i gathered these treasures a couple of years ago to place in a photo/memory book--you know the one that have a semi-sticky back covered by a film of plastic? the old fashioned out of style ones. somehow they still make them? i had no idea LOL.

i think i will continue to upload images of some of the things i chose to put in there before they go into their final celluloid home.

ok, anyone remember these cute little instant film strips? polaroid i-zone! i had a camera and exactly one roll of film LOL. after that it was pretty much never in use, finding its way into a junk drawer or a bin of stuff that i'd transport from house to house. too bad, becuase it's a cute idea... but i can see how the extra parts on each side of the photo could have led to its obsolescence. like, that's too much packaging for one tiny photo! right? anyway, that's my beloved dog circa 1999/2000.

here's a list of star wars characters and species and other terms i wrote down as i read the books. this list is inside of my 1997 star wars encyclopedia, which is one of my favorite possessions to this day. i asked for it for my birthday, and was so hyped when i received it! i dutifully looked up ever word in this list and quickly made myself an expert on star wars.

here's a bookmark my mom made me for my 9th birthday. i'm a collector of bookmarks, so this one is special! the way that she assembled it was by using tape, which i find super endearing. i dunno, it's just sweet and shows her resourcefulness. i also realized much later that she probably had the bookmark printed at kinkos or something, because we didn't have a printer for at least another couple years. so that's dedication.

speaking of bookmarks... here's one that i LOVE. oh to be alive during the marketing that was lord of the rings and AOL. it was interesting, and fully inescapable. look at the bottom of this thing! AOL keywords! so there was a series of these bookmarks that were all in this same style. i was collecting them like mad. somehow they managed to be at the library in my middle school--not totally sure how, or if every middle school or high school library had these at the time, but every so often for three years (i.e. the entirety of the lotr theatrical release window) there would be a stack of new character bookmarks for the taking. and oh how i took. merry & pippin were my favs tho by far.

so if you remember these bookmarks and/or they were at your school or community library, please let me know! somehow! i don't have a guestbook yet, so... idk. send a pigeon.

i am freaking out about the impact of this heat on wildlife. here it hasn't reached over 100º yet, unlike many areas in the country which have and never get that hot. but it's still hot af, and there's so many pollutants, and the birds are dying and now i hear camels are dying in africa??? is that real??? this is gut-wrenching. i want to do something!!! what tho?? aside from feeding the hummers here, and leaving water dishes so birds can cool down. we live in a place with no back yard. it's terrible, i want to help. if you read this and you have a yard, put out saucers and dishes full of clean water. leave them everywhere. make sure they're shallow enough, you don't want something an animal cant get out of and drown in. but low dishes are great. put them in the shade if you have shade.

fuck this administration. now they're going after endangered species. fucking WHAT. manatees, among many others. just literally. what are they going to gain when they've succeeded in killing EVERYONE off the planet? all they'll have is their ugly ass billionaire asses. what good will it be if there's nothing left? you've conquered it all. congratulations, now live with yourselves.

i don't have the fucking patience for the tiny percentage of psychopaths running this planet into the ground. i just don't.

in addition to that shit, this week was really rough. i lost my grandpa. he was more like a father to me than a grandpa, because my mom and i lived with my grandparents for most of my childhood, and my dad was out of the picture. i like to think that my existence brought my grandpa a bit of childlike joy... a joy that wasn't very present for my mom and her siblings when they were kids- mainly because my grandparents were both stressed out parents working super hard to make ends meet. by the time i showed up, my grandpa had a little one he could teach art to, teach how to bake or cook, take on trips to the hardware store, or to fry's to get computer parts.

fry's actually was the greatest place to go with him back in the day. our fry's was probably the most famous one of them all - it was ufo themed. so already, just getting there was like arriving at the gates of disneyland. we'd get a basket full of weird chips and wires and cards for him to attach to his computer he was rebuilding, and a new cheap weird cd-rom game for me (my reward for going with him), and then we'd head over to the cafe in the back of the store. we'd get a slice of pie and a coffee and a hot chocolate and we'd sit in the space-themed diner, a b-movie playing on the projector over the counter, and we'd just enjoy the moment. i think my grandpa was really good at enjoying the moment.

speaking of the games he'd get me, one time he came home from frys on a day i didn't go, and brought back this yellow accordion fold cd-rom game case filled with all sorts of games. putt-putt, and weird singalongs, and i remember especially this weird ass game called arcade america. it was probably my favorite, even though i wasn't great at beating the levels, and it would scare me.

a few years ago, i was really nostalgic for that game, but for the life of me i couldn't remember the name of it... well after some searching of key words, and finding a reddit post of someone ID'ing it, i finally got the dang name of the thing. then it led me to find this amazing site my abandonware. i still need to figure out how to download the game and make it work on a computer. i've actually been keeping my eyes out for years now, for an old windows laptop where i can just fiddle around with emulators and run old games like this. i still have a couple of cd-roms i'd love to play.

in other words, every day i am just slowly turning into my grandpa - taking apart computers to make new weird frankensteined ones that allow me to play old games, and trying to end every errand with a slice of pie

in other words: signs i might be clinically depressed lol. but for real, do others feel this way more than we talk about? most of my days, it is extremely hard to find joy. it's been this way for as long as i can remember, certainly long before the political disaster we're in here in the US. i've had clinical anxiety for all of my adulthood, and i'm pretty sure most, if not all of my childhood (underdiagnosed until adult), but this is an extra thing that i've never known if perhaps it is depression or just being a human.

ANYWAY. the feeling is this: i will have these tiny miniscule moments of pure joy that i know will expire, but i try to feel them for as long as consciously possible. today i had it, the first time in maybe a week or two. i stopped what i was doing to try and examine why the joyful feeling came about. was i thinking something nice? was i experiencing something enjoyable with my senses? what could it be? well, i was on a walk, and i did just hear two gorgeous coopers hawks calling to each other from across the street. could it have been that? i've observed birds for so long, and have never correlated that to the joy. this feeling is almost like a drug. like when it's administered, you aren't really in control of your own self anymore, the drug is. because let me tell you, birding DOES absolutely make me happy, but by just observing birds, i don't feel this... high.

then i was thinking... is it my hormones? did i just get a burst of some hormone i'm otherwise lacking or depleated of, and the delivery system that pumps these hormones is faulty so sometimes it works but most of the time it doesnt?? maybe. i've always felt like i'm faulty, so it's so easy to come to that conclusion. and i've been easy prey to people who have said that antidepressants would fix this. or supplements, or vitamins. from my experience, they dont really help when you're just by default a faulty unit (not to say that these methods don't help anyone! i was on ssri's for a long long time, and currently the anxiety meds i'm on are fabulous). but maybe this is what having a rush of dopamine feels like. or oxytocin. or endorphines?

in addition to my describing it like a drug, it also feels like i can--for a brief moment-- do anything. ANYTHING!. it's probably the best damn feeling i have. anxiety is completely nonexistent. i'm lighter, i'm bouncing on my heels. i'm happy, i feel like i can accomplish all my goals. nothing is foggy, or muddled. i'm convinced i can lift a car. that's the feeling. and then, in a flash it's gone again.

i hope someone out there gets it. well, not gets it, i dont want anyone to have this. but just gets it. and i hope one day i find at least some things that trigger this feeling. because then i'd like to keep doing those things. i want to find more joy in life. it's short. might as well!

i've been listening to their KEXP recordings; they're just so good. i've listened to a good amount of kexp shows and other live studio shows, and sometimes i do a little inward cringe at some of the vocals from some bands (wont name names lol) because they just sound so different from their studio sound, but not RIDE! they're freakin great.

i've seen RIDE only once, and that was in 2018 for the cure's 40th anniversary show at hyde park in london. and to be honest, i loved them, but my goal was really trying to secure a good spot at the park for the moment the cure finally came out XD. but now, my love for ride has really cultured over time, so i guess what i'm saying is it would be great to see them again in LA (or anywhere lol).

anyway, if you're so inclined, here's some KEXP videos of RIDE.

since january, i've been trying to write my own music. it's hard. idk how singer/songwriters do it?! i consider myself a musician, as i've been playing a wind instrument for over 20 years now, and piano not extremely well but well enough for even longer. but music composition and lyric writing are something else!

every once in a while i will get a melody in my head, and try to lay it out on my midi keyboard, try to layer it with accompanying instruments and whatnot, but i still have the most difficult time with what would be the vocal melody lol. so i have like 15 unfinished works just sitting here! what to do?

something i love about music is the way it transports you back to a special locked memory. it could be any kind of memory, like the first time you heard the song, or a time you heard it when you were with someone special, or if it was on a playlist you were listening to heavily during a specific season. it's wild. i love (most of the time) that music does this to us. the slim times when it actually is detrimental to hear a song because it brings up too much pain also exists, but even that is powerful.

the memories that come up for me with regard to ride are all within the last 9 or so years, when they reemerged from their long long hiatus to bless us with "Weather Diaries". since then, they've had two more records that have been equally wonderful. i remember hearing Lannoy Point for the first time... OMG. the memory that comes up when i hear that is just my jaw on the floor impressed with what i was hearing. the sound drew me in like a siren song. the next album "This is Not A Safe Place" was one of my absolute favorites during the pandemic lockdown. as much as i hate thinking about some aspects of the lockdown, the music that kept me company was so comforting.

my (truncated) ride playlist:

• lannoy point
• seagull
• leave them all behind
• like a daydream
• weather diaries
• in this room

i'm starting to get this website in a place that i want it to be in... it's not quite where i had it in my head, but it's going in the direction at least.

so i haven't played around with html for fun in close to 20 years (yes, myspace). so this is actually amazing that not only neocities exists, but that i somehow happened upon it several months ago. it took me that long to finally decide to make a site. i didn't really know what to put on here for a while. but then i realized, it could just be a collection of memories and things-- that seems to be what a lot of people use this place for.

i named this site "true afterthoughts" after the once popular defunct mall retail store afterthoughts. the concept of missing a store is both weird but also relatable for many of us, i imagine. i miss it because it was really emblematic of a time that shall never come back. pretty simple.

random thought but who else loved the plasticy smell of my little ponies back in the day?? here's a gif of my banana surprise. i love her.

i may not update this often, so don't expect much! but my interests are ever expanding, just as quickly as the internet at large is becoming an inhabitable space... so it's likely i'll find solace here?? idk. we'll see how much time i dedicate to this!

god, this is already becoming a cliche first journal entry.

i guess i can start with some things that i'm enjoying right now, because what are we if not consumers?

right now i'm enjoying:

• book: the bones beneath my skin by tj klune
• tv show: deli boys
• album: you seem pretty sad for a girl in love by olivia rodrigo
• movie: voicemails for isabelle