"I can't stand whining. I can't stand the kind of paralysis that some people fall into because they're not happy with the choices they've made. You live in a time when there are endless choices...Money certainly helps and having that kind of financial privilege goes a long way, but you don't even have to have money for it. But you have to work on yourself...Do something!"*

   I’m afraid (though not literally like when I watched Hocus Pocus by myself on Halloween night) that this is going to be another one of those posts where I just update you on the random musings of my life without any direction or point. My brains aren’t cooperating these days, so I’m just going to sum up the state of things. Without further ado:

1. I don’t want to sound like a bitch (though, to be fair, I am a bit of a bitch) but Lindsay Lohan’s downward professional trajectory has somehow made me very smug and happy. I’m sure jealousy is somehow involved. Whenever I see posters for her made-for-TV movie Liz and Dick I am simultaneously excited to watch the shit out of it and really elated that she’s sunk to the level of movie-of-the-week status. I mean, here was a girl who had a great career going and she just completely blew it. What a dope. However if I’d had the career she threw away, I’d be so amazed by myself and convinced of my invincibility I probably would have done EXACTLY what she did. And maybe that’s why I feel so damn joyous when I see the promos for Liz and Dick. I’m just really glad it’s not my face up there. Failing for all the world to see. (And to be ultra realistic, she’s still doing better than 98% of the actors in this city.)

2. These graduate school applications are totally kicking my ass. I think I’ve over thought the essay portion to the point where after 4 drafts and 7 people reviewing it, my essay looks like hieroglyphic swirls with occasional sketches of monkeys with light bulbs over their heads thrown in for good measure. Also, check out the length of that run-on sentence. I can’t write for shit anymore. My fingers work but my brain don’t.

3. I went to Chicago last weekend and realized that I miss autumn. Real autumn with the leaves changing color and the smell of smoke in the air (not smog, smoke) and warm, fuzzy coats and scarves and gloves and hats and biting winds and gray mornings and raking and all that. I don’t really like being cold but I miss having seasons. It’s “Fall” in Los Angeles and all we’ve got to show for it are a bunch of morons in parkas complaining about the 60° temperatures and the fact that the wind occasionally blows a palm frond or two into the street and the damn city won’t send someone to pick them up so we have to do it our damn selves. (Which does kind of suck because those things will shred your hands into a million pieces.)

Fall. For real.

4. I went to see Skyfall with Chad the other night and it made me even more anxious/eager/determined to travel somewhere. Why don’t I have any money???? Why??? I DESERVE to have lots of money so I can promptly go to Istanbul or Shanghai or both. And if the James Bond franchise is to be believed, you can find amazing parking spots anywhere you go in either of those cities. Maybe I will move there because free parking is hard to come by in LA.

5. Check out how American I am: The other morning I was eating a slice of American cheese in the bathroom while I got ready (as you do) and I set it down on top of my New Yorker (which, I’ll admit, is also a bathroom activity) and it stuck to the page in a really bad way. The cheese still tasted fine, but the article’s all fucked up. 

Bathroom activities.

Here's a close-up. Gross.

   Anyway, talk about first-world problems. My life is a dream and I would like to make this seem less like a blog post about complaining incessantly and more a blog post about my astute observations about life. As long as you readers take it that way, we'll be fine and I won't have to alter my world-view at all.

*The quote is from Hillary Rodham Clinton. And she's right...the money part does certainly help.