Category: The Ramble (page 2 of 475)

So here’s where we’re at in APPLETOWN — I’ve still got a half-dozen or so reviews to fire off here, though for most of them I’ve done videos over at Instagram. And I’m hoping to get a couple more apples yet from the local orchard (their Goldrush was running weirdly late this year), and I’ll also probably scurry about the grocery store like a weird apple-eating spider to see if I can pick up any varieties I’ve yet to review here.

That said, for the most part, I’ll probably skip the pontificating preamble for most of these and just jump right into the review. It’s the holidays, I’m busy, you’re busy, and October was heavy on the apple content, so I think there’s a value-add in me just cutting to the fucking chase and throwing my apple reviews at your face. Which rhymes. I am an apple poet; grapple with my pro wit. Boom. Drop the mic. On my foot. Why did I drop the mic. That was a bad idea. Oh god what did I do to my toe. Mistakes were made. I should stick to eating apples, no more of this foolish rhyming business.

All right.

Today, we have a two-fer —

Two apples that blush from the inside, with pinkish-reddish flesh — that, due to the anthocyanins inside the apple, which can be a function of the apple variety, but also goosed by exposure to the sun, and further, increased by how many human sacrifices you have laid at the base of the tree while wassailing the orchard in ancient song and apple hymn.

How do these two APPLE SIBLINGS compare?

My review of a Lucy Rose from Sprouts, early December:

My memory of this apple was that, as the name suggests, it was very very rose-forward. But the apple I ate now was no such thing.

In fact, the flavor of this apple would be “long-chewed bubblegum.”

The bite was, up front, incredibly, profoundly juicy — I hesitate to be weird and gross and call this apple a squirter, but I’m going to go ahead and do it anyway because honestly, if I’m not a little weird and a little gross, who even am I? But seriously, the juice from this thing was unparalleled — a drippy apple, salivating so much I think its kind was wanting to be eaten.

(Seriously, watch the video if you don’t believe me.)

Problem is, the juice is… watery. There’s not a lot of there there. The skin was tough. The floral bubblegum flavor faded so fast I’m not sure it was ever there. It occasionally flirted with the taste of pennies, which made me think I’d bitten my lip or something while eating it? The crunch was admitted satisfying — like biting into the skull of a long-held foe. But the meh flavor coupled with a long chew and a weird aftertaste made this less fun for me.

Oh! Oh, and it’s supposed to be all red and awesome inside but it was mostly white with like, light stains of pink, which makes it look biological. Like something you’ll pull out of a medical waste bin.

Not great. Let’s go 2.0 and call it a day.

(By the way, I know my photo there sort of sucks. Which matches the apple! Because the apple also sucked! Parity and parallel structure, baby.)

Lucy Rose: Pre-chewed bubblegum, yet alarmingly wet

My review of a Lucy Glo from Sprouts, late November:

So, the Lucy Rose sucked.

Presumably, the Lucy Glo also sucks?

WELL, YOU’D BE WRONG. It’s like the saying goes:

IF YOU PRESUMABLY YOU MAKE A PRES OUT OF U AND MABLY.

I mean, I think the’s the saying? Whatever.

So — the Lucy Glo stands in stark contrast to her far weaker sister.

What I found here was a refreshing pink lemonade-tasting, raw-red-innarded, Lemonheads-sour apple with a cider vinegar tingle in the throat — it was a little crunchy but just the right kind of soft where the flesh starts strong but then quickly goes cotton candy, not lingering longly in the mouth. The flavor goes down with the ship, which is what you want with any apple.

It’s more sour than sweet, and I think more candy sour than citrus sour?

But it’s great! Really great. Only thing to ding it, I think, was there was a papery finish and aftertaste to it — it’s like the taste in my coffee if I don’t rinse the brown paper filters before hand, that paper taste carries over. Except here, no paper existed, but it still tastes that way.

Truly a surprising grocery store apple, and though the outside is middlingly ugly (kind of a sicky-blush), the inside was pink-red-pretty. The kind of innards a serial killer would admire, probably.

Let’s call it a 7.9 — allllllmost an 8, but just shy.

Behold me chomping on the apple.

Lucy Glo: The superior Lucy, tastes of Lemonheads, with flesh that would appeal to Hannibal Lecter probably

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, Granny Smith

Every year I (try to) do a GIFTS FOR WRITERS post, which is to say, a post speaking not to the writers per se but to those fortunate (or unfortunate) souls that have writers in their lives. Writers need a particular kind of love! We have too many notebooks already! We probably don’t have enough chocolate! We require peculiar care and feeding! I want to help you help them.

(I think the last proper one I did was 2023, but even there, I mostly scrubbed off the “for writers” part, though it’s still in there, thematically.)

I don’t really have a list this year! The writers in your life probably don’t need a cool new pen or a shiny new analog word processor and instead need like, health care, or a book deal, or FOR THE WORLD TO CALM DOWN JUST A TINY FUCKING BIT. You know, things you can’t really offer.

That said, you can offer one thing:

You can support the writer in your life by pounding a stake into the heart of the digital vampire plaguing us all: Generative AI.

This means —

Don’t post AI slop.

Don’t repost photos or news stories that don’t pass the smell test or that don’t have reputable links to support them.

Don’t actively use AI in any way — no Sora ick, no Nano Banana bullshit, don’t even look at ChatGPT.

Don’t support it, don’t argue in its favor, don’t play Devil’s Advocate with it.

Just get on board the FUCK AI train. Tell them and the rest of the world with your whole chest that you know AI sucks, and more to the point, it literally sucks by siphoning up all our creative work, our effort, our information environment, our actual environment, our goddamn everything, and then it files down the serial numbers on our art and our identities and puts it back into the world without our soul in it — and more to the point, with no way for it to ever help us pay for rent or health care or food. It’s an artbarf machine — just puking up low-value slurry into the maws of the open-mouthed baby-brains who want to cosplay as writers and artists and musicians but without doing any of that pesky work. It pukes into their mouths, they puke it onto the floor, and they clap their shitty poopy hands and say, “I made this! I made art!” It’s horrible. Why would you like this? It’s the idolization of idea paired with the demonization of both creator and creation. It ruins us.

So you need to put up that flag. Loud and proud HATER-OF-AI, ye must be.

If you love us, that’s what you’ll do.

You won’t fight.

You’ll just trust.

And okay fine if you really want a gift —

This DESTROY AI shirt at Aftermath by artist Kim Hu is bad-ass.

Though not AI, there’s also Authors Against Book Bans shirts.

So, there you go.

Best gift for a writer is to respect their work and their humanity and give the biggest middle finger you can give to generative AI and LLMs, please and thank you.

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Listen, okay, fine, I am an imperfect person who has to sometimes hawk his crass wares, so I did write a writing advice book geared toward, um, these troubled times somewhat, called Gentle Writing Advice. You can get it at Bookshop.org, or my own local store can get you a copy — hey, they can even get you one signed and personalized and sent right to you. I also have merch! MERCH. Who doesn’t love merch!? Okay bye.

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