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 March
• Shock Stock in May, meeting Joe Bob Briggs and Darcy the Mail Girl

• An eclipse and the aurora borealis; the sky was wilding out this year

• Nova Scotia in June, hanging out with my sister and her family, almost dying a few times getting lost in the wilderness (e.g., top of a mountain with a broken ski lift), 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 joy

• Niagara Falls in September to celebrate good friends getting engaged
• Godspeed You! Black Emperor in November; my first concert in a while

• Christmas 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 Gen
• Brittany Howard: What Now
• Blood Incantation: Absolute Elsewhere
• Cindy Lee: Diamond Jubilee
• The Cure: Songs of a Lost World
• David Gilmour: Luck and Strange
• Falling in Reverse: Popular Monster
• Font: Strange Burden
• Jerry Cantrell: I Want Blood
• Justice: Hyperdrama
• Khruangbin: A La Sala
• Linkin Park: From Zero
• Magdalena Bay: Imaginal Disk
• Man Man: Carrot on Strings
• Opeth: The Last Will and Testament
• Poppy: Negative Spaces
• Sleater-Kinney: Little Rope
• Unessential 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 Problem
• Alone
• Baby Reindeer
• The Bear
• Curb Your Enthusiasm
• Fallout
• From
• Last Week Tonight
• Love on the Spectrum
• Shrinking
• Sugar
• What We Do in the Shadows

Movies

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: Romulus
• Beau Is Afraid
• Caddo Lake
• Challengers
• Dream Scenario
• Dune: Part Two
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
• Godzilla Minus One
• I Saw the TV Glow
• Kinds of Kindness
• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
• Late Night With the Devil
• Longlegs
• Love Lies Bleeding
• Monkey Man
• Perfect Days
• Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain – Underrated comedy I haven’t heard anyone else talk about
• Poor Things
• Rebel Ridge
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
• The 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 place
• Batman: Arkham Shadow; being Batman in VR is pretty cool
• Cyberpunk 2077; finally beat this
• Dungeons and Dragons; like, the physical role-playing game, with a campaign that’s been going over 2 years now
• Inscryption; a card game, sort of, but with lo-fi horror vibes that scratch deep into my soul
• The 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 muscles
• Marvel Snap; still my toilet game
• Star Wars: Outlaws; not amazing, but it’s fun to screw around in a Star Wars open world

Books

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.

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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!