The Dal Report

Hello, everybody! I feel like I’ve spent the last month or so simultaneously very busy and very sedentary. I’ve been dealing with some health stuff starting in early October which turned out to be a very low vitamin D deficiency. This resulted in me passing out randomly regardless of what I was doing, whether it was mid conversation or while actively doing a task, I would just. Fall asleep. Initially I thought it could have been narcolepsy or something, but nada. I’ve spent the vast majority of the last month in and out of work, but I haven’t been able to complete a full shift yet. I walk into work some days and I can’t get through the hour. It’s been incredibly frustrating for everyone involved, I’m sure. Luckily I have some money set aside for emergencies, so that lack of work shouldn’t be a problem. At least not as long as I can get back to normal soon. If nothing changes before the New Year, I’m going to go back to the doctor to see if something else is wrong with me.

The lack of working has been a blessing and a curse, I’m spending a lot more time with friends and with my personal projects, but it also means I’m missing out on getting out of the house and walking more. Although I do feel bad, I don’t feel like I have enough to show for all the free time I’ve had. Which should be fair considering I spent most of that time resting. Still, I’d like to share what I’ve been up to. Most of the following things are essentially serving as things I would have otherwise posted to my Instagram stories, so there’s going to be a lot of small things to share, in vaguely chronological order. Some things may have made it to Bluesky or Mastodon, but I still have friends not on either platform, and I’d also prefer everything to be in once place if I can help it :3

Casino with Grandma (10-26-2024)

My grandma bribed me into going to the casino with her and spending the night there with the premise of free food and alcohol. My grandma frankly has a problem with gambling, but at this point she’s in her 70s with virtually no bills, no dependents, and nothing but time and monthly government checks to spend. It’s one of those things that are almost definitely sad, but she has no desire to change and I honestly don’t know what else she could be spending all her time and money on. She said she would want to travel, but she’s also got dementia and no one to easily go with her. Obviously I or someone else in my family would love to go traveling with her, but we’re all working or in school so its not easy to plan anything. Anyway, all this to say, she’s on all the nearby casinos Give-This-Person-Free-Shit-Randomly-Because-They’ve-Spent-A-LOT-Of-Money-Here List.

So when she called me and told me there would be free food, drinks, and a hypnotist show at the casino, I said fuck it and went with her. Honestly the entire experience was just.. underwhelming. Gambling sucks, don’t do it. I left with $100 and still felt like it would have been more enjoyable to have just worked an 8 hour shift than to sit at a machine and watch numbers spin. The machines weren’t even cool, they didn’t even have arms and they were all touch screens.

I did see a cigarette vending machine! Which tickled me a lot honestly. Photo of a vending machine with cigarettes.

I also woke up in the morning to some Local 58 esque television. I’d post the video, but I don’t feel like learning how to embed videos right now.

Cyrus painted (10-27-2024)

I created a new character for a Shadow of the Demon Lord campaign I’m currently in. My good friend Michaela printed him in their resin printer, and my other friend Evan painted him. It looks so fucking sick and they did a great job. I don’t have much to say about Cyrus really, I tend to make characters to serve as straight men to the rest of the oddball party, so he’s a lawful neutral soldier looking to prevent his city from being overthrown by outside forces. He’s also on a hunt to find his brother who was incidentally sold into slavery (happens to the best of us).

Image of a mini figure of a black man in light, padded armor. He weilds a rapier and is in a fighting stance. He has a red cape off his left shoulder and a coil of rope along his belt. He is dressed in multiple layers of thin fabric and sandles Same character, rotated clockwise Same character, from behind

Here’s the Hero Forge I made for him as well, for a more true to life representation of him.

Cupcake climbing around in weird places (Late October)

Cupcake is Cass and I’s cat, and recently she’s been climbing around all over the place.

Image of a very fluffy cat attempting to climb onto a shelf. Her back foot is stuck out in midair, as there is not enough space on the shelf for her. Image of the same fluffy cat climbing on top of a desk, walking in front of a TV. She's curious as she attempts to navigate a very cluttered surface. Image of the same fluffy cat sitting on an entertainment center in front of a different, larger TV. She is looking at the camera, curious.

Which I find extremely odd because she DOES in fact have a cat tree she can climb! Image of the same fluffy cat sitting inside a cat tree. She is content and relaxing.

She has plenty of toys as well I just.. think she’s weird. She only did this for a handful of days anyway, so I’m really not sure what her deal was.

Park walk (11-04-2024)

One night I got very high and decided to take out this nifty camera with me for a walk. It’s called a Papershoot and it basically takes high quality images that kinda look like mid 2000s disposable camera quality. It’s really cool, but it behaves best with good light and most of the photos I took with it ended up being a bust. Here’s a couple that have some potential in the hands of the right photo editor.

Image of a blurry night time photo of a residential street. There are cars to the left side and a few light posts, as well as vague outlines of houses on either side, but it is very blurry. Image of a blurry night time photo of a large apartment building in front of a pond. The photo is poor, so only the lights coming from windows and their reflections can be seen.

Here’s that same photo, but taken from my phone. Image of the same apartment building as before, but with a slightly different angle. Trees on either side of the frame can be seen, as well as another, smaller building in front of the apartments that was near invisible before.

Still not great obviously due to the low lighting, but you can at least make out what it is. Anyway, the night culminated in me sitting on a bench and listening to ducks and then a well earned Taco Bell visit while absolutely baked.

Spotify playlist covers (11-09-2024)

So I have a bunch of Spotify playlists that I like keeping nice and tidy looking. I got annoyed for a very long time about the fact they don’t have covers besides the generated one of the 4 first album covers. Anyway, I didn’t like it. It made the playlists feel almost unfinished to me. So, I went through and made a whole bunch for all my public playlists. Image of 24 different playlist covers with the same formatting. They feature a frame of different colors depending on the playlist, but usually lower saturation colors. Each cover has the name of the playlist with 'Malice_And_Meat' underneath them, as well as short quips on the top right of each cover. There are images, all differing for each cover, to support the general moods of each. For exmaple, the playlist titled 'Baby, it's Halloween!!' has an image of various silly and spooky pumpkins and black cats with a dark purple frame and the phrase 'Get in loser, we're going trick or treating' on the top right.

Originally I had planned for them to all look more different, with different fonts, layouts, styles, but I think them all being consistent with each other is just better and easier. I like how they came out a lot.

Friendsgiving (11-11-2024)

Me and my friends had a great and wonderful Thanksgiving celebration together. The photos more or less speak for themselves, most of them here were taken from the paper shoot, but a handful were from my phone.

Image of a cooked turkey on a stove with gravy in a pot next to it. It is missing several chunks as people have already served themselves turkey. Image of a massive metal bowl of mashed potatoes on a table with various different kinds of dinner rolls and cornbread. Two people are sitting at the table with plates and drinks, though their faces aren't shown. Image of a cheesecake just pulled from the oven. It is golden brown on the edges on top. Image of a cluttered table where people are preparing food. On the left are cutting boards and hard boiled eggs getting cut in half to be made into deviled eggs. On the right are bite-sized balls of oreos about to be coated in melted chocolate. Admist this are bottles of water, cans of soda, and mugs of hot chocolate. Image of roughly 4 dozen hard boiled eggs in a massive metal bowl, prepared to be peeled. Image of a paper plate filled with ham, mac n cheese, mashed potatoes, and cornbread. In the background is other thanksgiving sides and plates of food. There is a person sitting on the right side. Image of a bowl filled with mud pudding and whipped cream as well as gummy worms. Image of a cluttered table with a TV. Three people are playing Smash Bros. Ultimate on the Switch.

Shoutout Sam, Max, and Emory for hosting and doing the bulk of the cooking. Shoutout Cass for not helping us with cooking and instead hacking Sam and Max’s Wii. Shoutout Andrew, Kalyn, and Leah for showing up and bringing even more life to the party. I’d like to share more photos theoretically, but I’m wary of showing anyone’s faces here since this blog is public at the moment. If anyone I know personally would like to see more photos, please reach out and let me know - otherwise most of them have been posted to the Radio Tower server already :3