Guilty pleasures

[sabotabby]

Everyone's going to be blogging about this Guardian article so I might as well get it over with. My comment to strawberryrock:

I bet [Hitchens is] one of those people who thinks it's really hilarious to get together with his friends over a pint litre of gin and quote lines from The Simpsons and thinks that he's sounding all intellectual while really, his imitation of Homer going "D'oh" just makes him sound like a frat boy.

I want to play that game that Zizek recommended, though. It sounds fun, although I never really got the hang of video games.

Anyway, I don't so much have guilty pleasures as a number of bourgeois indulgences that I don't feel terribly guilty over: TV, LJ-voyeurism, shopping, raspberry dark chocolate lattes, and making fun of Christopher Hitchens.*

---

On a much sadder note, if you have a pet, hug him or her today. The passing of a dog I've never met brought me to tears. Rest in peace, Zeke.

* My latest, and oddest, guilty pleasure is all the internets wanking over the death throes of For Better or For Worse (mostly via Comics Curmudgeon and binky_betsy). I thought Liz's various romantic entanglements and inevitable descent into suburban domestic servitude were bad enough, but then Michael got a $25,000 advance on a crappy unsolicited first novel—in Canada, no less!—and that is way more offensive than most Mallard Fillmore strips. Then again, the novel is Canadian historical fiction, and I honestly have no idea how any of that stuff gets published in the first place. I wonder if the protagonist fucks a bear.

Comments

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

Get the terminology right; it's a QUART of gin. An Atlanticist like Hitch wouldn't dream of using European measurements.

[sabotabby]

I can't help it. I'm Canadian. We're perpetually confused by measurements.

[ghostwes.livejournal.com]

Nah, we're anti-imperialists.

[ironed_orchid]

You should NEVER feel guilty about making fun of Christopher Hitchens.

[sabotabby]

It's just that it's so easy.

[ironed_orchid]

Next you'll be telling me I should feel guilty for making fun of Randroids

[sabotabby]

That's even worse! I can't stop myself, though.

Oh, and on that game:

[ironed_orchid]

ironed_orchid: I want a game where I get to be a KGB agent and torture people to death, is that wrong?
grimreaperess: You'd need to play a lot of Wolfenstien 3D to make up for it.
ironed_orchid: whats Wolfenstein?
ironed_orchid: Is it game where you are nice and rescue kittens?
grimreaperess: It's a 90s computer game where you have to shoot Nazis and reclaim the stolen treasures.
ironed_orchid: yep, that would even it out. I think there should be a kitten rescuing game, tho'

Re: Oh, and on that game:

[sabotabby]

What if you lost and the kittens didn't get rescued, though?

There should be a game where you get to shoot Nazis, and for every Nazi you kill, you get a kitten.

Re: Oh, and on that game:

[ironed_orchid]

Good points. Who needs gems and works of art when there could be kittens.

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

guilty pleasure: Jackass.

[sabotabby]

Really?

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

yep. My whole household.

[sabotabby]

Heh.

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

we also watch a lot of romantic comedies. It;s like bubblegum for your brain...good when you're too worn down to watch anything meaningful but too awake to go to bed.

jackass, though....have you seen it?

[sabotabby]

I can't watch romantic comedies. Comedies, for the most part, don't work for me because I don't have a sense of humour. ;) I haven't seen Jackass either. Isn't it the one where they eat each other's shit?

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

hmmm, well, there's definitely more poo in Jacass than you might be used to, but no one's ever eaten any that I'm aware of. they basically do pranks and also, skateboard tricks; and most of the pranks are sick and wrong, yet for the most part, even though it's all white dudes, they manage to avoid being sexist and racist and homophobic; in fact there's a lot of underlying homoeroticism that seems to be somewhat embraced. It's really totally dumb humor, but I love it.

[elgordochico.livejournal.com]

At least, he didn't write something ridiculous like Steven Pinker's bit about rock songs: 'Bob Dylan's "God said to Abraham, kill me a son" is a perfect example of a benefactive double-object dative construction; Paul McCartney's "She could steal but she could not rob" illustrates a subtle contrast in lexical semantics.' See, Pinky, the point of this piece is to show intellects like you don't preen all the time.

I haven't heard of Zizek's rec but if you wanna check out a good war/hacker game try System Shock. It's probably available at Pirate Bay. Its chief villain is a really bitchin' sentient virtual babe bent on destroying all humanity.

[one-serious-cat.livejournal.com]

It's also kinda funny that he owns up to a complete lack of interest in classical music, even though he spends part of a chapter in The Blank Slate rubbishing the modernists whose work grew out of the "classical tradition", broadly defined.

[elgordochico.livejournal.com]

That seems fitting. I hate classical music everytime I hear Pachelbel's Cannon. But don't get me wrong. It was okay the first millionth time i heard it. Maybe he doesn't like classical tradition because you're still stuck with it even after it gets old.

[one-serious-cat.livejournal.com]

Pachelbel's Canon was never okay, and I can see why it exacerbated Timothy Hutton's emotional troubles at the beginning of Ordinary People. It's not that I think no one has any right not to like classical music, but I think it's a good idea to have some knowledge of it that's based on genuine interest if one is going to complain that the mid-20th-century avant-gardists ran afoul of aesthetic strictures imposed by Pinker's good friend, "human nature".

[cleobourne.livejournal.com]

guilty pleasure: Taking whole grain blueberry bagel and smearing cream cheese filling ( the kind in the tub) all over it.

[sabotabby]

Ewww. (Then again, I don't like bagels or cream cheese. I am a bad Jew.)

Too lazy to log in. It's cleo

[(Anonymous)]

Rather cheese cake filling. Not cream cheese.

Re: Too lazy to log in. It's cleo

[sabotabby]

That sounds better.

[gillen.livejournal.com]

Dawkins on his vice of computer programming: "It was a lonely vice, interfering with sleeping, eating, useful work and healthy human intercourse. I'm glad it's over and I won't start up again."

Need I remind folks that the man is married to Lalla Ward? And he finds himself sometimes drawn away from their marriage bed to write word processors? Richard, you get to sleep with the sixth piece of the goddamn Key to Time, man! Now get back in there and do your duty for Queen and Country!

[fannishnonsense]

Wait, he's married to Romana II? Why didn't I know that? That's completely awesome!

[elgordochico.livejournal.com]

Computer programming doesn't affect social life much. Computer gaming on the other hand...

[sabotabby]

He's married to Romana II and he lets anything get in the way of "healthy human intercourse"? What's wrong with that man?

[gillen.livejournal.com]

I tell you, it's enough to make me doubt my disbelief in God.

[fannishnonsense]

That's such a weird article. It's like we're all Puritans or something and have to feel guilty about enjoying ourselves. I guess I just agree with Bertrand Russell that "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." Er, not that we should never do Big Important Things, just that we should be allowed some time for fun too.

Also, I used to love For Better or For Worse when I was a kid. Seeing what it's become is equal parts depressing and fascinating to me. It's kind of like watching a car crash.

[sabotabby]

Oh, I know. And for the most part, they've chosen guilty pleasures that aren't that guilty. I mean, computer programming?

[culpster.livejournal.com]

Re Comics Curmudgeon...I haven't been paying attention for about a quarter of a century, but I'm quite sure that if Lynn J is a "ham fisted Stalinist" then Cathy Guisewite is bell hooks.

[culpster.livejournal.com]

And btw on this evidence I think I would rather share a bed (to sleep I mean, facing the wall) with Christopher Hitchens than with Mr. Roger Scruton, whoever he is. This guy really wants his empire back.

[sabotabby]

Oh, seriously. He needs international intervention to remove the gigantic pole up his arse.

Two things that surprised me:

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

That Stanley Fish is a Sara Evans fan. "Suds in the Bucket" is a great song, one of the few to come out of popular country music in the last twenty years.

That Catherine MacKinnon's response is the most sensible of the lot.

Z. and I were discussing this

[sabotabby]

I am annoyed, as somewhat of a country music snob, that someone considers country a guilty pleasure. Really good country isn't. Shania Twain is. Toby Keith is a hilarious guilty pleasure for a leftist. I get annoyed when people snot at country or hip hop for being low-brow.

Re: Z. and I were discussing this

[culpster.livejournal.com]

Speaking of McKinnon (and IMHO she's as wrong as usual re People magazine), notice how nobody wrote, "my guilty pleasure is PORNOGRAPHY?" Nobody. I smell a rat.

Re: Z. and I were discussing this

[sabotabby]

My guilty pleasure is reading boyband slash on the internet.

Well, it's not, but it'd be a good answer for someone.

Re: Z. and I were discussing this

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

right? Steve Earl= not guilty.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

My guilty pleasures at this point are CSI and CSI fanfic.

[sabotabby]

I can't get over how CSI is filmed. It's unfortunate, because it seems like a good show otherwise.