P.T. Phronk's Blog

Last night, I watched a documentary called Endurance, about the search for the shipwreck of explorer Ernest Shackleton’s failed attempt to cross the Antarctic. It’s an incredible story about the spirit of humanity. But as I watched footage of the crew and audio of their voices from 1915, I thought: is this humanity at all? Were there even video cameras back then? How did they get audio of these people reading their own diaries? Wait, did I just get duped by artificial intelligence?

Real or AI?

There are obvious problems with AI. Any real writer will use a lot of bad words if you bring it up, because even the simplest chat bots are based on stolen work. Some of my own books are on LibGen, the database that Meta pirated to train their AI, and yes, that pisses me the fuck off. I put years of work into those books, and Meta can’t even bother buying a single copy to steal it and chop it up and make billions of dollars off of it? Fuck you, Meta.

Watching Endurance revealed a less obvious problem with AI: it has eroded trust so much that, even watching a historical documentary, I have no idea if what I’m seeing is real or not. Even if it didn’t actually use AI, that cat’s out of the bag, so now I have to question everything I see. Am I actually learning anything, or am I only seeing a predictive algorithm’s best guess as to what history looked like? Or even worse, a machine’s idea of how humans would react to a machine’s idea of history?

Is AI implanting false memories that I think are real, like a psychologist from back when ethics weren’t a thing?

Technology-assisted deception has always been around—I’m sure it wasn’t long after photography was invented when someone thought “what if I used this incredible civilization-changing tool to mess with my friends?”

The Haunted Lane, 1889

Even staying in the shipwreck realm, Treasures From the Wreck of the Unbelievable was an unassuming documentary about the art found on a newly discovered wreck, except (spoiler alert) it was all fake and designed to promote an artist’s exhibition of the fake shipwreck art he created. But that’s different from AI trickery! That’s human deception, human storytelling, human artwork. Even in its lack of authenticity, it tells you something real, and connects you with a person at the other end of the chain from human hands to cameras to another human on a couch in front of a TV.

So I’m not a luddite, I swear. I just like people.

I like learning things that are true.

AI makes it impossible to know if I’m connecting with people or learning anything, even in the context of a documentary that is supposed to be telling a real human story.

It turns out that my untrusting gut was half right about Endurance. At the very end (why not the beginning??), it reveals that the camera footage was enhanced, but real. The narrated diaries were AI-generated voices, based on other recordings of the crew, who, being dead, surely didn’t give permission for AI to imitate them, making a guess as to the emotion in their voice as they described the worst days of their lives.

The spirit of humanity is under attack.

I had a nice year.

Nothing big happened, I just had a pleasant time hanging out with my partner and my dog, listening to good records, drinking good coffee / whisky, being antisocial, and taking long baths. It was a year of self care. That also includes taking exercise and diet more seriously, going to the doctor to get prescribed my very first daily medication (for gout, which sucks ass), and generally trying to extend my life for another 45 years or more. I’m a lucky person in 2024, might as well keep that going. Live laugh love.

Highlights worth mentioning:

I wrote and released a novella in February: Are You Seeing This? Seeing my nephew’s play in Toronto in MarchShock Stock in May, meeting Joe Bob Briggs and Darcy the Mail GirlAn eclipse and the aurora borealis; the sky was wilding out this yearNova Scotia in June, hanging out with my sister and her family, almost dying a few times getting lost in the wilderness, driving mountainous slippery roads, and poisoning ourselves with whisky, wine, and the best cocktail I’ve ever had:The Black Lodge: peaty scotch (e.g., Lagavulin 16), Campari, coffee liqueur, sweet vermouth.Cottage up north (ish) in August; seeing Pepper healthy and enthusiastically exploring steep mountains and cave systems fills my heart with joyNiagara Falls in September to celebrate good friends getting engagedGodspeed You! Black Emperor in November; my first concern in a whileChristmas and new year celebrations in December, having friends and their toddler and dog stay with us, six parties in a row with lots of great people

Zooming out from myself in 2024, it feels like the world is in a bit of a holding pattern. Storms are gathering on the horizon with the U.S. election going as horribly as it possibly could have, and Canada on track to inexplicably follow suit. Maybe the alien ghost drones being sighted all over the world (including here in London) will save us from the next world war. Maybe artificial intelligence will do our work for us so we can take more baths. Change is certain. Whether it will actually make our individual lives better or worse in any meaningful way is not.

Finally, here’s the art that inspired, distracted, and soothed me in 2024. I like looking back on these posts to help remember what the year felt like. Maybe you’ll find some new recommendations to make your 2025 better.

Music

As usual, this is an uncurated list of the albums I listened to most, courtesy of Last.FM. It’s worth noting that I also gained an unhealthy obsession with vinyl this year, listening to mostly 70s prog rock. I spent way too much money on impractical plastic discs, got stupidly excited about cleaning them with my new Spin Clean yesterday, then had a nightmare that Meg ruined them all. Not good.

First, some honourable mentions for albums I liked that came out late in the year, late last year, or didn’t make it on the list for whatever reason:

Bring Me the Horizon: Post Human Next GenBrittany Howard: What NowBlood Incantation: Absolute ElsewhereCindy Lee: Diamond JubileeThe Cure: Songs of a Lost WorldDavid Gilmour: Luck and StrangeFalling in Reverse: Popular MonsterFont: Strange BurdenJerry Cantrell: I Want BloodJustice: HyperdramaKhruangbin: A La SalaLinkin Park: From ZeroMagdalena Bay: Imaginal DiskMan Man: Carrot on StringsOpeth: The Last Will and TestamentPoppy: Negative SpacesSleater-Kinney: Little RopeUnessential Oils: Unessential Oils

And the top 10:

#10: Halsey: The Great Impersonator. The concept of songs explicitly influenced by various artists is pretty cool, resulting in some decent sappy pop.

#9: Glass Animals: I Love You So Fucking Much. On their last few albums, every song sounds the same, but it’s a good song.

#8: Amigo the Devil: Yours Until the War is Over. Year’s best album in the murderfolk genre.

#7: Gary Clark Jr.: JPEG RAW. Political guitar wizardry goodness.

#6: Fontaines D.C.: Romance. Post-punk triphop rock weirdness. I like that song where he breathes a lot.

#5: Kyros: Mannequin. I discovered these modern prog pop geniuses this year and I love them so much.

#4: Elbow: Audio Vertigo. A favourite on Radio Paradise, an Internet radio station I put on whenever I can’t decide on an album to listen to.

Tied for #3 (these all got exactly the same number of plays somehow): Dua Lipa: Radical Optimism. More of the same, but a nice short burst of decent pop.

Tied for #3: Chappell Roan: The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. Best pop album I heard in a year when pop was starting to get really boring.

Tied for #3: The Smile: Wall of Eyes. It’s like Radiohead is back, with a jazzy twist on their Kid A / Amnesia period, which was my favourite.

Tied for #3: Beth Gibbons: Lives Outgrown. It’s like Portishead is back. Beth’s voice is as haunting and beautiful as ever.

#2: Jack White: no name. It’s like the White Stripes are back. Just a nice solid rock album.

#1: Caligula’s Horse: Charcoal Grace. I extended my prog rock obsession into prog metal this year, and Caligula’s Horse is the best of it IMO. I love this album more every time I listen to it.

Television

I watch too much TV, but here are the few shows that actually had an impact on me:

3 Body ProblemAloneBaby ReindeerThe BearCurb Your EnthusiasmFalloutFromLast Week TonightLove on the SpectrumShrinkingSugarWhat We Do in the ShadowsMovies

These are the movies that came out in 2024 (or late 2023) and that I rated 4.5 or 5 stars on Letterboxd, so go there for full reviews.

Alien: RomulusBeau Is AfraidCaddo LakeChallengersDream ScenarioDune: Part TwoFuriosa: A Mad Max SagaGodzilla Minus OneI Saw the TV GlowKinds of KindnessKingdom of the Planet of the ApesLate Night With the DevilLonglegsLove Lies BleedingMonkey ManPerfect DaysPlease Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain – Underrated comedy I haven’t heard anyone else talk aboutPoor ThingsRebel RidgeSpider-Man: Across the Spider-VerseThe Substance – Best movie of the year IMO, and I think the only one I saw in the theatre. So gross and wonderful.Games and Apps

Here are the games and game-related things I played a lot of this year. Add me on whatever platform you’re on if you’d like to play together.

Alan Wake 2; confusing horror set in the Pacific Northwest is my very specific happy placeBatman: Arkham Shadow; being Batman in VR is pretty coolCyberpunk 2077; finally beat thisDungeons and Dragons; like, the physical role-playing game, with a campaign that’s been going over 2 years nowInscryption; a card game, sort of, but with lo-fi horror vibes that scratch deep into my soulThe Last of Us Part 2; one of the best games I played, and I feel bad for people who didn’t enjoy it because they’re scared of women with musclesMarvel Snap; still my toilet gameStar Wars: Outlaws; not amazing, but it’s fun to screw around in a Star Wars open worldBooks

Here’s my year in books from Goodreads. These were almost all very good. I particularly recommend Tear, which is a feminist monster story set right here in London Ontario #LdnOnt, which is not something you see every day.

Only 9 books, yikes. It’s better than last year, but one of them is a book I wrote so that doesn’t really count, and one is a Neil Gaiman comic I didn’t actually finish reading because he turned out to be a shitstain. Note to 2025 self: try for at least 10 books this year, you lazy fuck.

Ok, another year, another blog post done. Not sure anyone actually reads these, but let me know if you do. See you in another 365 days if we’re both still alive and not dead! Bye!

Pretty normal year this year, which is weird. For better or worse, everyone seems to have moved on from the pandemic, even though we all sense that something has changed forever, and that we probably shouldn’t be ignoring the next foreseeable disaster coming around the bend.

Personally, I’ve continued to be very lucky, and I am grateful for that. Work was a big focus, as I moved into a director role—probably my peak, if I’m being honest, since I’ve never had much interest in a title starting with “C.” We had a health scare with the dog, which was one of the worst days of my life, but she seems to be fine now. My passions stagnated, and I should work on writing and art more, because I know it’s unrealistic to wait for a magical retirement when I have all the time in the world, plus a brain and body humming with youthful vigour. I already have signs of gout and important events completely wiped from my memory, so it ain’t happening, unless ChatGPT can dig up an eternal youth potion in the next few years.

Anyway, here’s my summary of the media I consumed in 2023. Sometimes I like to look back on these posts to help remember what the year was like. Maybe you’ll find some new recommendations.

Music

As usual, this is an uncurated list of the albums I listened to most, courtesy of Last.FM. First, some honourable mentions for albums that came out late in the year, late last year, or didn’t make it on the list for whatever reason.

Honourable mentions:

Peter Gabriel – I/O – I got really into prog rock this year. Partly just because old Jethro Tull and Genesis albums are cheap on vinyl, but I also grew to love it. Peter Gabriel did something even more pretentious than expected this year: two albums with the same songs, only slightly different from each other. But they’re damn good songs! And there’s something compelling about comparing the different versions, like a peek into Gabriel’s mind as he tinkers with slightly variations, can’t decided between them, then just says fuck it and releases both.Demi Lovato – REVAMPED – Like Miley’s live album last year, I just love pop songs with a harder edge. Here, Demi Lovato completes her turn to metal by hardening some of her best songs.In This Moment – GODMODE – One of my favourite bands. I like this one, but it didn’t do it for me as much as their last few.Duran Duran – Danse MacabreParamore – This Is WhyFall Out Boy – So Much (for) StardustCarly Rae Jepsen – The Loveliest TimeK. Flay – MONOAvatar – Dance Devil DanceQueens of the Stone Age – In Times New RomanSteven Wilson – The Harmony Codex

And here are my top 10 most listened-to albums:

10. Ayron Jones – Chronicles of the Kid – Uncomplicated rock, just a talented guy making music. Good enough for me.

9. Sleep Token – Take Me Back to Eden – Apparently another band with a mask gimmick, but the music itself holds up, playing with genre to stand out from most hard rock this year.

8. The Smashing Pumpkins – Atum – Can’t decide if this is awful or wonderful. At least they’re doing something different.

7. Greta Van Fleet – Starcatcher – Don’t tell Led Zeppelin, but I kinda like Greta just as much.

6. HARDY – the mockingbird & THE CROW – Has a special place in my heart because it was the road trip soundtrack for Meg and I this year. Even if you don’t like country, it’s worth a listen; the first half is genuine cheesy country, and the second half infuses metal into it. This guy sounds like a total asshole, but his redneck experiment is irresistible.

5. M83 – Fantasy – Dreamy and endlessly relistenable.

4. Miley Cyrus – Endless Summer Vacation – Miley is always on this list. I preferred her 80s rock phase, but this is good too.

3. Nothing But Thieves – Dead Club City – I love how these guys are evolving into something a little different with each album.

2. Yves Tumor – Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) – A title like that sticks with you, and so does their deeply weird music. Just got this on vinyl, too.1. Depeche Mode – Memento Mori – They’ve managed to remain decent as a duo after Andy Fletcher died.

Television

I watched a lot of reality TV this year. I’m getting too old to feel guilty about turning my brain off once in a while, so I won’t call them guilty pleasures, despite some of these being worse than ever. I should spent more time with my brain turned on though.

AloneThe BearBlack MirrorThe CurseDown for LoveThe Fall of the House of UsherI Think You Should LeaveJury DutyThe Last of UsLove in the WildMrs. DavisOnly Murders in the BuildingPerfect MatchThe RehearsalShrinkingSiloSelling Sunset / The OCSuccessionWhat We Do in the ShadowsMoviesThese are the movies that came out in 2023 (or late 2022) and that I rated 4+ stars on Letterboxd, so go there for full reviews. Bold ones are 4.5 or 5 stars.BeastBottomsFallGuardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3Infinity PoolNopeViolent NightWhen Evil LurksThe Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar65Asteroid CityBlackberryBodies Bodies BodiesThe BoogeymanClockThe Devil on TrialDualDungeons & Dragons: Honor Among ThievesThe FlashHellraiser (2022)It’s a Wonderful KnifeThe KillerKnock at the CabinLeave the World BehindM3GANThe MenuMissingMoonage DaydreamNo Hard FeelingsNo One Will Save YouThe NorthmanOppenheimerPamela, A Love StoryPearlRebel Moon Part OneThe Royal HotelSanctuarySharperThe Super Mario Brothers MovieTalk to MeThey Cloned TyroneGames / AppsHere are all the games and game-related things I played and liked this year. Add me on Xbox or Playstation or Nintendo or wherever to play with me.Baldur’s Gate 3 (Playstation) – I’m constantly in awe of this game. It’s just so clear that the people making it actually give a shit, putting together great writing, visuals, and gameplay in a way that has compelled me to spend 125+ hours on one game without getting bored.Meta Quest 3 – An amazing piece of hardware. Let’s see if Apple’s Vision Pro brings mixed / virtual reality mainstream in 2024, or if it remains a weird niche for dancing furries.Starfield (Xbox) – Flawed, dated, but that Bethesda formula is still addictive.Marvel Snap (iOS) – Still playing this addictive mobile card game every time I shit.Peloton – I’ve started doing longer rides while watching Netflix on this thing. Hoping it’ll help me live longer and reverse the damage this holiday season did to my physical body.Strava – Mostly for biking and hiking, trying to get a real-life high score.Wealthsimple – It’s so fun to see the little numbers go up and down.Dungeons and Dragons – This campaign has been going for over a year now. Nice to be back into a long-term game with friends.Books

Here’s my year in books from Goodreads. Damn, this is worse than I thought … I only read 6 books in 2023. They’re thick ones, but still. Gotta fix that in 2024.

Okay, another year complete, good job! Looking back on this post, I see a theme: I should spend less time watching reality TV and more time reading / writing. Call that a resolution for when the arbitrary number on the calendar changes. Tune in a year from now to see if I make any effort whatsoever or if I immediately forget this the moment I hit post. Bye.

Scotch has been my drink of choice lately.

Have you ever read reviews for scotch? Google any random example and you’ll see they’re all pretentious as hell. Here are five egregious “tasting notes” about various drinks, from Whisky Shop Magazine:

“Absolutely filthy … like doing a bog swim without a snorkel.”

“The nose is a TNT banana, exploding bursts of fruit …”

“The hug of sherry is soporific.”

“A pleasant dram, but lacks nerve and buoyancy.”

“Like putting Benny Lynch into the ring with Marciano.”

Ridiculous, right? I don’t even know who those last people are. I prefer David Lynch.

Yet I find myself reading reviews for each scotch before I drink it. The more reasonable reviews may not mention TNT bananas, but they do include various fruits, spices, and inedible items like smoke and leather.

Wait … meat?

But you know what? I enjoy the scotch more after reading these reviews.

After reading about Ardbeg’s peaty nose and impression of a distant wildfire, I cleared my mind of the day’s worries, watched the rain fall outside, took a sip, and was transported to a boggy landscape with a hint of smoke in the air. It was a nice experience. I could even compare it to a hug.

I don’t know if that pleasant sip was a direct result of the chemicals in the scotch reacting with my tongue, nerves, and brain. I probably imagined half of what I thought I tasted. But it doesn’t matter, does it? Taste is subjective anyway. If it can be enhanced by some pompous scotch blogger halfway around the world causing my brain to embellish a little, then I will continue reading flowery booze descriptions until I see the world through purple-coloured glasses.

Here’s where I tie this back to writing. Writers sort of do the same thing as these scotch reviewers, except the embellishment is intentional, and we aren’t constrained by the physical reality of liquid on the reader’s tongue. If we’re doing our jobs, we can make a person vividly hallucinate coastal air, a beach bonfire, and a soporific hug—no strong liquor necessary.

In a time when inspiration is badly needed, that’s where I’ve most recently found mine.

This was originally posted on Across the Board in December of 2020, and has been edited to be a bit less specific to that time.

See also: Vodka Illusions

I got a dog a few weeks ago. It’s cool to see the world through a puppy’s eyes, wondering how she’ll react to any new thing for the first time—music, for example.

I constantly listen to music, but I hesitated the first time I went to stream some tunes while the dog chomped on a toy beside me. Would it distract her from the important task of beheading her plush pig? Would she like the new Ozzy Osborne album, or prefer his older material (perhaps Bark at the Moon)?

This entire post is an excuse to post this picture of my dog, who lies here while I write. LOOK AT HER

It turns out that, as with most things, it depends.

Most dogs just ignore music, which says something about their tolerance for our noisy and confusing human antics. There’s a tendency for some dogs to react angrily to metal, be soothed by classical, and have a “meh” reaction to pop—which says something about how dogs aren’t all that different from humans after all.

My dog seemed momentarily confused by Ozzy’s voice magically emanating from the bookshelf, but soon she was back to having a snooze.

That got me thinking about another type of creature that likes naps, is easily distracted, and has mixed reactions to music: the writer.

I know some writers need silence while they’re writing. Others are distracted by words more than the music itself, so it’s instrumental songs only.

Personally, I have music on whenever I’m writing. During the scientific writing of my day job, I’m not picky; usually it’s that meh pop music, or whatever the algorithms decide to deliver to my ears today. When writing novels, it’s different. I like to match the mood of the music to the mood of the story. For example, someone on Spotify created a 20-hour playlist inspired by David Lynch that has been a good fit for my recent writing. My novel Stars and Other Monsters was explicitly influenced by listening to Lady Gaga’s The Fame Monster over and over; it’s a very vampire-y album.

Lyrics are fine for me. Occasionally a line in a song will provide inspiration for a line in the novel, the same way passing strangers can provide inspiration for characters while writing at a coffee shop.

I know others (like friend of the blog Nilah) go so far as to create specific playlists for specific projects, and Mary Fan even wrote a song to include in her novel Windborn! I can’t help but think that a clarity of vision cutting across various media must help the end result feel like its own thing.

What about you? Do you (or your dog) write with music, or let only the tappy-tap of your keyboard accompany your writing?

This was originally posted on Across the Board in February of 2020.

I write genre fiction—mostly horror. I’m also a brain scientist. Occasionally, I like to combine those things and explore the irrationality of the horror genre with an attempt at rational thought.

Have you ever thought about how damn strange horror really is? Yeah yeah, obviously spooky stuff is strange, and it’s always been an outcast of a genre due to the icky subject matter, but I propose that its strangeness goes deeper than the obvious, because horror is inherently paradoxical. In horror, what’s bad is good. The worse it is, the better it is. How does that even make sense?

Horror fiction goes through periods when it’s embraced by the mainstream, like the “post-horror” label a few years ago, when horrific media stumbled into the territory of Very Serious Critics and was judged to occasionally have redeeming qualities beyond the ghosts, goblins, and guts. That doesn’t change the fact that the core of horror—the defining quality—is repulsion. If it doesn’t contain something you want to turn away from, then it’s not horror. Why would anyone be attracted to repulsion?

Are people who like to be scared defective?

It’s tempting to think there’s something wrong with people who are really into horror. Maybe some neurons got wired into the wrong places in their brains, and they actually experience bad things as good. They are the defective humans who, outside the comfy modern world, would have been compelled to enter Earth’s darkest corners, only to add to the pits full of skull fragments and femurs waiting there.

But I don’t buy that anyone who likes a good scare is defective.

In my PhD thesis on horror (read it here if you have a few hours to spare), I used a special technique to get at people’s gut reactions to frightening media, free from cultural baggage and other explicit thoughts that come into play if you simply ask someone “do you like this gushing neck stump? I know you’re not supposed to, but do you???” That’s one of the reasons it’s so hard to understand why people like horror. You can’t just ask them.

Coming at it more indirectly, I found that when you pull out the repulsive elements of horror movies and show them to people, everyone has a negative gut reaction. There are no—or at least very few—people who see something scary or gross and feel pleasure instead of repulsion.

I think this applies even more strongly to written horror. There are no noisy jump scares or visual gross-outs in a novel, so there’s even less room for the theory that people consume horror because they’re getting some cheap thrill out of it (not that there’s anything wrong with a good cheap thrill—we may be on the verge of a recession, after all). Those defining repulsive elements are necessary for horror, but not sufficient for enjoying it. There must be something deeper. Something that I believe gets at the core of what it means to “like” something, and ultimately, what it means to be happy.

An explanation for the paradox of horror

Let’s go back to what it even means to “like” something. Feeling joy is certainly one route to liking. When you eat a piece of cheesecake and your tongue tells your brain to leak happy chemicals into its mushy folds, sure, you like cheesecake. However, we humans are complicated, and the range of human experience is much broader than a neural thumbs-up or thumbs-down in response to a given thing.

When it comes to horror, here are a few reasons to “like” a scary story despite your brain often giving it a vigorous thumbs-down:

Relief. It feels good to be done with a bad experience. It may even feel better than how you felt before the bad experience. So part of enjoying horror may be chasing a high—not during the scary bits, but during the comic relief, or when there’s actually nothing behind the door, or when the big bad monster is finally defeated.Expression. People like to express themselves, and a person who likes horror may want to express that they are the type of person who likes horror. In my research on the topic, I’ve found certain personality traits that predict self-reported enjoyment of the genre—for example, people who describes themselves as agreeable are less likely to say they like horror, and people who describe themselves as thrill seekers are more likely to say they like horror. However, crucially, they had the same emotional reactions to horrific imagery. It’s not immediate emotion, but more of a self-expression thing—we all construct an image of how we see ourselves, and how we hope others see us. Saying we like horror is one small part of that. And I don’t think expressing ourselves through our preferences is “fake” in any way; it’s core to how we operate as social beings, and as genuine as loving cheesecake.*Connection. Serious academics have named this the “snuggle theory” of enjoying frightening media. It mostly applies to film—two people watch a scary movie together and one acts scared while the other acts brave, which brings them closer together, which leads to babies and the continuation of the human species. I think it applies platonically too, though. The horror community is one of the most cohesive and generous I’ve seen, so our shared love of getting freaked out can lead to connecting with awesome like-minded people.

For me personally, it’s all of the above, and one more thing that I haven’t come across in the academic literature. I’m a scientist myself, so I have a weird need to understand the unknown, but also an attraction to the unknown itself. After all, science shines a light in the pit of the unknown, but there are always more shadows, and we have to be curious enough to jump in the pit in the first place.

For me, the most sublime horror is this poster for It Comes At Night:

Or this video of unidentified howling in the woods:

Or this pie chart:

Or the best cosmic horror novels. Just pure unknown, or even better, unknowable.

I love that feeling of the unknown; the bittersweet unease from realizing there could be anything out there—or nothing. This feeling may overlap with fear, and it may be ambivalent rather than pure joy, but I think it’s worth seeking out. Maybe my attraction to the unknown is why I’m okay with, and accused of writing, novels without endings.

Human minds are some of the most unknowable objects in the known universe, especially as we’re all trying to understand them from the inside, but hopefully this little post helped in understanding, just a little bit more, why the human mind would be attracted to darkness.

*Another point under the “expression” theme: when I wrote about horror on Medium, a reader named Caryn wrote this comment about how expressing fear may be taboo in certain cultures, except during a horror movie. Horror can allow people to express themselves in a society where they otherwise can’t.

This was originally posted on Across the Board in 2019, in two parts.

See also: Stephen Kozeniewski’s great summary of what horror is, and what some of the key subgenres are.

Art by Prettysleepy2.

It feels like the world is getting back to normal in 2022, but with two important caveats.

First, it probably shouldn’t feel this way. More people are dying of COVID now than at many times in the past few years when we rightly freaked out. Yet we’ve stopped doing anything about it. The threat of a runaway exponential burst in cases seems to have subsided for now, but we won’t even wear masks to staunch the constant flow of hundreds of Canadian deaths every week. If a serial killer were murdering hundreds of people a week, we’d probably stay home a lot and carry protective gear more solid than a mask. On the other hand, heart disease kills even more people, and we don’t do much about that either. Maybe we’ve gotten to a place where society is fine with those human sacrifices, but it does highlight how inconsistent and temporary our priorities are.

The second caveat is that I’m not convinced normal is a good place for the world to get back to. The pandemic showed everyone that normal kinda sucked. Many of us realized that commuting to an office every day, unending social obligations, and not thinking twice about getting sneezed on were always a bit stupid. COVID may have changed normal for a lot of people. For now, I’m seeing small things—less pointless commuting, more people saying no to obligations that never made them happy, staying home when sick—but it could be the start of larger changes. It might be time to think about whether we really need or want this capitalism thing, for example.

On a personal level, I survived COVID—still without even getting it, though it seems like everyone else got their turn eventually this year. However, I’m getting past halfway through my likely lifespan, which makes me think about death a lot. Should I be doing more big important immortal things with my life in the time I have left? Or should I just lean in to my cozy stay-at-home life, savouring every moment with my partner and even shorter-lived dog? I think those are questions I’ll continue to struggle with in the next few years, all the while hoping that medical technology gets to a point where 42 years old is no longer middle-aged.

Ah shit, I got all contemplative about death and forgot to be funny in this year’s blog post. Maybe next year!

Anyway, here’s my summary of the media I consumed this year, which is a problematic but effective way of jogging memories of how 2022 felt for me.

Music

As usual, this is just an uncurated list of the albums I listened to most, courtesy of Last.FM. It was a lighter year for listening to new albums, because I listened to a lot of old albums on vinyl, and a lot of playlists on streaming. Still, the winners are the winners, so here they are.

First, some honourable mentions for albums that came out late in the year or didn’t make it on the list for whatever reason.

Honourable mentions:

Let’s Eat Grandma - Two RibbonsOur Lady Peace - Spiritual Machines II - The first Spiritual Machines is what got me into Ray Kurzweil and deeper into technology, changing the course of my life. This sequel was a nice little 2022 surprise.Carly Rae Jepsen - The Loneliest TimeBartees Strange - Farm to TableViagra Boys - Cave WorldYeah Yeah Yeahs - Cool It DownTegan and Sara - Cry BabyFoals - Life Is Yours - These guys have been appearing on this list a lot. I can never really remember a single song of theirs, but I always enjoy their albums when they’re on. Weird.Wet Leg - Wet LegMuse - Will of the People
And here’s my top 10 most listened-to albums:

10. Bad Omens - The Death of Peace of Mind

9. Alt-J - The Dream

8. Bonobo - Fragments

7. Lights - Pep

6. Years & Years - Night Call

5. Charli XCX - Crash

4. Metric - Formentera

3. Highly Suspect - Midnight Demon Club - This one holds a special place, because Meg got a new car this year, and we spent a lot of time driving around, listening to the Octane station on the fancy new satellite radio. This band came up a lot on that station, so they’ll forever be associated with hard rock road trips.

2. The Weeknd - Dawn FM

1. Ghost - Impera

TelevisionI feel like I didn’t love any TV this year. More than ever, shows feel like they’re created by soulless algorithms to get as many people streaming them as possible. That said, these ones were pretty good:
Archive 81The BearDoom PatrolHouse of the Dragon (and to a lesser extent, Lord of the Rings Rings of Power)The MoleOnly Murders in the BuildingOur Flag Means DeathOzarkThe PentaverateShe HulkStranger ThingsSuperstoreTwo SummersThe WatcherWhat We Do in the ShadowsThe White Lotus
MoviesThese are just the movies that came out in 2022 and that I rated 4+ stars on Letterboxd, so go there for full reviews. Bold ones are 4.5 or 5 stars.The 9th Annual On Cinema Oscar SpecialThe Banshees of InisherinEverything Everywhere All at OnceJackass Forever / Jackass 4.5Norm Macdonald: Nothing SpecialSpeak No EvilXBarbarianChristmas Bloody ChristmasCrimes of the FutureDeck of CardsDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of MadnessElvisThe Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday SpecialGuillermo del Toro’s PinocchioPreyScream (2022)Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)Thor: Love and ThunderThe Tinder SwindlerWerewolf by NightWho Invited Them
Games / AppsI didn’t play a whole lot of video games this year, up until the last 2 months, when I got a Playstation 5 and binged some of the games I missed out on the PS4.
Here are all the games I played and liked. Add me on Xbox Live (Phronk) or Playstation (Phronk) or Nintendo or Oculus to play with me.Dungeons and Dragons - Got back into role-playing again, this time on Zoom with geographically scattered friends.Elden Ring (Xbox) - I thought I’d hate this because I’m old and suck at hard games, but I beat Malenia on my first try. Still got it.God of War (2018) (PS5) - I love how chunky and crunchy this game feels.Marvel Snap (iOS) - God damn, this is so addictive. I play it every time I shit.Peloton - Particularly Kendall and Cody.Spider-Man (PS5) - I’m compelled to get 100% of everything in this game because it’s so pleasant swinging around the city.Strava - Mostly for biking and hiking, trying to get a real-life high score.Wrap-ups from the various platforms:




That’s a lot of hours! I don’t think I actually played Elden Ring for 170 hours, but still, I could have written a novel or two in the time I did, and instead I pretty much quit writing altogether. Whoops.
BooksHere’s my year in books, from Goodreads. I liked all of these!



Okay, we’ve made it two thousand and twenty-two years since year zero. Good job, everyone. See you next year.

I do this little review every year, so I have a record of how things were for me. I don't have much to write this year, because it felt like a holding pattern, just waiting around for the shitshow of 2020 to settle down, but with no particular new highs or lows to report.

I'm once again thankful for the position I'm in—despite the pandemic continuing, I remain healthy, have a roof over my head, a job that I can do under said roof, and a personality conducive to long stretches of staying inside and hanging out with my girlfriend and dog. I did do a few things outside of these walls, though: lots of hikes in forests, bike rides, even a few trips within Ontario and visits to restaurants when things briefly opened up and felt safe. None of my friends or family died, though there were close calls. All considered, it was a fine year, and there's room to go up from here.

Here's my summary of the media I consumed this year, which is a potentially problematic but effective way of jogging memories about what 2021 was like, how it felt.

Music

As usual, this is just an uncurated list of the albums I listened to most, courtesy of Last.FM.

First, some honourable mentions for albums that came out late in the year or didn’t make it on the list for whatever reason:

Honourable mentions:

Ides - CrawlerThe Pretty Reckless - Death by Rock and RollBlack Honey - Written and DirectedLil Nas X - MONTEROOlivia Rodrigo - SOURSteven Wilson - The Future BitesKacey Musgraves - Star-CrossedModest Mouse - The Golden CasketLimp Bizkit - Still SucksThe Offspring - Let the Bad Times RollThrice - Horizons / East
And here’s my top 10 most listened-to albums:

10. Duran Duran - FUTURE PAST

9. Rob Zombie - The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy

8. Gojira - Fortitude

7. Foo Fighters - Medicine at Midnight

6. Brad Sucks - A New Low in Hi-Fi

5. Lorde - Solar Power

4. Kaleo - Surface Sounds

3. Evanescence - The Bitter Truth

2. Garbage - No Gods No Masters

1. Greta Van Fleet - The Battle at Garden’s Gate

I also got Meg a turntable for Christmas, so that opens up a whole new world of possibilities for defining my personality through music like a hipster piece of crap. It also goes with this year's theme of mostly listening to artists from when I was young and stuff seemed better. Is this that old man tendency to romanticize the past? Am I there already?

TelevisionI liked these shows:
Brand New Cherry FlavorCurb Your EnthusiasmDexter: New BloodExplainedFoundationHawkeye, Loki, WandavisionI Think You Should LeaveThe Last Drive-InLove on the SpectrumThe MandalorianMare of EasttownMidnight MassMythic QuestSquid GameSuccessionSuperstoreTed LassoTiger KingThe Walking Dead
MoviesThese are the best movies I saw in 2021. They may not have come out in 2021, shut up. I'm just listing recent-ish movies I rated 4+ stars on Letterboxd, so go there for full reviews.An Evening With Beverly Luff LinnAnother RoundAntebellumArmy of the DeadBad TripBarb & Star Go to Vista Del MarBeckyBingo HellBlack WidowDaniel Isn't RealDon’t Look UpThe FatherFingersFree GuyFried BarryGreener GrassLove and MonstersMalignantMinariNomadlandParanormal Activity: Next of KinPigPossessorPromising Young WomanThe RentalShang-ChiSilent NightSound of MetalThe StarlingThe Suicide SquadSynchronicThe TripThe Truffle HuntersWilly's Wonderland
Games / AppsI didn’t have much time for video games this year. I don’t know if it’s the games industry or me, but I just couldn’t get deeply into any one game. I’ll grab something from Games Pass, play it for a few hours, then forget it existed until I need to clear space for another one.
Anyway, here are the games I did play and liked. Add me on Xbox Live or Nintendo or Oculus to play with me.
Xbox:Assassin’s Creed Odyssey - It’s become a bit of a Christmas tradition to use my time off to play a bit of a very long Assassin’s Creed game. For some reason I’m going through them backwards.Assassin's Creed Syndicate and Unity - Finished these ones up too.ControlDying LightLawn Mowing SimulatorOutridersTwelve MinutesUnpacking
Nintendo Switch:Nintendo sent me one of those annual wrapped summaries, and apparently I spent like 2 hours playing my Switch this year. Oops.
Oculus Quest, Mac, Other:Demeo - Like a board game, but in virtual reality. Pretty cool.Supernatural - A VR workout app that doesn’t feel like a workout. They got bought out by Meta (formerly Facebook) this year, so hopefully it doesn’t go to shit.Strava - A good way of keeping track of how much I get out on my bike.Peloton - Meg got one of these ridiculously expensive indoor bikes, and it really is pretty motivating.
That's two thousand and twenty one! Hopefully next year is more normal, for realsies this time.

Back before Twitter, blogs were where intense debates happened. In the year 2000, if you were an edgy youngster like myself, you post something provocative on your blog, then people would “comment” on it (kind of like an @ reply), then others would yell at you, and sometimes you’d go to their blog and yell at them, and this was known as being “blog friends.”

Around 2005, right here on Phronk dot com, I became blog friends with a woman named Dani. Dani is a pro-God, anti-choice, anti-sex-before-marriage, basically just anti-reason person who showed up on the blog to debate if gay people are really people. All people are people, IMO, even Dani, so sarcasm aside, we did have a fascinating connection as we tried to discuss difficult issues from radically different points of view.

Dani followed a man named Bob Enyart. As a conservative talk radio host and pastor, Bob had a lot of influence, none of it good. He led a series of disgusting stunts, like the harassment of doctors who perform abortions, and called for the deaths of anyone he disagreed with. When religious zealots are Christian, the word “cult” isn’t used as often as it should be, but the definition fit this group. Dani followed Bob without question, isolating her family from society through her radical beliefs. I was once privately contacted by a concerned friend of another woman who fell under the influence of Bob and his crew, and was living with some of them, becoming more radicalized every day.

Bob talked about me on his show once. On Dani’s blog, I’d pointed out that he used cheap tricks that dumb people see as intellectual debate—the “if people evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” level of gotcha that right wing morons like Turning Point USA still pump out today. I guess it revolved around rocks, because he spent a few minutes trying to convince his audience that a rock can’t be murdered, and a rock is considered “dead.” Which somehow proved the Bible is right and abortion is wrong. Or something.

I thought about Bob the other day. Here in late 2021, homosexuality and abortion debates have given way to debating whether we should protect ourselves from a deadly disease spreading across the globe, or just die. I had a guess as to which side of the debate Bob would be on, and I was correct. Bob Enyart boycotted vaccination against COVID-19 and, as a direct result, died of COVID-19.

I don’t know if a rock is dead, but Bob Enyart definitely is. I have to be careful here—is it hypocritical to experience any schadenfreude from this fact? Or would that be on the same level as when Bob played “another one bites the dust” while reading the obituaries of AIDS victims? I always try to see things from both sides, which may make me a dirty centrist, but I think it’s intellectually rigorous nonetheless. On the other hand, this isn’t a matter of values or opinions; objective reality exists, COVID-19 exists, and rejecting reality in favour of delusions has deadly consequences. I’m human, and I see the dark humour when a Herman Cain Award is granted to someone I sparred with over the very fantasies that led to their demise.

As a sad footnote, Dani had parted ways with Bob Enyart at some point. That could have been a good thing, but it seems the damage was already done, or perhaps mental illness had been the driver all along. She recently showed up on this blog a few times, commenting with paragraphs upon paragraphs of conspiracy theories about Bob being a Satanic serial killer who murdered JonBenet Ramsey. She even accused me of being Bob in disguise. Well, I’m still here, and Bob is dead, so that debate should be settled.

RIP, Bob. On the off chance that you’re right about all this Bible stuff, I’ll see you in Hell.

I got my second COVID vaccine yesterday, so this post might be a literal fever dream. Sorry.

It���s become almost clich�� to say this, but do you ever snap back to reality and realize how weird things have become? Yesterday, I went to the place where London���s annual Western Fair is usually held. I passed the grounds where I���d normally be eating a deep-fried-bacon-wrapped-Snickers bar then letting rickety carnival rides spin me around until I barf it out. I entered the ���agriplex,��� where I���d normally be watching chicks hatching from eggs, smelling pig shit, and letting scorpions crawl on me at the bug exhibit.
Except now, there hasn���t been a fair in two years because a different sort of critter caused a deadly pandemic, which still makes gathering in large crowds a bad idea. No greasy foods, no rides, and the building that was previously full of chickens, pigs, and creepy-crawlies has been converted into a mass vaccination center.
In the exact place where I came face to face with the biggest horse I���d ever seen, a doctor injected a snippet of genetic material into my arm, where it will hijack my cells to create harmless replicas of the deadly virus, so that my other cells can recognize it and fight it if they ever come across the real thing. This is happening inside of me right now, and giving me a nasty headache, but it���s a good sort of hurt, like feeling pleasantly queasy after surviving a few flips through the air in a carnival ride. Totally worth it.
I hope the whirlwind of 2020 and 2021 will act as a vaccine for humanity. It seems to be happening slowly here in the middle of it, but I think history will show that 2-ish years is a pretty good pace for upending how we interact with each other and developing entirely new technology to inject into our arms and (hopefully) eliminate COVID as a worldwide threat. We learned that we are capable of fighting this one. Bigger threats are coming, as this summer���s extreme weather, floods, and wildfires are giving us a taste of, but with this vaccine swimming in my aching body, I have a bit more hope that humanity���s immune system will be able to face them.


This was originally posted on July 12 at Across the Board.