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Posts published by “Joe Dillingham”

The Black Laser Reads: Episode 2 – Bartleby The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street by Herman Melville

This time on The Black Laser Reads we visit Herman Melville’s classic tale of capitalist woe “Bartleby the Scrivener”. You didn’t think we were the first generation to feel ground to death under the heel of our economic system, did you?

You might have read this story in high school English, as I did, and not realized how funny it was. A quick scan of the Goodreads reviews reveals a bunch of readers taking this story very seriously. But I think it’s actually quite humorous, especially in the contrast between the narrator’s uppity opinions of himself and his staff and the reality betrayed by their actions.

I tried to inject a little personality into the performance of this one. It’s easy to lose that in the old fashioned writing style, but there’s plenty of it in the text if you can coax it out a little (and deal with all the commas and semi-colons). It was certainly lost on me the first time I read the story as a 16 year old or whatever back in the 1900s. It was a pleasant discovery as I looked through texts for my next read.

Listen and enjoy.

I apologize to my British readers for Turkey’s accent. I did my best. I will work on it for the future.

The text for this episode came from Project Gutenberg. If you’d like to read “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street” yourself, you can find it here.

I’ve got a nice spooky one lined up for next time. If you’d like to be notified when it comes out, subscribe to e-mail notifications and you don’t even need to remember to check. It just shows up! Easy!

Thoughts on our 2023 Whole30

Sarah and I finished our sort-of-annual Whole30 this week. It’s a nice thing to do once a year or so when you feel like it’s time to clean up your act a little. And it’s a good way to be thoughtful about your eating and drinking, even if those aren’t problem areas for you. We’ve done it a bunch of times over the years and some are harder than others. This was one of the more challenging ones.

For those who aren’t familiar, the Whole30 is an elimination diet/habit-breaking challenge. For 30 days you don’t eat added sugar of any sort, grains, legumes, dairy, carrageenan, or alcohol. Additionally, you don’t recreate baked goods or treats with approved ingredients. So, no Whole30 cupcakes, no Whole30 pancakes, no Whole30 whiskey sours. You get the idea. Finally—and this isn’t a huge deal for me—you aren’t allowed to weigh yourself during the month.

Not so bad, right? With a little practice, it’s not. The real issue comes with the sheer amount of label-reading you are required to do. You’d be surprised how many items in your grocery store have banned ingredients in them. No added sugars isn’t just no white sugar; it’s also dextrose or maltose or sucrose or many others. No grains isn’t just no bread; it’s also no canola oil or corn starch or rice. No legumes isn’t just no beans; it’s also no soy sauce or peanut oil or tofu.

Go ahead. Read the ingredients in your pantry items. You’ll see all of these things in there. It’s a lot.

The first time you do this, it’s a real challenge and requires quite a lot of learning. But, as mentioned above, this isn’t our first time. It might be our sixth or seventh? We’ve got the label-reading thing pretty dialed in.

All that aside, I’ve got some thoughts and reflections about my experience on this most recent Whole30.

  • I lost 14 pounds this time, from 227 to 213. Losing weight isn’t the point, but it was worth noting.
  • I finally figured out how to make sweet potatoes that I actually like. The secret ingredient is salt. Here’s how you do it: peel and halve you sweepots. Slice into 1/4″ thick semi-circles. Toss with olive oil, more salt than you think, black pepper, paprika, cayenne pepper, and garlic powder. Spread on a half sheet pan. Throw into a preheated 450°F oven and let cook for like 35 minutes, stirring a couple times. That’s it. Fantastic.
  • Sliced napa cabbage is a great bulking item for lunch leftover stir fries. Finish it with a splash of rice vinegar.
  • I didn’t miss dairy at all. I like to have it as a snack, but I realize that I actually just like fancy cheese as a treat.
  • I also didn’t miss alcohol that much. I missed having something to sit down with and wind down, but not the beer or wine itself. It would be nice to find an adequate replacement. Tea won’t do it.
  • In past Whole30s, I would get through the first 7 to 10 days and suddenly feel great with all the added sugar and booze out of my system. This time not so much. The primary difference this time is that I have three small children and don’t get nearly the same quality or amount of rest I used to. Do with that observation what you will.
  • Radishes really scratch a lot of snacking itches. Dress with flake salt.
  • Thank god you can still drink coffee.

That’s it. I recommend the program if you’re at all interested in tinkering with your nutrition and habits. It’s pretty eye-opening and, once you’ve figured it out, it becomes a nice reset button.

A Trip to the Zoo in New Jersey

The girls love an adventure. Who doesn’t, really? Sometimes “adventure” means a 2 hour long car drive to go to a doctor appointment, which is really stretching the idea of what you think about when you hear “adventure”. But sometimes it also means taking a ferry to New Jersey and going to a zoo.

Sunday was that second type of adventure. We loaded Penny and Bea into the van, left the baby home with a sitter, and got on the Lewes-Cape May ferry. After a boat ride and snacks, we loaded back into the car and took the girls to the Cape May County Zoo. They got to see lions, bears, monkeys, camels, goats, cows, pigs, alpacas, wallabies, kangaroos, and, coolest for dad, a bald eagle.

A bald eagle! Neat!

Of course, as one would expect with toddlers, the most interesting part of the zoo was the acorns and fallen leaves covering the ground. They behaved well, no one melted down, and Penny didn’t get motion sick a single time. Overall pretty successful adventure.

Enjoy some photos after the jump.

The Black Laser Reads: Episode 1 – The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe

Welcome to the inaugural post of the rebooted The Black Laser Reads, a series of audiobooks recorded by yours truly all sourced from the public domain. I attempted this project once before way back in 2011, but I was never happy with the recording quality or the performance. Fly forward 12 years with me and I’ve practiced a ton, figured out how to record myself in much higher quality, and gotten excited for the project all over again.

I even designed a sweet new logo for the series!

Nice, right?

We’re beginning with an old standby: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”. This selection was partly inspired by Criterion Channel’s Roger Corman/Vincent Price/Poe retrospective they put up in September (excellent watching all of them) and my simmering hype for the new Mike Flanagan show premiering later this month. Poe seemed a natural start. Plus, Poe was the first one I read in the old version of The Black Laser Reads and who doesn’t love a callback?

Please listen and enjoy.

If you enjoyed it, leave a comment and tell me. If you hated it, leave a comment also! I have tons of texts lined up for this series, and not just short stories. And if you want me to read something from the public domain specifically, let me know.

A huge thanks to Standard Ebooks for providing the text I used in this performance. I mean, they didn’t directly do anything for me, but they do provide an incredible resource for anyone interested in classic ebooks. Really. Go check them out. Fantastic site.

And if you are interested in reading some more Poe yourself, this is the collection I read from.

Half Birthday

The 20th of the month was the girls’ half birthday and Sarah thought it would be fun to have a half birthday party. She was right. It was fun!

She made them a cake and put them in cute outfits. They got a couple of communal gifts (all gifts are communal at this age for a couple of kids who share a birthday) and had a grand time running around being two and a half. Also, Beatrice is really working on her stink eye.

I took some photos because that’s what I do. Enjoy a pretty big gallery after the jump.

Failure State – Confidence

We could also call this “Failure State – Believing in Myself” but it’s not quite as snappy, is it? “Failure State – The Ability to Think My Decisions Are Good Decisions and Not Bad Decisions”.

“Failure State – Feeling Good About The Creative Choices I Make”.

Nah. None of that is good. Let’s go with “Confidence”.

You know that feeling when you’ve been working on something creative and literally at no point at all through the entire process do you feel good about it? Not like the work itself is stupid, but more like you’re stupid? Like, somehow, you totally misunderstood the assignment and you’re spending all this time making something that completely misses the mark creatively, intellectually, and spiritually? You know how you feel that feeling all the time about everything you make?

Good. I’m glad it’s not just me. I feel this way about literally everything I’ve ever made, professionally and personally. My whole career. Everything. The entire time. And I’ve spent most of my adult life working in a creative field! Even when we were doing the greenhouses, I felt this way. I’ve never not felt this way about something. Can you relate?

Worse is that this feeling puts me on edge like crazy. I’m so worried that I am making a dumb mistake that my anxiety spikes and I work myself into a sulky mess. The anxiety also really slows down my progress while I spin out about whether or not I am metaphorically shitting the bed. What a colossal waste of energy.

For example, just yesterday I received a very nice compliment from someone to whom I sent an audition for a VO project. She didn’t need to say anything to me about it. It could have just gone out there into the void like 99% of auditions do to never be heard about again. But, instead, she took time to tell me something nice about the work I put into it. It was really nice! And I really appreciated it! And she absolutely did not need to do it! And what did I say back to her? Just look!

What the actual fuck, Joe. How about a “Thank you!” or a “That’s awesome! I am glad she liked it!”

No.

Instead I offered a self-deprecating joke and then totally hammered it home because I felt weird. Slick, dude. So slick. Then I spent the whole rest of the day thinking about—and feeling bad about—this exchange. So bad, in fact, that I am now writing this post.

I’m not worried about the person who sent me the text and this weird little exchange having some effect on our relationship. We’ve known each other for a long time. It’s totally fine. But, man, am I a doofus sometimes. Like, just be gracious and take the W, dude.

Maybe allow that there is a chance, however slim, that you are actually ok at some stuff and just have faith in yourself? Maybe just a little bit? A teeny tiny bit? A speck of faith?

With professional creative work, I grind and I spin and I torment myself until the deadline comes and it’s time to present the project. I am sure I’ve written about this here before. I make my presentation with this profound shrugging feeling inside my soul that screams “I have no idea if this is good or right or if I’ve completely misunderstood and fucked it up but here it is and oh god I’ll never work again”. And boy does that suck a whole lot. I experience this every time I start a project. And, if I am being honest with myself and with you, the feeling has led me to actually fuck up some projects because I was so far inside myself that I couldn’t put one foot in front of the other to get the thing done correctly. I couldn’t put the right amount of effort in with the time allotted. And those regrets haunt you. I always want to do a good job, but sometimes I get in my own damn way.

And with personal works? Forget about it. As soon as this rears it’s hideous, malignant head the project stops. If I could share with you all the sheer mountain of aborted projects littering my projects archive, you would go mad in the face of true hopelessness. A thousand thousand projects—good ideas all!—begun and abandoned because deep in my heart I truly believe that everything I make is trash and that no one will ever want to read/watch/listen to them.

For the projects that do meet completion, by the time they are finished I have spent so much time feeling weird and uncomfortable about them that I can never see them in a good light. Even when they are good, like the audition I wrote about above. And this feeling of… shame? embarrassment? uneasiness? none of those are right, but you get the idea. This lingering, haunting feeling impedes me standing behind my work or promoting myself with any real vigor. This has been a major professional failing that we will discuss in further depth another day.

I am always in awe of people who can really promote themselves and the effort they’ve put into a project. It’s impressive! I wish I had even a tiny ounce of that, but I don’t. I can feel the inside of my chest just crawling thinking about it. The most self-promotion I can stomach is the occasional post here on The Black Laser and that is insufficient.

Another recent example I can’t stop thinking about. Ever since Verdant folded, I’ve been picking up freelance video edit projects to try and pay for my kids and life and stuff. It has been pretty tough because I live in Delaware and everything is remote. The time gap between the last time I was active and now is quite long, so people have moved on and I am out of their minds. Normal stuff. I sent an email to someone I used to work with to let them know I am on the market and looking. I made a mention in the e-mail of how awkward I find that sort of inquiry e-mail. And while that is completely true, why the hell did I write that? Why self-deprecate at all? All it does is feed the void and that’s not helpful at all. Does this person now think I find them awkward? I don’t. I really just want to work. But I couldn’t help writing some dumb ass shit because I felt nervous about representing myself and, God forbid, asking for something. I wrote that e-mail in May. I never received a reply. I think about it every single day.

Yet things do get finished. Otherwise there would be nothing here for you to read and I’d have starved to death ages ago. Worry not for things will continue to get finished for as long as I am making things. I am more than three decades into feeling like this and I don’t see it letting up any time soon. Just have to live with it and work through it.

Download the audio for this post.

Wilbee in a Chair

A couple weeks ago I took some photos of Wilbee sitting in a chair outside because she’s a baby and you take photos of babies. That’s pretty much it.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t quite smiling yet and she definitely couldn’t yet hold her herself up. Our shoot was pretty short because of that. We still got some cute ones, though.

Apologies for sleeping on these for a couple weeks. It feels like I took these photos yesterday, but the dates in the EXIF reveal that I live in a timewarp where minutes, hours, and days have no meaning whatsoever.