This is my first open thread and I’m hoping that it generates a little interest. What guilty pleasure do you have? Is there an activity you spend time or money pursuing that sometimes surprises even you? I think by most people’s definition I would qualify as dull. I play chess, read far too much and I am generally a very quiet person. However, I do have interests that I don’t normally share with others.
I will admit to being far too interested in the paranormal. Right now I subscribe to only 2 magazines: Mother Jones, and Fortean Times. Fortean Times is just about the most interesting magazine published.
My wife often says: You’re the smartest guy I know, and I can’t believe you like reading about Bigfoot and UFOs. Hey, it’s bubble gum for the brain, right? Right?? So, what are your guilty pleasures?
Comments
I'm completely embarrassed to admit
that I have a secret, shameful addiction to TLC's Friday night reality show "Say Yes to the Dress". All of that drama! All of those bridezillas and momzillas with terrible taste in bridal fashion! It's like crack.
It's like crack..........great description
we want to stop, we know we should stop..........but God help us, we CAN'T stop........
guilty pleasures?
I have far too little guilt about them, but here goes...yes, I love the paranormal, I will also watch damn near any stupid competition up to The World's Strongest Man, just as long as it's shown in a bloc--I can't be bothered to show up weekly.
I've also been known to blow money on art supplies and books.
My son-in-law once said
"If they keep score, I'll watch it."
hey sartoris! great open thread!
my guilty pleasures. hmmm.... i'm not really guilty about anything, but i'd have to say some of the USA dramas, and i read a lot of detective/murder mystery novels. i read a lot of stuff - fiction and non, but i really enjoy my mysteries, lol...
and i play a couple of the facebook games... that would definitely qualify as a guilty pleasure, lol...
oh yeah - the ID channel - the one with all the true crime shows - that is def a guilty pleasure....
yes!
I almost forgot about the hidden object game I play...yeah, not that guilty feeling about that either, great little stress buster. Not as much fun as poker used to be, but the poker tables are full of shnooks now.
hidden object?
not following........what do you mean?
they give you a picture and a list of objects--
and hidden in that picture are all of those things--like in highlights for children only for adults. The one I play follows a loose story line so it's a series of loosely interconnected scenes but really it's just seeing how fast you can ferret out the hidden objects.
oh, I thought you were doing that old shopping cart gag
dropping items in people's carts when they are not looking........hidden object.....now I understand
well, perhaps I have another to admit..........Court TV shows
I love all the Court TV shows. Judge Judy should be president. Of course everyone has heard the term ambulance chaser to describe low life lawyers, right? Well, I have always thought of the court tv shows as trailer park lawyers. It's like a really, really, really bad lawyer went door to door in the trailer park offering a one time only deal of 50 bucks for representation.........I love 'em!
Oh, my!
Cleetus is semi-addicted to tru-teevee. He hides in our room and watches all those shows!
I'm trying to arrange a visit to a live taping of Judge Mathis
Judge Mathis is taped in Chicago and I sooooo want to see a live show. Ugh. If I don't get help at Charter I hope I get it somewhere...........
I'm trying to comment here, but every time I write it out,
I delete it, nope, can't say that, can't say that, won't say that.
I shall remain a mystery ;)
But this is a great topic, though. Thank you.
come on!
spill!
Uh oh. Tactical error.
Now you're going to have to fess up to them ALL. Come on, now. The first one's the hardest. Start with the most embarrassing and work from there.
aw, c'mon....it's the internet...what could possibly go wrong???
well, I understand your reluctance.........I should get going myself, have a hot lead on a Bigfoot sighting less than 3 hours away........er, I mean, I have chores to do, important, manly chores.........yeah, that's what I meant.
aw, c'mon....it's the internet...what could possibly go wrong???
well, I understand your reluctance.........I should get going myself, have a hot lead on a Bigfoot sighting less than 3 hours away........er, I mean, I have chores to do, important, manly chores.........yeah, that's what I meant.
You can say that again ;)
(But don't delete it, might lose part of the thread)
Mitch Hedberg says
The reason there have been no clear photos of Big Foot is that Big Foot is blurry.
Um, Days of Our Lives
I don't seek it out, really I don't. Really. But when I'm doing something in the room while my wife is watching it, I get a huge kick out of it. There are a couple of characters that crack me up just opening their mouths. And what could be better than an argument between lovers in which a character says something like, "Well, YOU switched my baby at the hospital and tried to drive my mother insane!" My laughing and wise ass remarks used to annoy my wife, but now she gets in the spirit of it. Unfortunately, like most of America, recent years have seen Days of Our Lives turn increasingly to plots which involve general fear of larger forces. Still, Jack Black is just about the funniest character on television today, completely unintentional.
On my own little soap opera, I've been cleaning blown-in insulation from between rafters--its a nasty hard job. I'm trying to ignore all the plastic I'm probably inhaling. Right now I'm procrastinating starting up, but I have to have it all cleaned out and ready to go for a brief window of clear weather we will have tomorrow. Last night at 11:00 I was vacuuming the particles that had migrated out of the plastic cocoon we set up to work in. What a mess--it's all been soaking wet, probably for years. There are passages through it like an ant farm where ants lived for a while. Tomorrow we find out just how far down we'll have to tear it before building back up and getting the roof on, at least, before winter. I'm so sore I can hardly walk it's been so long since I've done this kind of physical labor. Believe it or not, I'm sort of enjoying that part. The tension and worry about actually having to replace posts and beams, not so much. I'll know a lot more by tomorrow night.
you better we wearing a face mask
be careful around that stuff, it's nasty. hope you don't have to replace anything. be careful, Geomoo.
Thanks, Sartoris
Mostly, I'm having to choose between the face mask and the goggles, because when I wear both at once, the goggles fog. During the cutting, though, I wear both, which means I can't breath and I can see less and less by the second. There is a short limit how long I can bear that. Mostly, I'm wearing the glasses, I'm afraid. Luckily, I'm old enough that old age might get me before cancer has time to develop. Yep, that's me--I always look on the bright side.
Now stop distracting me and let me get to work. I have to go now, so stop posting these open threads and replies. I'll be waiting to see if you have anything to say to that. I need to go NOW! In one more minute.
yes, it is a pain in the ass, but do it.
I worked in a factory years ago where there was something in the insulation of the one material we worked with. We should have all had masks on when we worked with it, but we never did, long story short, two women on my block, my 22 year old friend, a regular card player at my folks table and too many more to mention...dead from cancer within a couple of years. Now--that could just be sitting in my lungs, waiting to bloom. Wear the damn mask.
I was thinking the same thing, but actually
thinking a respirator. Will a mask be enough?
A respirator probably would have been good
But it mostly isn't like airborne dust, and the fact that it is mostly wet is an advantage that way. I'm being careful about it, with a couple of foolish exceptions when I was so tired I wasn't thinking that well. Thanks for the concern. Now I am really going to get back at it.
I hope I have time to watch my football game tonight. I almost listed sports as my guilty pleasure. It's full of conservative egoists who think god is watching their every move (my wife says, "He should point at his legs instead of the sky."), people are injured badly, it is completely co-opted and aggressively associated with militarism and sexism, it glorifies many negative masculine traits such as violence and machismo, it creates false community and substitutes healthy collective exuberance for a false kind that is then unconsciously associated with the negative values mentioned above, and yet I watch a lot of it. That is indeed a guilty pleasure.
Geomoo, I've never football explained quite that way
before, but you are correct.
I'll live to be a hundred
Thanks to you two and triv nagging me. I wore the mask the whole time. I worked until 2:15 am, and early start tomorrow. It's the one sure day without rain in the middle of rain. Sometimes nagging can be okay.
You must be exhausted.
I hope you're done in no time.
Thanks for wearing the mask ;)
Okay, thought of something I could write.
Older movies I like, I watch over and over again whenever they're on, especially including the dumber ones like all The Die Hards. I used to repeatedly watch all the Lethal Weapons, too, until I learned more about Gibson, so now when I watch them, it makes me ill, so I've stopped those.
My Cousin Vinny and Trading Places are two more that I can think of right now. Probably have watched them more than twenty times.
And the other weird thing is I won't watch them on Netflix, or pop in the DVDs I own, it's only when they come on TV and I'm in the room that I sit down and watch them.
Demolition Man...
I can't help myself, watch it every damn time I see it~
Army of Darkness... and Evil Dead II...
and West Wing. over and over again... love the Die Hards, always watch 'em when they're on... and Independence Day... i do admit to watching movies and shows i love over and over again... :D
Yes, yes, Independence Day. Forgot that.
And Armageddon with Bruce Willis.
The Evil Dead is much less interesting than the Raimi Brothers
The Raimi brothers are great. Sam and Ivan started with the Evil Dead and ended up making Darkman, Spider Man and even movies as mainstream as The Quick and the Dead with Gene Hackman, and Kevin Costner's woefully terrible baseball flop, For the Love of the Game. Ivan Raimi is now a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine. He still works with his brother though. They all grew up with Bruce Campbell and that's why they love working together. They've been friends since they were teens. There is an excellent interview with Sam Raimi on Youtube about how him, his brother and Bruce were able to secure financing for The Evil Dead. It's pretty funny stuff. I don't particularly like The Evil Dead but I think Army of Darkness is great and I absolutely loved Darkman. The Raimi Brothers are just great. They remind me of the Farrelly Brothers, just brothers who love each other and get to do what they love with people they love.
Hoarders.
It's the guilty pleasure of a mother with a toddler. No matter how bad my house gets, I can flip that on and revel in my relative cleanliness.
hello!
I have indulged in the Hoarders...it does make me feel a bit better, yes~
Hoarders and The Biggest Loser are feel good shows
Hoarders makes me think my house is clean and The Biggest Loser makes me feel skinny...........wait, can I say that?
you can say what you please...
but I do not watch the Biggest Loser or Celebrity Fit Club or anything like it. I'm a fat-assed woman and that's just the way it is, no matter how much fatter those folks are--that don't make me thin, I'm still a fat-assed woman and I'm okay with that~
Sometimes I read Politico.
Please don't judge.
^^^^^^ el oh el
`
Ooh, ooh, my soccer anime, Knight in the Area.
Now, the anime I follow is not, in general, a guilty pleasure. I like following a story longer than a movie, but also a story that you can watch through in two or three sittings or follow weekly and get finished in three months or half a year. And while a lot of anime is dreck, my approach to the dreck is I don't watch it.
But I got started watching this horribly melodramatic, horribly animated soccer anime, ... the young striker's older brother is a star in the Japanese Youth team, but there i s horrible accident, the older brother is killed, but his transplanted heart saves the younger brother's life, and ... well, it gets weird in an extremely hokey way. And even though sometimes I fell behind ... its come to a premature conclusion after three (three month) seasons and I watched it all the way through the end.
So last season its been like "I'm following Polar Bear Cafe, Space Brothers, Utakoi, Humanity has Declined {mumble} and Knight in the Area {/mumble}.