Kelly's Blog, or, How I learned to love life and become an agoraphobic

12.18.03
This morning I read that Cold Mountain is leading the pack for Golden Globe nominations. This confused me not only because the movie hasn't opened yet, but because I read the book, and I've seen the trailers, and they ain't the same thing. For one thing, there's very little action in the book, aside from a guy walking slowly across the country to a woman who is barely aware of his existance. Jude Law and Nicole Kidman seem to be very aware of each other by the looks of the trailers. Plus, it looks like there's some action. If you catch my drift. Which, as I'm saying, does not happen in the book. Anyway, it's a good book, but it's pretty boring. Another book, which is also boring but not good and is also a major motion picture which has not be released yet but has been nominated for a Golden Globe is The House of Sand and Fog. That book was JUST awful, and ridiculously boring with absolutely no action at all, and yet the trailer shows people getting excited, raising their voices and slamming doors and I swear to God I don't know where all that came from. Mostly I can't believe someone, somewhere, said, "Let's make a movie out of this." I will probably see Cold Mountain, but I have no intention of seeing The House of Sand and Fog, partly because it takes place in San Francisco, and that makes me sad because I miss it, and partly because Jennifer Connelly's in it and I hate her. By the way, last night I was watching my new favorite show, "The Simple Life" and Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie were playing some kind of trivia game with their simple family, and the answer was "Shannen Doherty" and Paris says, "I hate her." And it was pretty hilarious, because probably she really like, knows her, in a way that I do not personally know Jennifer Connelly. It's too bad the "Simple Life" is so overproduced and scripted, but it's still damn funny. Well, I think I'm going to go shopping today because I spent no less than an hour and half trying to figure out what to wear to Mike's office party at the Hilton (Hey, Paris!) last week and I think it would have been drastically shorter if I had only had a thin velvet jacket or a fur-collar cardigan.

11.19.03
Had a great little party the other night when some old friends were in town with their little boys. I don't see many people that aren't in the 25-35 age bracket so was exciting to interact with 4 year olds. I think they were fairly exceptional because I've never before met 4 year olds who can read and re-program our vcr. Also, one took some incredible post-modern photographs with our digital camera, which you see here, unedited. Well, other than that, I've been *very* busy, people. Aside from my rigid daily schedule of reality tv, I have to fit in two hours of CSI a week, as well as a tight Thursday night line up of Friends, Will and Grace, and Scrubs. Today, I was so tired, it was three o'clock before I took off the pajamas I had been wearing for two days, although, to tell the truth, I was not motivated to take a shower. A few weeks ago I sat in on a session of the Supreme Court of Illinois and watched my friend get sworn in as a lawyer. In a moment of pure ecstasy, I realized that I could stand up and get sworn in along with everyone else and there'd be nobody to stop me! Except I didn't because I thought it *might* be insulting to my friend, who'd actually gone to law school, and her mom, and also her aunt, who had flown here all the way from India. So, I missed out on my chance to be an actual sworn-in-lawyer in the state of Illinois, all because I'm a nice person. But maybe I'll get sworn in next year.

11.13.03
In the past week, I've seen two really bad movies: The Matrix and Sylvia. I thought they were both going to be really great, but they sucked pretty bad. Also I haven't read anything good for a while. So, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the creative process when I'm not sitting around on the couch watching tv. One thought that I came up with, when I left the house for a walk and my mp3 player batteries ran out was that the creative process is easier when there are no distractions. Wonderful distractions like MTV's Rich Girls, which is the funniest damn show I've ever seen since Newlyweds. I'm pretty sad that Rich Girls is only a half hour show and plays only once a week! That's just not enough Rich Girls for me, and, probably, the entire nation. In these hard times of economic depression and political unease, only Rich Girls can unite the communities in laughter and amusement of two silly teenagers who contemplate their past lives and wonder why clothes aren't free, because they're a basic necessity, like water.

11.05.03
So, I took the GRE last week. It did not confirm a suspicion I had that I was actually a super-genius. But, thankfully, I am not a super-idiot. I did respectfully on the verbal section, and got a sort of embarrassing "quantitative" score. I got a lot of support from the pencil guy at the test center, who said to me, "Kelly, you're a genius" but not so much from my husband, who said, "Is it possible to get a refund?" Since then I've been keeping up with my hectic schedule of daytime tv watching, including new talk shows like Ellen and Sharon Osbourne. REM was on the Ellen show, and for some reason, Michael Stipe had dyed his eyebrows blue, as well as his temples. Actually, I can only assume he dyed them, but maybe he didn't. On accounta... later on I took a shower, and when I got out and was drying my hair and looking in the mirror, I realized my neck was blue from this cheap-ass necklace I had been wearing. Then I felt like I was as big a weirdo as the biggest weirdo of all: Michael Stipe. And that felt weird. Pee Ess, I thought I had seen the grossest things on the El that one could possibly see, including a guy throwing up and more than one person masturbating, but today I was standing on the platform downtown and this dude totally took a piss on the rails.

10.15.03
I'm not wearing pajamas today, but I am wearing the same clothes that I wore yesterday and last night. I'm sort of Anti-Pajama Girl (A-PG!) today. Well, I've been feeling like a real loser the last week or so, on accounta I'm a big loser without a job and with very little ambition. I'm sorta doing the South Beach Diet, but it's a real drag not eating any carbs or sweets or drinks. I lost three pounds, then I gained them back overnight, and then miraculously, I lost them again the next day. I blame the old food pyramid for almost all of my "weight issues." Also my mother. It's probably about 80% Mom, 20% old food pyramid. I kinda dig the new food pyramid although it bites my ass that instead of no less than a suggested 6-11 servings of bread and pasta which were the base of the pyramid that I grew up with, the base of the new food pyramid is... wait for it... "Daily exercise and weight control." It's not even FOOD! And it's a FOOD PYRAMID! And it's a total switchero, I'm telling you, because now all the delicious potatoe-ness is on the top of the pyramid now. Anyway, I really like whole grains and olive oil, so I've got that going for me. That, and, I think I'm going to get another day or two out of this outfit. (FYI, have done two sample questions for the GRE. Got them both wrong.)

10.08.03
Those expecting a blog about a girl sitting around in her pajamas until five minutes before her husband comes home from work after doing nothing all day must look otherwise! This blog is about a girl who sits around in her pajamas all day getting serious work done, folks. For example, yesterday I finally made an appointment to take the GRE (October 30th! I'd better start studying!) and even cracked open my year old novel-in-progress, which was getting dusty, I admit, in C:\Kelly\creativewriting. And then, I wrote a whole page. That's right. This little girl has been busy. Also, one day I photographed my feet in all of my shoes and made a poster, which has been very handy for shoe selection. See, I get dressed, and then I look at my shoe poster and I decide which shoes would look best with my outfit. And I don't forget about any shoes that might be out of sight or in a box or something. See? I'm a genius, right? Also, I had another brilliant idea, after I saw this totally ridiculous Jesus Fish Variation (on left). It's a Truth fish eating a Darwin fish. Which doesn't even make any sense. So I had this idea for another fish, which I have created for your enjoyment... Some say it doesn't make any sense either, but I think it's funny. For those of you crazy fish nuts out there, don't go stealing my idea and making a million bucks off of it.

10.01.03
Once again, I find myself at 4:30 in the afternoon in my pajamas. A lot has happened - it's gotten bitterly cold in Chicago; I had a job interview (didn't get the job); and disastrously, the Pet Psychic is no longer on daily at noon. It's really thrown off my whole schedule. Also, right now I'm realizing that all my life, I have been spelling (and pronouncing) "disastrous" incorrectly. I thought it was more like "disasterous". The other day I saw Kelsey Grammer on some talk show and he was talking about words frequently mispronounced, and I have to say, it was revealing. Although, I looked up some of the words on one of my fav websites, Merriam-Webster which has a very handy audio pronounciation thingy, and it turns out one can pronounce most of the Kelsey Grammer words the Kelsey Grammer Way, or the Kelly Way. Anyway, I do admire Kelsey Grammer, so I'm thinking about changing my pronounciation of "culinary". Speaking of, I went to the Chicago Culinary (you say "cul-inary", I say "cue-linary") Institute for dinner one night and it was mostly good. We had pre-drinks at the Martini Ranch (what more ridiculous name for a martini bar exists, I ask you?) and it was mostly lame. Holy cannoli! I just listened to the pronounciation of "agoraphobia" and turns out I've been mispronouncing that too! Which reminds me, today I was reading this chapter on post-modernism in "Buffy and Philosophy." I like throwing around the phrase "po-mo" even though I don't really know what it means, but today I learned. I've really learned a lot from "Buffy and Philosophy." And anyway, I'd like to identify my sentence re: the pronounciation of agoraphobia (and indeed, this entire entry and perhaps my entire life) as post-modern (or "po-mo" as we in the know [or the pretense of know] like to say). So, actually, I'm feeling better about still being in my jamies because I've actually accomplished a lot today, like how to spell "disastrous", how to pronounce "agoraphobia" and not only that but identified our current historical paradigm. Who's got time for showers with all that going on?

09.24.03
5 minutes after I said, "Blogs are so over" I thought to myself, "Now, I'm a person who could write a pretty kick-ass blog..." Who better than, me, one of the 6.4 percent of unemployed Americans, to document for the three or four people that read my website my daily struggles and daily television offerings. For example, today I had two goals: to sign up to take the GRE, and to make a handbag. I spent about three hours on the computer in the morning, writing e-mails, looking for jobs, and reading the news. Then I made a quesadilla and watched The Pet Psychic, then I thought I'd better get cracking on that handbag, which I finished around 5, just in time to watch Clean Sweep. I never took a shower, changed out of my pajamas, or stepped out of the apartment, much less made an appointment for the GRE. Wasn't that kick-ass?