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a blurry and poorly lit photo of a group of strangers walking on a sidewalk in los angeles at night taken by ash in july 2010

We are having a Stressful Time around here for a mix of good and bad reasons and as always I am handling it sooooooo well and being so mature and making so many good and sensible decisions and behaving like, so super normal that I just heard I’m getting an award for it, so that’s cool.

So anyway, as I am sure I’ve mentioned here before, I think the music Vince Guaraldi did for the Peanuts tv specials is some of the best of all time. I’m a jazz guy, and have been since I was a little kid, so I was predisposed to liking it anyway, but as I have seen many other people say on the internet in recent years, essentially: he did not have to go that hard, you know? Except he did! Because we used to really make things! And they were good! And there are reasons they have lasted!

ANYWAY, I have been Stressed and when I am stressed I put on a playlist called ‘soothe’ which is just “Great Pumpkin Waltz” and “Thanksgiving Theme” that I play on a loop because it is comforting but it also recedes into the background in a pleasant way and you can literally track the worst years of my life for a while now by whether those two songs show up in my Spotify Wrapped. (Oh this year… Oh buddy.) So that’s something I highly recommend, even if I don’t want you to be stressed enough to need it.

I have also recently enjoyed some snacks! Doritos Golden Sriracha are bomb and the most tortilla chip tasting Dorito I’ve ever eaten. (I am normally a Spicy Sweet Chili–is that what those are called?–person as far as “””new””” Doritos go–Cool Ranch 4ever ofc–but this was a fun detour.) Planters Duos peppercorn pistachio and parmesan cashews are bomb. I’ve been pretty into eating tuna on those store bought tostadas with guacamole. Caesar salads are as always the goat of summer meals.

This month we donated to PBS in both North Dakota and Minnesota, Wikipedia, and the classrooms of some teacher friends which I always recommend, especially in a couple months where the new school year flush has run out!

Okay, that’s it. Hope you guys are not wildly stressed out also, but if you are I hope it’s for a good reason! (The regular dread and horror of being alive right now doesn’t count as stress, right? Right.)

tunesday: august 2025

a square image of two people posing for a photo in front of a third with an early 2000s style digital camera with august 2025 written in a dark mauve print, the picture was taken in july of 2010

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a blurry and poorly lit photo of a group of strangers walking on a sidewalk in los angeles at night taken by ash in july 2010

I have been under a constant state of static, waiting based stress for a huge portion of 2025 and the waiting portion finally ended yesterday with good news so now the more regular doing stuff stress is starting which isn’t necessarily fun, but is forward motion, so I’ll take it!

Anyway, that means as Decision Day approached I kind of stopped thinking entirely and had a LOT of very stupid trouble focusing which means I mostly watched movies I’d already seen (Independence Day – still a banger; Scream 3 – even better than I remembered, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure – still as important to me as it was when I was a kid) and barely did any substantial reading (I did read and love Carmilla and thought Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party was fun!) though we are almost down with Murderbot which I’ve been enjoying so much more than I had expected, not because I didn’t enjoy the books, but because they seemed pretty hard to adapt.) and that’s basically it.

I would say hopefully next month will be more full of enthusiasm and good stuff I liked, but I know things are just going to be a different kind of stressful, so I’ll just hope I manage to meet my goals and call it a day.

This month we’re donating to ILRC, MIRAC, and NICWA, and I hope you’ll join us if you’re able! If you have any particular charity you’d like to recommend, shoot me an email: ashrocketship[at]gmail, please!

Stay sane out there! Love you!

tunesday: july 2025

a square image of someone descending into a pool feet first with a cloud of bubbles and fabric around them, they have a black bar over their squinched shut eyes and july 2025 is written in pink cursive, the picture was taken in july of 2010

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recently

a blurry and poorly lit photo of a group of strangers walking on a sidewalk in los angeles at night taken by ash in july 2010

Not only is the world as it is at the moment, but personally it has been a complicated, stressful couple of months and it’s about to get more stressful, so I’ve been trying my best to stop scrolling and enjoy things when I can to mixed success.

I’ve been trying to not spend all my time on my phone partially for obvious reasons and partially because I am literally fighting a repeptitive motion injury in my wrist from scrolling for [redacted reason to be revealed later maybe] and it hurts, so I have been doodling in one of these KingArt sketchbooks. I’m not an artist and I’m not using a medium more complex than Sharpies, but the paper has a pleasant enough texture and it fits in my bag with my Moleskin journal and Leuchtturm planner without screwing up the careful balance of garbage I carry with me at all times. And they were cheap!

The only book I’ve finished so far is Pokko and the Drum by Matthew Forsythe, which I do highly recommend! Such a fun story and such sweet illustrations. We’ve been watching Murderbot, which is not as good as the books (Adaptations rarely are! Life sucks!) but is really fun on its own.

My coworker got us some blind boxes to open together–it’s funny that this has become a big trend again when they were so big in the late 00s (We have a pretty big collection of Vinylmation from Disneyland from that era!) and I wonder if it’s like… a comfort in uncertainty kind of thing–and that’s been extremely fun and now I will always have a cute little Space Molly reminder of it!

What else… Oh we tried the Tate’s Bake Shop chocolate chip cookies and those are pretty bomb. I really like the Walmart brand bettergoods creamy oat milk (especially with Frosted Flakes) which is a nice find. We also recently housed a package of the Keebler original EL Fudge cookies which were bomb. (Lots of sweets in our house right now… Stress? What’s that?!) Crystal used Biotone starter fertilizer to plant all her annual containers this year and they look fantastic, so I highly recommend that too, which feels weird at the end of a bunch of food, but whatever.

Okay, that’s it! This month we made donations to CHIRLA, Jail Support LA, Clue Justice, and eSims for Gaza and I hope you’ll join us if you’re able! If you have any particular charity you’d like to recommend, shoot me an email: ashrocketship[at]gmail, please!