Author: terribleminds (page 1 of 475)

I liked a lot of cool stuff this year! I liked books, movies, music, games! The end! Huzzah. We did it. I’m going to go eat an apple now.

*stares*

*waits*

Ugh, fine. Fine. You probably want me to, like, conjure names of things, which honestly is very hard for me, really for two reasons:

a) my brain is essentially a sinkhole in the middle of the street, and there’s just no telling when a car full of semi-useful information is going to drive right into it

b) it’s also sort of silly to mark not time this way but enjoyment of media time in this way; for example, I read a lot of books for blurbing purposes that didn’t come out this year but are cool future books, so do those count? What about a movie that came out in 2024 that I saw in 2025? why does this matter?

Also, should these be limited by number? Only ten books? Top twenty? Why does that matter? It can’t matter! The number ten is not a superior number and if I read fourteen books I liked, fuck ten, I’mma tell you about fourteen.

Whatever, fuck it, here we go.

Books

We start with books because books are the best. I write them. You read them. There are a lot of them by a lot of genuinely wonderful authors. They’re truly a universal good.

Here, in no particular order, is a series of books I liked from and in 2025, and no, I’m not providing mini-reviews, I got shit to do. Just know that I liked these a whole lot and you will like them too.

Apple: A Delicious History by Sally Coulthard

Hot Wax, M.L. Rio

King Sorrow, Joe Hill

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, Clay McLeod Chapman

House of Idyll, Delilah S. Dawson

Spread Me, Sarah Gailey

When The Wolf Comes Home, Nat Cassidy

Crafting for Sinners, Jenny Kiefer

Good Boy, Neil McRobert

Watching Evil Dead, Josh Malerman

Why I Love Horror, ed by Becky Spratford

The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer

Another, Paul Tremblay

We Are Always Tender With Our Dead, Eric Larocca

What Stalks the Deep, T Kingfisher

Humans: A Monstrous History, Surekha Davies

Not One of Us, Dan Chaon

The Birding Dictionary, Rosemary Mosco

The Night That Finds Us All, John Hornor Jacobs

God’s Junk Drawer, Peter Clines

There are surely, surely some I’ve missed. Again: brain is sinkhole.

Oh, and I popped these all into a Bookshop.org list here.

Also, since I am a jerk who needs to eat food to live, and whose health insurance costs are metastasizing in 2026, hey, Staircase in the Woods made it to the year’s best books list on Vulture for 2025, and if you’re so inclined to grab it or any of my books before the year is out, I’ll love you forever. Or at least until I perish from an easily-preventable disease and am eaten by all of my quantum cats.

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Music

Got to see a couple shows this year — a truly sublime NIN and a bad-ass Tom Morello + The Neighborhood Kids. And I listened to a lot of music. I have no more profound commentary than that. Music is good. Yay music.

Here’s what I liked:

Tron: Ares sndtrk: NIN

No Hard Feelings: The Beaches

Soak: Black Honey

The Hives Forever, Forever The Hives: The Hives

Coydog: Carter Veil

Girls: Princess Nokia

Good for the Soul: GANS

Hard-Headed Woman: Margo Price

All That Is Over: Sprints

Moisturizer: Wet Leg

Memory of a Day: Phantogram

Swallow the Knife: Sir Chloe

I’m Only Fucking Myself: Lola Young

The Clearing, Wolf Alice

Here’s an Apple Music list of the songs I listened to a lot, though (though some of these are odd that they’re in there, given I can only remember listening to them once or twice, but who knows).

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Movies

Hey, movies are great! I mean it’s too bad they aren’t going to exist anymore in a year or two, functionally-speaking, and that movie theaters received a death blow this year and ultimately everything is terrible, but in the meantime, I liked a buncha movies this year, so here they be, in no particular order:

Sinners, One Battle After Another, Frankenstein, Black Bag, The Monkey, Bring Her Back, The Naked Gun, Predator: Badlands, Together, Heart Eyes, 28 Years Later, Companion, Friendship

Weapons gets a special shout-out as a movie I 80% loved and 20% hated, which still makes it great, and arguably makes it interesting

Still need to see Blue Moon and Wake Up Dead Man

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TV

Best shows in 2025 —

Pluribus, Peacemaker, Andor, Severance, Task, The Chair Company, The Lowdown, Murderbot, Alien: Earth, White Lotus, The Residence

Dang, it was a pretty good year for TV.

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Games

I feel like this list should be longer, but I dunno!

The Blue Prince, Ghost of Yotei, Ball x Pit, Baby Steps

And I think that’ll do me for 2025.

Feel free to drop into the comments and tell me what you loved!

Or feel free to tell me what I’m missing.

Or just fight me! FIGHT ME YOU FOOLS

great bye

It’s time to talk about my cat. To which you might be saying, “Chuck, I didn’t know you had a cat!” and I’d respond with, “I didn’t know I had a cat either.” But Google — the preeminent search engine! — knows otherwise, courtesy of its wonderful, never-ever-inaccurate “AI Overview,” which is totally not a piece of shit that just makes up information willy-fucking-nilly.

In fact, here is what it would like you to know about my Definitely Real Cat:

Well! That answers that. Apparently, unbeknownst to me, I actually do have a cat, as the *checks notes* Wengie Wiki will tell you. This isn’t unusual. Cats are very often little hide-and-seeky guys, right? Dear sweet Boomba is probably just tucked away in some dimensional pocket inside our house.

Hey — maybe if the Almighty Google Gemini AI knows that I have this cat, perhaps it also knows where the cat is. Let’s check!

Oh. Oh fuck. Oh no. Poor Boomba. Boomba, I hardly knew thee. Literally, in fact, I didn’t know you existed until moments ago and now you are deceased. I apparently announced it on this very blog.

But! BUT. Welcome to the family, sweet Franken! Apparently I’ve posted photos of the cat on this blog somewhere?

I saw this cat hanging around our property in July — maybe this is our cat??

Hey, who knows? But at least our family unit has been made whole, once more. Finally, catness has returned to the Wendig household, and I’m sure Franken is well-loved and healthy–

FRANKEN NO

RIP FRANKEN

I MISS YOU BUDDY

WHAT DO I DO NOW

Jesus Christ, I am going through cats like they’re dish sponges. At least this is the end of it —

What the fuck. Now there’s a Catlin? Is Catlin friends with Dartanian? Is there any chance that all of these cats are just the original cat, Boomba??

Also I have a dog named Roxie? What happened to my other two dogs, Loa and Snoobug? Do I have more pets I don’t know about?

Oh! Uhh. Oh! Okay! I still have Loa, but then I also have *checks notes* six other fucking dogs but now Roxie isn’t one of those dogs and Snoobug maybe never existed at all and —

ONCE AGAIN REALITY HAS SHIFTED

WHO ARE PIPER AND OTIS

THOSE ARE VERY GOOD NAMES FOR DOGS THOUGH

ARE THEY HEALTHY

DID ONE OF THEM EAT FRANKEN AND BOOMBA

At least I’m healthy, right??

oh SHIT

I have cancer –?!

What kind? A good kind? I mean, none of them are good kinds but is it like, a kind you can deal with? Or is it one of those other kinds? Damnit, to have to find out this way. I guess I should just thank Doctor Google for telling me.

It’s a shame I haven’t yet found religion —

oh thank GOD

literally thank God

all hail the Christ, I had no idea I embraced Christianity in a public way, but apparently I have, which I think definitely keeps my soul intact as I go onto Heaven into the arms of Christ himself and

Well, if Nat Cassidy says it, it has to be true

Whatever the case, I’m just glad at the age of 49, I have found religion

I am 49, right?

NOTHING IS REAL

NOTHING IS TRUE

ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE

HAIL THE CAT CHRIST I AM A YEAR YOUNGER THAN I THOUGHT

MAYBE THE CANCER ATE A YEAR OFF MY LIFE

Or maybe

just maybe

Generative AI is a sack of wet garbage.

Do not use AI for search.

DO NOT USE AI FOR SEARCH.

AI can’t even do the basic math right. Meanwhile it hallucinates endless nonsense things! So many false things! It would generate new false things if I gave it the same question string twice. This is only the tip of the iceberg for the weird things I got it to assure me were true. Some other fun things:

I had a podcast about The Expanse:

I’m a screenwriter (okay, sorta true) who wrote a monster movie called “Beware, Beware” —

I have two children, both of whom are homeschooled. I guess I keep one in the cellar, and have forgotten about him. Or her. Whatever.

I also wrote the book Incidents Around the House! Sorry, Josh Malerman! Not you, buddy. Me. I wrote it. And I also gave it the plot to The Book of Accidents, because I’m kooky like that.

Finally, did I mention my pet spider, Luigi? Who, I dunno, may or may not be named after a handsome (alleged) assassin?

So! This is just a nice little reminder that generative AI is shit. Total shit! It scrapes everything we’ve ever written and then can’t even sort through it fast enough to give us a correct answer, all the while burning down the world to lie to us. What a truly nightmarish thing we’ve created! Jesus Christ we are cooked! I only hope my precious kitty-cat is okay. My precious kitty-cat, who I’m totally not making up and feeding to the Artificial Hallucination Machine. My precious kitty cat, who is named Sir Mewlington Von Pissbreath and who is definitely real and who is six years old and who wears a little top hat and also can speak limited Cantonese.

Okay! Don’t trust AI! Burn it all down! Buy my real human-authored books! Also I guess buy Josh Malerman and Nat Cassidy’s books too! Bye!

p.s. here are my real dogs, Loa and Snoobug

It is the day of the giving of thanks, a holiday that is ostensibly problematic in its origin but kind of nice and pure in its current form — it’s a celebration only minimally about buying things and ultimately about sitting down with friends and family to a stupidly caloric starch-bomb meal, often concluding with some manner of pie.

(I suggested on Bluesky that the ultimate form of Thanksgiving might in fact be Piesgiving, where you begin the day with breakfast pie, and eat savory pies throughout the day until crossing the finish line with a variety of sweet and season-slash-region-appropriate dessert pies. The goal is then also to figure out how to turn, say, a coffee drink into something reflective of pie — or a cocktail, as well. IT CAN BE DONE. And yes, there’s already 3/14, Pi Day, but the goal here would be to make it more autumnal, more apropos to the standard Thanksgiving meal.)

Anyway, it’s a nice day, and you might be sitting down at some point and enjoying apples today, as I hope you are. You are, after all, a member of the Apple Snack Gang whether you want to be or not, sorry, I don’t make the rules, just by reading these very words you are legally across all galactic satrapies a member of the cult I mean gang. Welcome aboard!

I’ve got apples in my homemade cranberry sauce, and I also made a side of applesauce — this time using Ludacrisp apples, and honestly, it tastes a little weird. Not bad! But weird. I also get a pie from Factory Girl, and I’ll just let you get a look at that beauty:

They have in fact challenged me to try to figure out what five apples they use in this glorious pie — really, it’s the best apple pie ever — and boy howdy am I down for that challenge. I’ll get it wrong! But I’ll try.

(My go-to apple pie apple is Goldrush, but I have yet to be able to get any this season, as my orchard seems late to put them out. Aaaugh.)

Anyway, one of the apples I think most commonly used in Thanksgiving foodstivities is, in fact, the apple I am here to review today.

Without further ado:

My review of a Manoff Orchard Granny Smith, late-Nov:

The Granny Smith apple! An apple that I only just learned is apparently an Aussie apple. Not British, not American. May even have some ties to Tasmanian crabapples? And it’s named after a literal Granny Smith — Maria Ann Smith, an orchard-keeper.

Whatever the case, it’s often thought of as a great baking apple, a good sauce apple, and a terrible eating apple.

In fact, my last review some years ago was this:

“It’s good for baking but don’t put it in your mouth.”

And that was it.

Thing is, that was a grocery store version procured in January. It was tart as hell, hard as a rock, and made my mouth sad.

I decided this year, well, why not give it another go?

They were popping up at my local orchard, plus I was using some to cook with for Turkey Day (a day in which I do not make turkey, by the way, and today I’ll be making little quails) — so I saved one for eating out of hand.

The result?

This was a lovely apple! Quelle surprise, which is French for: “I AM SHOOKETH, FOR THIS APPLE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A MISERABLE ORB OF TONGUE-SHRIVELING SOURNESS, BASICALLY JUST A LIME, BUT ACTUALLY, IT WAS MUCH BETTER THAN THAT, THEREFORE I AM, AS PREVIOUSLY NOTED, SHOOKETH.”

Crisp rather than crunchy. Juicy but not like, “go see a doctor” juicy. Had a lemonade flavor, but less a super-sweet lemonade and more the artisanal kind which is mostly lemon and minimally sugar. It was tart, but not unsweet. The skin was not a problem to eat and was, erm, easy to perforate and did not linger longer in the mouth.

All told?

Very pleasing. Quite refreshing!

Only oddities were —

a) the skin offered about 10% banana runts

b) a puzzling savory note manifested and lingered long after eating the apple — not unpleasant, but odd

Neither of those are deal-breakers.

As such, for eating-out-of-hand, this is an easy 6.6 out of 10. (Higher if you’re using it for baking or throwing at the shrieking poop-fingered goblins you’ve parked at the kiddy table today.)

You can watch me eat it — and regard its witch’s nipple — here.

(I also quick remind: order my books by Nov 30th here from Doylestown to get them shipped to you with unique personalizations and stickers. Support a cool indie bookstore. Help me buy more apples in the process. Okay, minimal capitalistic intrusion complete.)

I’m thankful for this apple.

I’m thankful for you.

Okay bye.

Granny Smith: Best for baking but a good version from a nice orchard will give a pleasantly refreshing lemonadey apple-eating experience

Reviews in 2025: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet, Cortland, Maiden’s Blush, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Reine des Reinettes, Ingrid Marie, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Holstein, Suncrisp, Ashmead’s Kernel, Opalescent, Orleans Reinette, Black Gilliflower, Red Delicious Double Feature, Jonathan, Ruby Mac, Crimson Topaz, Esopus Spitzenburg, Mutsu, Hunnyz, Winesap, Stayman Winesap, Winter Banana, Ribston Pippin, Rhode Island Greening, Roxbury Russet, Opal, Cosmic Crisp, Black Oxford, Ananas Reinette, Sugarbee

As a cantankerous alt-rock grunge-loving teenager, I was not particularly a Rage Against the Machine guy — I mean, I liked the music but it didn’t connect with me, and my theory now as to why that was? I was just a selfish teenage dickhead whose angst was not political, not global, and I was honestly a little walled off from the world’s problems and definitely up the ass of my own problems. The private, self-absorbed, inward-looking angst of NIN was more my thing than the outward-facing rage of, well, RATM.

Fast-forward to now. My kid, who you may know as “B-Dub,” has been playing guitar now for… *checks watch* oh my god since he was five years old. And he’s now three inches taller than me, just to give you that sense.

He discovered Rage, and further, Tom Morello.

And Morello became something of an inspiration to him — the kid loves his attitude toward playing, toward guitar gear, obviously his political stances, and even more obviously, the dude’s actual ability, which is appropriately legendary. The guy, with minimal gear, can make a guitar sound impossible, like he’s forcing it to do literal magic. So, as such, I’ve become a proper RATM fan in the present. And recently we had the opportunity to see Tom Morello with a full band accompaniment, and further, we got the chance to give the kid special access in the form of a VIP “guitar package,” which was like, this thing before the show you could go to where you got to check out Morello’s long-serving guitars, his pedal board, and talk to his guitar techs about all of it. Got this for the kid for an early Christmas present as a surprise.

Thing was, they sent out an email that falsely stated we’d be meeting Tom himself alongside the man’s guitars — but then they sent a follow-up email the next morning to say, “Oops, nope, that’s not true, sorry, sorry, our bad.” Which, hey, that sucks but I knew it going in and suspected the first email was wrong; the initial package description was clear about not meeting the guy. I was under no illusion and expected the clarification that inevitably, if disappointingly, came.

So, we go to the show.

We go to the VIP experience.

And they tell us, “Tom feels bad and wants to make it right,” so suddenly the man hisownself shows up, does some Q&A alongside his guitar techs, and then takes photos with everyone.

It was, needless to say, pretty fucking rad.

But during the Q&A, he said something that struck me in the heart like a pure beam of light. I’m gonna be honest — it was so good, I don’t even remember the question. I think it was a throwaway question and he might’ve even meant this statement as not a throwaway, exactly, but given more as a casual response, and not a statement with the creative weight that I felt it carried.

This is what he said:

“Don’t leave behind who you are in what you do.”

And man, that’s just fucking good advice.

I recognize it’s not particularly profound advice, really, but I do think it speaks to the danger that all creative people face, and that’s whether you make words or physical art or music. Hell, maybe it speaks to the danger everybody faces, regardless of your life path or career choice or whatever — the more of yourself you slap up on that altar of success, the more of You that you have to cut away… the less it all means. The less reason you have to do it.

The less it all matters.

With writing, I am wont to remind folks that who you are really matters to that process. And it matters in a thousand different ways. Two of the most important are: first, you write how you write and that’s important to figure out through endless iteration and reiteration of process, and second, very little if anything we write can truly be original, but the one original thing we get to bring to the table is ourselves. Because we are each of us a truly unique confluence of creative and critical molecules. No one is like you. No one! No one has the particular, peculiar combination of experiences and fears and delights and fetishes and anxieties and neurodivergences that comprise the YOU that shows up to the page, so it’s foolish to try to push that part away. That part is the only part that matters.

And so I really loved what he said — don’t leave yourself behind. Because it’s easy, so easy, to do that. It’s tempting to believe we’re the thing that’s holding ourselves back, or that we’re the thing standing in our way — and that’s not to say we can’t be our own worst enemies. We can! We can absolutely get in our own heads and fuck ourselves up. But sometimes, the thing we get in our own heads about is self-doubt. Imposter syndrome. This feeling that nobody wants us at the party, that we weren’t invited, and if we’re going to show up we better show up with a mask on, or pretending to be someone else. So we need to write in this genre or with that trope or using some particular trick or convention. Even AI represents a way away from yourself — it’s not you. It’s a sticky stolen mash-up of everyone else. Use AI, you’re leaving yourself behind (amongst several other critical sins). Hell, with AI, it’s worse than that — you’ve discarded yourself, given over your agency and your creativity to Techbro Billionaires and their Great and Powerful Oz machine.

You’re not an imposter.

You belong here.

The invitation to the party is you. You’re it. Your creative and emotional DNA is the key that unlocks the door to get inside.

Shit, it’s the only real way past the ropes.

So, I dunno. It hit me and for me was a useful reminder and, as such, I thought I’d pass it along.

Don’t leave behind who you are in what you do.

Fuck yeah.

Also, hey, Tom Morello seems like a real one. Put on a helluva show, and he also had an opener that he invited, a San Diego hyper-political rap-punk group called the Neighborhood Kids, who fucking slammed that stage with intense energy. (Check ’em out here.)

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All right, gotta remind you all — if you want signed, uniquely-holidayily personalized, and bestickered books from me, then click here to do that. Deadline is November 30th for a guaranteed get by the holidays.

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All right, fuck it, another quick story. So, during the performance, both with Morello and the Neighborhood Kids, there was political talk, with a bonus chant demanded of FUCK ICE. And let’s be honest — most of the crowd was what the Neighborhood Kids called “old rockers.” White dude graybeards with metal shirts and shit. Not all of them! There were some youths! I saw some trans folks! I sat next to a cool Latino dude who was a big guitar nerd. But mostly: yeah, old white guys. I guess, at this point, myself included in that group. And it was fine! They were awesome old white dudes, still trying to headbang and throwing up horns and fists and trying very hard to jump up and down on creaky old knees. They were committed, and they were politically invested.

Anyway, during the chant of FUCK ICE, two things happened:

First, when that chant was over, a guy behind me — not an old guy, but a young guy, I’d say late 20s, early 30s, standing there with his girlfriend — waited for a moment and yelled FUCK SOCIALISM.

I turned to glare at him.

A lot of people turned to glare at him.

His girlfriend, perhaps seeing this, hit him on the arm.

He received — thankful for him — no acknowledgement of what he yelled from the stage.

Then, directly in front of me was this meatball-looking dude, this absolute casino-fiend of a man (did I mention the show took place in a casino theater? eennh it did) with hair slicked back and dreams of having starred on The Sopranos — soon as the chant was over, he and his starving-bird-girlfriend got up and walked out of the show in a huff. As if FUCK ICE was a bridge too far for them.

I guess they were hoping Tom Morello was raging against the machine of… socialism? He was mad at progressive thought? Raging against immigrants? Like, what the fuck? What machine did you think was the problem? Did these people ever actually listen to RATM? And then I realized — no, they didn’t, not really. Guys like that, they just heard the guitar and the fuck you I won’t do what you tell me and in their minds etched that saying onto their feelings about Big Government or Big Woke or some other stupid shit, and they ignored literally all the rest of it, and then they come to a Tom Morello show thinking he’s on their team while mostly being fans of like, Limp Bizkit or whatever.

Dipshits, dipshits, everywhere.

Anyway! Sorry, had to add that story in.

BYE.

I’m kind of spoiling my review a little here in the post title sooooo I guess let’s just get into it, shall we?

My review of this fucking SugarBee “apple,” bought at I dunno some grocery store, maybe Sprouts, I forget, early-November:

This apple was a real piece of shit.

I’m sorry! I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

Okay, look.

I don’t know if this is literally, legitimately the worst apple I’ve eaten all year. Okay? I don’t know that. This shit isn’t science. I give it a fancy number score as if to make you believe this is math somehow, but it’s not math, it’s just me taking a dart made of my emotions and throwing it at a map of the internet. Giving it a number makes it feel like an official, objective accounting but in reality, but mostly that number is just a gut check feeling and reflects whether I’m happy or sad or meh or, in this case, angry inside my mouth.

Now, I know some of you genuinely like this apple.

That’s okay! You should be allowed to like things, even if you liking those things makes me think somehow your tongue is broken, or that perhaps your brain has been chewed upon and through by some kind of weevil. It’s fine! You’re fine! We’re fine. More SugarBee apples for you, friend! Less for me because I don’t want to eat poison!

Because that’s what it kind of tasted like.

It tasted like this:

You took a rose.

You sprayed that rose with wasp spray.

You muddled that rose in a mixing glass with a couple cubes of brown sugar.

You poured cider over it, strained it, and made me drink it.

And then the aftertaste was like if you dipped a cantaloupe* in MSG — I was suddenly assaulted by this weird savory umami goblin that lingered and lingered, clinging to my tastebuds and I have no idea why.

It was juicy! It was sweet! Not tart at all, not even in the slightest! What a nice crunch! Wow is that the piquant effervescence of RoundUp mixed with grandmother’s perfume? Oh my!

Seriously, I don’t know what happened here, but it fought my tongue like an angry swordfish on the line. One assumes this horrible fuckface of an apple is not emblematic of all SugarBee apples — I’ve had one of these before and recall not particularly liking it, thinking it was a dullard’s apple for children and only children, but I don’t recall the “pesticide and weird melon” taste. I’m almost tempted to buy another one from a different store just to see, but I may not hate myself that bad. I even peeled this one to see, and it did not fix the problem, not at all. It insisted, then persisted.

Anyway. This was bad and weird and the taste stayed on my tongue like the smell of a dead rat in the walls. It was fucking horrible fuck this fucking apple.

I’m going 1.1 out of 10, which is honestly gracious, but I am trying to give it some small credit for the juicy crunch it gave.

Here’s me eating it.

SugarBee: Like a rose dipped in wasp spray and sugar

Reviews in 2025: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet, Cortland, Maiden’s Blush, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Reine des Reinettes, Ingrid Marie, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Holstein, Suncrisp, Ashmead’s Kernel, Opalescent, Orleans Reinette, Black Gilliflower, Red Delicious Double Feature, Jonathan, Ruby Mac, Crimson Topaz, Esopus Spitzenburg, Mutsu, Hunnyz, Winesap, Stayman Winesap, Winter Banana, Ribston Pippin, Rhode Island Greening, Roxbury Russet, Opal, Cosmic Crisp, Black Oxford, Ananas Reinette

* by the way, fuck melons, melons are also pieces of shit and should get fucked, throw all the melons out, put them in some sort of space trebuchet and launch those shitdicks to the fucking moon, the moon can be for melons, melons for the cave-dwelling moon people, I’m sorry if you like melons** but in this case you’re wrong and have been duped by perhaps nostalgia or aliens or those weevils I was talking about earlier

** watermelons are sort of okay