The Pickup Truck Diaries: Identity & Ego.

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Identity & Ego.

Welcome back to The Pickup Truck Diaries! I feel like even though I’ve written over twenty of these articles over the last few years, I’ve still been neglecting this series somehow. After all, I really only want to engage with topics that I’m both passionate about or educated on in some way, but...

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Accomplishment & Pride.

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Accomplishment & Pride.

Welcome back, friends. Let’s do a little exercise together, right at the start of this one. Just you and me. I want you to pause, self-reflect, remember, and consider the last time you felt proud or accomplished. Interpret the scale or scope how you wish. Could be a single thing from just today,...

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Media & Production.

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Media & Production.

It’s been a while, but welcome back! This time in The Pickup Truck Diaries, we’re going to take a look at the wide world of entertainment, news, media, and production! There’s a whole lot of nuance here, ranging from small-time indie internet sensations, to enormous corporate giants - long bought...

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Education.

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Education.

Now… I’ve been sitting on this one for a while. Almost a year, in fact. That’s largely because about a year ago I was in the middle of making my exit from the fucking gongshow that is public education in Canada.  And trust me - at least here in British Columbia?  Public education is a...

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Organized Religion.

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Organized Religion.

Ready to piss some people off? Good! Because so am I. See, I don’t really feel bad about annoying some of the most powerful institutions in the world. Some of them have dominated wide swaths of humanity for literally thousands of years, suppressing independence, science, and individuality. ...

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Good & Evil.

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Good & Evil.

How simplistic! How droll! How utterly expected of the human race. Settle in, folks, this might be a long one. As a social outcast, and especially as a neurodivergent disabled person, I’m well-used to the proliferation of such simplistic ideas as good and evil, as if the universe wasn’t a...

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Drugs & Addiction.

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Drugs & Addiction.

DRUGS! Scared yet? Expecting me to shit on addicts with the tired old trash of being lazy, weak-willed, or lesser-than? Fuck that. We all know how much stigma there is around the topic of drugs and addiction. It deserves to be spoken to. For education first and foremost. So… Fair warning about...

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Disappointment.

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Disappointment.

If you’re expecting me to tell you not to be disappointed in this edition of The Pickup Truck Diaries, you’re going to be disappointed. Ha! After all, I come from a life of nothing BUT disappointment, in which being a strange neurodiverse person in a small town frequently made me an outcast....

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Goodbyes.

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Goodbyes.

Well fuck. This is part two in the: “I’m moving and processing said move through my writing.” By which I mean I’m really grappling with some pretty big issues of legacy and the saga of a family. Which isn’t exactly what I expected.  See, I always thought when I moved, I’d write this big...

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Boundaries & Change.

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Boundaries & Change.

Fuck me. A lot has happened in a relatively short while, so this one might be a little personal, but honestly… That’s kinda what these Pickup Truck Diaries are about, right? Using the context of my strange and well-lived life to provide some sort of awareness or education, and maybe a forced laugh...

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Power & Control.

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Power & Control.

Fuck you! That was the essence of punk in some circles, honestly. To be egregious, offensive, and downright startling. To defy anybody who would try to exert control over others. Be it the tats, the hair, the piercings, or the style, punk emerged in the 1970s in both North America and the UK as a...

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Road Trips.

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Road Trips.

Aight, so this edition of The Pickup Truck Diaries comes to you fresh from the Red Deer Alberta Montana’s, because I really wanted Steak and Eggs. (Unfortunately, they only had the Steak.) Well, we got halfway there at least. And my lavishness means I’m definitely treating this trip like my own...

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Demisexuality

The Pickup Truck Diaries: Demisexuality

Uh oh! This article has “sex” in the title! Everybody, start panicking! Scream! Run for cover! Because lo and behold anyone even attempts to have an honest conversation about their identity these days, right?! See, we just ended pride month, meaning the wide variety of Fortune 500 companies that...

Central Universe Science Fiction Shorts: An Update!

Campfire. Come gather 'round the campfire. Let me tell you a story. Several small ones, in fact! It started a month or two ago, when I had a bunch of hits on "Our Better Angels" via the 'ol analytics. Now, I've been running this little business for half a decade - so out of neurotic perfectionism,...

Witchcraft, Bastardized.

Witchcraft,Bastardized,Stolen across a dozen paganisms.Warped,Infused into poems.Emotions of a single moment in time,Philosophies held like gossamer -Spiderwebs.Fleeting feelings,Of a hundred timelines.The whole range of possibilities.Severing strings of fate,To write our own futures.

No Man of Grace.

I'm no man of grace.Nor one with a squeaky clean past.Ghetto redneck,Learned,Via the school of hard knocks.First time I ever smoked weed,It was laced with crystal meth.How they hooked kids.Still do.First blowjob was in a pair,Of cutoff jean shorts.Stupid as shit.In a truth or dare circle.Weirder...

I AM JORMUNDGANDR.

I am Jormungandr,Clutching my tail in my teeth.Grin and bear the game!Squeeze all the harder.Hourglass grains of sand.I am dying quicker than the rest.I am close friends with death.Screaming into the void.White rabbits, Alice!Follow the white rabbits.Serpents always do.

Keep Running.

Keep running,From my histories.Having fought them once,Living to tell the tale.Gotta punch up,Ever upwards.Uppercut the same stories,A hundred times.Until they are merely well-worn skin.Old routines,One uses as practice.When fear is a distant memory,We grin,Bear it.

Freedom From Samsara.

Death becomes an old friend,A sort of certainty to things.Finite time,Amidst universal entropy.The ticking of clocks.There's never enough.It's never enough.I can fight it for a thousand lifetimes,Seeking freedom from Samsara,The void,All of it.To be me,Forever.

The Softest Dirges.

I am the hungering dark,Seething in the shadows,Roiling in the pitch-black deeps.Sharp teeth.Manic grins.An oblivion that consumes the light,Crafting fractals.Infinite entropy,The purest want,Trickling from the void.I am the fallow field,Empty stomach,Softest dirges.

McRae’s Miraculous, Magical, and Monstrous Annotated DM’s Guide for: Template Non-Player Characters for Fun and Function!

So I just dropped my newest Dungeons and Dragons resource, based around providing some characters for you to use in your home games of DnD! And just like the last guide, every single character of the well over one HUNDRED characters is annotated by yours truly with comedy bits, stories, tips and...

To Be Gentle.

What is it,To be gentle?Such a wartorn past as mine,Hardly deserves peace -Does it?I choose to be kind -Remembering the fisticuffs of my youth.Part of me,Is gentle because of all that.Fighting an evil nature,Through great effort.Trying to be better,Each day.Yet beasts,Still lurk within.No matter...

Wild & Free.

I will never be what you want me to be. Demand me to don, That mantle of lover? I shall fight you to my last. Tell me to be quiet, I will become cacophony. Tympanic shockwaves. Try to tame me, And I must go wild. Becoming the creature, The beast. Cryptid. In an age of...

Cold Rage.

If only I could do more,With this infinite cold rage.Converted to fuel,Via alchemy.Sluiced through empirical methods,Of my true god science.Bottling wouldn't do.Implosion would be imminent.As a decade ago:Enough rage to power infinite lightbulbs,Honeycombs of neon signery.Craving release.

At Least I’m Haunting Something Right.

I never want to say goodbye,To any lover.Leaning Polyamorous,Yet cursed by Demisexuality.Grey-Ace rules -Half cocked conditions,We can't pin down.Were relationships so easy.Learned they require work,One or two in.Others just need avoiding.Yet the curse remains.Sordid,Seething."I will always love...

21st Century Witchcraft.

A spell in three parts,Sung in eighths.Retch intent into it,These poor facsimiles,For better incantations.The rhythm doesn't matter,It's willpower that works the wont.Cascading contentions & calamities,Warping wills & wisdoms,Worlds & wanderers.I can teach you,Darling.

A Future To Be Saved.

Serenade me into power,With silence.Let the naysayers,Finally fall quiet.Empires,Built on new gold.Manufactured from authenticity,And talent.I shall ascend the steps,With reverence for the shoes,To be filled.The legacy,To be left.And a future,To be saved.

As Per The Punk Days Of My Youth.

I hath played taskmaster,Too much it seems.Speaking soliloquies aloud,To small,Empty rooms.Poor little cryptid,Trying not to fall back into madness again.Yet the monk,Always does need to maintain discipline.So I must restrain myself.Invisible chains,As per the punk days of my youth.Stay.

Monks Doused In Gasoline.

Do not love me.I fear I might end up,Reciprocating.Such a dangerous game,When learned from thy histories.Those that can lull you to solace,But for a moment.Guard dropped,Knife sinking in to the hilt,Between the shoulderblades.Pacifists like me,Never love very long.Doused in gasoline.