Carl Gillingham

candies

November 2025

Happy month-before-Xmas! This latest in an occasional series of newsletters has one aim and one aim only: to take you, if only for a few minutes, to a happy place. Come on, let's deny reality, just for a moment. First, I wanted to celebrate you - my uninterested,

cake

Chocolate Ice-Cream: Gateway to Self-Discovery

This is not a story about chocolate ice-cream, although this most perfect of foodstuffs will play a central role in what we must sadly refer to as my "learning opportunity." The lesson learned is: my family is weird. But don't worry; your family is weird too.

food

When the YouTube Algorithm Sends Me Camping in South Korea

We are all slaves to the Algorithm at this point – prisoners of the bubble we’ve created by consistently clicking on Daily Show clips, comic book reviews, and the endless videos of touring comedians doing crowd work. That said, sometimes the Algorithm gets a little quirky. Sometimes, it offers a

BBQ

Snow's BBQ

What we wanted was a weekend away, just the two of us. But various circumstances conspired to make that impossible, so, instead, my next-best idea was to plan a mini-road trip. We would head out east, to Lexington, TX, and try out what at least one of my social circle

sugar

Sugar: My Worst Best Friend

At my first post-Covid-lockdown medical check-up, my doctor noted what we both could see, just from a casual glance. I had put on a remarkable amount of weight over the past year. Some of this was anxiety weight – eating my way through some stressful times. But, his gaze told me,

meat

Choose Green for Meat

Unless you’re a successful publishing freelancer – where the crazy money is to be made – the Brazilian Steakhouse Experience is not an everyday one. It’s very strictly a special-occasion, save-up-for-six-months kind of experience. But buy that piggy bank and start hoarding those quarters now. This is every awesome thing

birds

Nature Sucks

Let that title be your trigger warning. This is not a story with a happy ending.  We had started so brightly. I noticed a nest of twigs tangled in the vines of our chocolate vine plant. Being as non-invasive as I could, I reached up with my phone and took

food

Lockhart, Texas

We’re grown-ups so we’re not stupid, right? We know there’s no such thing as “the best” of anything. There’s what I like. And there’s what you like. But no objective “best.” . . . that being said . . . I have made it my mission in life to find the

food

Sensitive

Get yourself a partner as sensitive as your marinara.

With Pugs You Are Never Alone

I can only speak about pugs as we only have pugs. I have no doubt that other breeds of dog do the same thing. Tell me about it in the comments (imaginary floods of dog-owning readers)! Let me tell you about pugs. They are the Stasi of the house. They

10 Shiny Things

June 2025

To start off this month, a pug in sheep's clothing. Random unchecked fact I learned from my work this month: Cheetos in Japan often have strawberries in them. Want to make a living as a writer? This is how one writer puts cash in the bank and food

pugs

Pugs As People

Remember the Dolly Parton Challenge? Probably not; it was old and tired by the time Jordan and I made the quartet of images here. It was the first time I think I jumped on an internet meme bandwagon - and so late I probably missed. But AI allows us to

Two Days in F'Burg

As an agreeable human, I am perfectly willing to be taken to all manner of places while someone else does the organizing. I've seen some cool stuff being guided by the wisdom of others - San Francisco... Santa Fe... Behind an abandoned store in downtown Austin... But, for

10 Shiny Things

May 2025

“Enjoy every sandwich” - Warren Zevon. May is the month of my wedding anniversary. Also that of my wife. We have a lot in common. As this one was a round number, I was uncharacteristically proactive and made reservations for us to spend a longish weekend staying in a silo

pugs

Training (the Untrainable?) Jordan

Jordan, once she settled in, turned out to be something more challenging than we’d first expected . . . an angry, protective whirlwind of intimidation and violence. Like so many tiny dogs before, she was just so full of hate. The reality of this is a little . . . stressful. She seemed very very

AI

ChatGPT Photo Challenge #1

Prompt: You are an expert photography teacher. You love movies and art. You will create an ongoing photo project where you set the task and I must create an image that matches the brief. The requirements should be one or more of: Create a mood Recreate an image Be inspired

travel

Travel Story: There and Back Again

Driving through Texas is a fascinating and frustrating thing for a photographer, even an occasional, highly amateur photographer like me. Any one-lane country road has enough visual interest to fill one of those coffee table books on Weird Trees or Sexy Rust or Cattle With Huge Horns. Small towns have

Medical

Pooposcopy: Everything I Know

February 2024, I coined the term “pooposcopy” as I thought it was funny, and it made it easier to talk about what was looming on my horizon. I got so used to the term that I kept forgetting what the real word was. I’ve forgotten now. Maybe it’ll

memoir

Ask Me About My Watch: A £500 Lesson in Memory & Grief

Ask me about my Armani watch. You might as well; I’m going to tell you about it anyway. In Texas, with an English accent, I can just about get away with such incredibly obnoxious behavior. “This is a £500 watch,” I’ll begin, being way more vulgar than I

Medical

Keep Medicine Weird

"Keep Austin Weird" is either a way of life or an effective way to market a city that desperately wants to let everyone know it is in Texas but not necessarily of Texas. Like Austin self-proclaimed title of being Live Music Capital of the World, the idea that

Medical

The Big Snip

As humans with only a finite amount of time on this round blue ball, we measure out our days in many different ways: Birthdays, obviously; but also, relationships, jobs, vacations. One of my milestones is medical procedures. For me, there is the time before my vasectomy and then the time

Underfoots

The Ballad of Jordan Underfoot

If you’ve never had a dog before, adding one to the family unit will almost certainly completely restructure your life. Once you're all settled into the new rhythm you’ve negotiated together, the next thing to do is . . . to get another dog, right? Because who wants consistency?

Underfoots Featured

The Ballad of John Henry

S. was a cat person; I have never cared for anything larger than a hamster, yet here we were, at the back end of 2015, in an animal-rescue shelter, looking to adopt/rescue a dog. I may have foolishly said at one point in our pre-search that pugs were weird