Pleasure and Guilt, Food and Poop, and (as always) Television

[witty intro]

...Hello. I’m here today to crankily type about a little something known as “guilty pleasures.” For the record, I do not have any issues with the term itself.  (The same cannot be said for terms like “make love,” “man-whore”— oh, the sexism— and “irregardless.”)

In fact, I love the idea of guilty pleasures. I’m even mother to quite a few. I think they’re a great way to get to know someone, because true-to-the-definition guilty pleasures are very similar to secrets. But so many (dare I say, majority?) of the guilty pleasures I hear of today are NOT true to the definition, and this is where the problem starts.

When magazines ask celebrities about guilty pleasures, or someone announces one in a public “place” (i.e. a locale in the real world or a status update online) I’ve learned to hold my breath and anticipate either a back-door brag or just a pleasure.

Sure, the pleasure might be a little nerdy, but if I had a nickel for every pair of Buddy Holly glasses I’ve watched ironically shuffle by me over the past year, I would spend the lump sum on a billboard reading,

“I get it: Cool = 'I’m nerdier/less-mainstream than you.' ”

Odd how no one ever seems to mistakenly label pleasure-less “guilts” as “guilty pleasures.” Maybe the conversion from adjective to noun tips them off that they’re missing something?

But enough ranting (at least in paragraph form). It's time to take this issue to the graphs. Let's start off with a celebrity example. 

"My best guilty pleasure is watching old sitcoms and eating grilled cheese and tomato soup in bed."-Padma Lakshmi

Padma, I think you're great. Love your show, yadda yadda yadda, but that's not a guilty pleasure. That's a Wednesday night.

You see, it's like this:

Need another comparison? 

Let me break it down using one of my favorite topics, television:  

dig?

...And yeah, that's pretty much all I've got right now. I might be back. 

Wow, today is not my day for segues. 

Bye? 

"kan ye" blame me?

Sometimes I fear that this blog will…become yet another item on my list of abandoned half-assed projects left to rest in pieces? Is that what you were thinking I was going to type? Yeah, well, you AND the¼ finished “make your own daffy duck rug” that sits in a closet/basement somewhere in this house. Haha, just kidding. We threw out that box of yarn aaaages ago. Also, fun fact: rugs—even unfinished ones—can’t have thoughts or opinions. (Can they?)

But, no, that’s not what I fear. That’s what I expect. (see March 2010, posts zero-zero) In fact, the thought of that not happening is shocking. Let’s stop thinking about it. Visualizing prolonged productivity wears this lady out.

What I do fear is that this blog will eventually become a collection of artifacts marking my lack of a social life and slightly-more-than-habitual crankiness. Not to mention my comma insecurities and unbridled love of stringing words together with hyphens. (Ah, vices. Cigarettes just seemed a little too cliché and a lot too risky for my asthmatic self. So naturally, I took the next best thing, punctuation marks.) 

But back to the crankiness. On harlanguage (and please get ready for an overstretched “Yanawamsayin? No?” analogy) I feel like I’m Kanye West during the Katrina telethon except there’s no camera cut away and so Mike Myers just has to stand there looking constipated until I decide to stop talking. 

Well, that's the case as far as my point of view goes. I realize most people just navigate to other pages like facebook, or that asian porn website that’s all the rage in my comments section. Seriously, check it out. (That's a link to the comments, not the website. Oh, and to the commenter, while your website isn’t really my bag, I appreciate the warm wishes—thank you, online translator—and reciprocate the sentiment. Thanks for being my most supportive follower!) 

But here, I can be like, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people…and heeerrree’s whhhyyy…” and then I pull out a scroll and start talking about the super dome and end two days later with some tangent about golf. 

...Yanawamsayin? No? 

Well, that’s okay. The important thing is I feel like I’ve atoned (by merely acknowledging my flaws and making no promises to change).

So on that note, I’ma let this finish and start on my next post.

The writing is on the wall (and the author used a red pen)

I just spent a lovely weekend in Syracuse celebrating the union of Mo and Tyson in holy matrimony. Holy smokes, did we have fun! You might even say we painted the town red. However, while we're on the topic of paint shades, I must admit that the festivities were tainted by a heated (yes, as in flames) debate. Oh, politics. The red-hot issue has yet to be resolved so I've decided to take it to the masses (ha! "masses") and ask for your opinion.

Please be honest, and even-more-please, don't be stupid. The truth is out there, and it is obvious.

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