I’m coming clean about the fascinations

January 9, 2007 at 2:30 pm | In inappropriate, navel, the art of bullshit, timesuck |

I like to write something personal once in awhile, just so y’all don’t think I’m some sort of robot blog generator that finds links to feminist blogs and Justin Timberlake and tries to make them fit together. Today I thought I’d broach the topic of ‘guilty pleasures’, considering all the hullabaloo over Harry Potter here recently (well, at least Uncomplicatedly said it was a guilty pleasure).

A couple of half-hearted searches on ‘guilty pleasures’ resulted in this crap. Oh wow, Neil Diamond is a guilty pleasure? Give me a break.

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is filling out those hideously boring Myspace surveys, but I actually just attempted to do one of those here, and I couldn’t. Nobody cares if I’m right-handed or left-handed, not even internet voyeurs.

I don’t know. What counts as a guilty pleasure anymore? I can’t think of anything I like that I’m even embarrassed or guilty about, even if it’s a bit passe. (Example: David Gray.) Or nerdy to the nth degree. (Example: Star Trek: The Next Generation.) I like having impossible crushes, but I can chalk that up to the human condition. The Taco Bell seven-layer burrito doesn’t seem important enough to be a guilty pleasure. I don’t know. That awful song ‘Better off Alone’ is floating around somewhere on my iPod…

Dear readers, please help. What’s a guilty pleasure in the year ought-seven? What are some of yours?

13 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

my problem with star trek is not that it’s nerdy at all! it’s the metaphor. the white male commander lovingly shepharding his minority crew around.

that being said, i love the show….i grew up on it. its so corny its funny. but once i began becoming conscious of those racist/imperialist/colonizing themes of the show, it certainly brought a different tone to watching it…

i have no guilty pleasure. i love my pleasures. guilt only gets in the way!

yeah, um. the justin timberlake thing…its a a little creepy.

Comment by Nezua Limón Xolografik-Jonez — January 9, 2007 #
my problem with star trek is not that it’s nerdy at all! it’s the metaphor. the white male commander lovingly shepharding his minority crew around.

totally, totally. and they’re all ‘it’s the future, we’ve eliminated racism!’ but you look at the other humanoid species (klingons, vulcans, even the oh-so-effeminate betazoids) and think ‘hmmm… I wonder what stereotypes that’s perpetuating?’

Comment by petitpoussin — January 9, 2007 #
Well, I was raised in a fundie Christian family, so ALL of my pleasures are guilty pleasures!

That said, my guilty pleasures are watching rings spin on home shopping networks; closet eating; this bikini; um, TLC shows about bringing a new baby home from the hospital (gross, I know); snorting things; fantasizing about a. watching my boyfriend have sex with another girl, b. sharing my boyfriend, c. being Shane from the L word, d. being Samantha from Sex and the City; blogging obsessively when I should be writing/reading/cleaning, etc.

Comment by Jane Awake — January 9, 2007 #
Oh, also, when I was a teenager I had a lot of guilty pleasures, too.

Three out of four of these are true:

1. I used to dig through my dad’s underwear drawer looking for porn.
2. I used to masturbate with a curling iron.
3. I used to dig up and befriend worms.
4. I used to put my head between my knees while I was on the toilet, so I could watch the pee come out of my urethra through the crack between the toilet and the seat. Interesting every time.

Comment by Jane Awake — January 9, 2007 #
Booze. Every time, every night when I fix myself a drink it’s with a little shiver of pleasure because I know lots of people who would disapprove. Everytime I mix together gin and vermouth, I think “ha ha ha ha haaaaa ha…I’m having a martini in a cool glass and you’re nooooott”.

Comment by Rootietoot — January 10, 2007 #
Jane: >

Ha! I’d forgotten that I was very very tempted once, but i was terrified that I’d wash it and never get moisture out and electrocute myself.

and btw, “hi to jane”. sorry i never said a proper hi and thanks over at my place. got busy and ittotally slipped my mind.

Comment by queer dewd formerly known as ( ) — January 10, 2007 #
Every now and then i’ll read a horoscope, and spend the day trying to convince myself that everything fits .. but keep telling superstitious people that it’s utter bollocks
I had a very fat chocolate brownie today but pretended it was cool because I spent twenty minutes on the cross trainer afterwards; then i came home and had a cheese toasty so i guess i have to find some ‘house-sports’ to offset that.
I keep being novels and read hem at work pretending it’s all to improve my english but then when my supervisor asks how my phd is going i say i’m too busy working to get anything done
I used to spend the day waiting for going home to watch all the AllyMcBeal seasons on dvds (remember?) but i express utter contemps when anyone talks about soaps.
all that is utterly utter timesuck but it’s cool it prevents me from doing anything meaningful.

Comment by French Boo — January 10, 2007 #
i meant ‘buying’ novels not being…..

Comment by French Boo — January 10, 2007 #
and my new guilty pleasure is to make all the Thames watermen i work with believing that I’m expecting twins

Comment by French Boo — January 10, 2007 #
I don’t think I quite said I felt guilty about reading Harry Potter, just that I acknowledge it’s not actually very edifying. I guess if I do end up at Barnes and Noble at midnight this summer when the new one comes out, then I will be ashamed. Probably this won’t happen, probably I have enough self-respect to wait a few days. The thing is not that I cannot live without knowing what happens, but that I’m very afraid the internet will spoil it for me.

Actual guilty pleasures? The OC. I was ashamed even to own up to it on your post about it, instead sticking up for Potter who I do have a little bit of faith in. Kugelmass started me on The OC and I really actually liked it, while being very ashamed, for the first 8 episodes, but episode 9 sucked and maybe it will continue to do so and I can show my face in public again.

Comment by uncomplicatedly — January 10, 2007 #
I’m addicted to Gchat…

Comment by Leslie — January 11, 2007 #
I really don’t have any guilty pleasures. Which is to say, I don’t feel guilty about any of my pleasures, even if others might categorize them as “guilty pleasures.” (E.g., I like Desperate Housewives.)

Comment by Amber — January 14, 2007 #
Bila Quedew,

I know about the curling iron thing. The reason I knew I could successfully and thoroughly wash it was because about two years before I found its true purpose, I used to use it on my hair. Back in those days I had the ever popular perm mullet. The hair style required a lot of hair spray (or so I determined) and, for some reason, the curling iron (hideous bangs). Any curling iron used on hair-sprayed hair gets quite disgusting and must be washed.

Comment by Jane Awake — January 15, 2007 #