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snagged and tagged
11/19/2007 = 03:33 AM

I got tagged by Franci with the seven random facts meme, which means Franci hasn't been reading me much, because she would know that I don't take kindly to being forced into a meme, and also that I've done the seven random facts meme so many times that there really aren't any left.

I admit, I haven't been reading Franci much, either, but in my defense, I never know when she's updated, because for as many times as I point out that her code is broken and her RSS feeds do not work, they still do not so much work as completely fail to work in any way, shape, or form.

So screw the seven random facts — I'm doing Six Guilty Pleasures You Wouldn't Ordinarily Suspect Me of Having instead, but I'll do seven, to fulfill my requirements. I'll also de-meme it to protect you (no thanks is necessary, donations are nice but not required); and if Franci tagged you and you read this all the way through, you're immune.

I watch the Disney Channel. This started when I decided to find out why my pretend internet gay boyfriends seemed to be so enamored of High School Musical and High School Musical 2, and escalated into an embarrasing fondness for Hannah Montana, Ashley Tisdale when she's being Maddie and not Sharpay, and The Emperor's New School, which occasionally features the voice of one of my favorite people ever, Patti Deutsch, as the Lunch Lady. I am also amused by the dopeyness of London Tipton on The Suite Life, and more amused by the knowledge that either Paris Hilton is too dopey to realize she's being parodied or (I fervently hope) is in the process of suing Disney for defamation of character. A girl can dream, can't she?

I read The Cat Who ... mysteries by Lilian Jackson Braun. When I say "read," I don't mean the word that rhymes with "red" and refers to the past tense. I mean the word that rhymes with "reed" and means not only did I used to wait with bated breath for the new one (I stopped when I realized how many dei ex machinis the author employed, which eventually led to a predictability over who the next victim would be and which character would be the murderer), I do go back to the beginning of the series, particularly when it's cold and snowy outside, and reread them. No matter how annoying her people-characters are, Koko the Siamese cat is the cat I have always dreamed of being owned by.

I eat Spaghetti-Os. Not Chef Boyardee, which is, to my palate, trying too hard to be legitimate cuisine (and failing), but Franco-American products only, which are unapologetically squishy, inexplicably orange, and unimaginably salty ... and, for some reason, I find them absolutely delicious. Furthermore, they are the only food with which I willingly and actively consume that otherwise repugnant-to-me food favorite, Wonder Bread, to sop up the ambrosial orange residue at the bottom of the bowl.

I have seen the film Titanic so many times I can quote much of it. I am disgusted by its combination of gloppy sentimentality and faulty history and forensics (the whole plot would have fallen apart if Cameron were to have applied actual facts to it), overpowered by the incessant, supposedly haunting woodwinds wailing to the tune of Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On Until You Want to Shove Me Face-First Into a Vat of Scrambled Eggs and Say Will You For Gourd's Sake Eat Something You Skinny Bat. But I am simultaneously moved by the power of the few bits of historically accurate recounting, and the poignancy of vignettes such as the Irish mother telling her children the bedtime story of Tir-na-Nog and Mr. and Mrs. Strauss clinging to each other in what they know to be their final hour of life. I manage to keep my brain from throttling itself in an attempt to put an end to this dichotomy, by counting instances of foreshadowing ("God Himself could not sink this ship") and the number of times someone tells Rose Dewitt-Bukater what to do (one hundred and seventy-three).

I don't think Facebook is a waste of time. I pretend to believe this, because it is somehow cooler not to want to be sheep and play with all the mindless apps and write on people's walls and things, and I admit to being angry when I notice that certain of my friends have time to fritter away at Facebook when they could be doing things like taking notice of the fact that they haven't contacted me in months. But I am just as apt to sit in there for fifteen minutes myself, having forgotten that I have a Real Life, in order to take the Before They Were Stars quiz and see if I can beat Monty's score. (We tied.)

This is my best one. As of one month ago, I had, to the best of my knowledge, two first cousins who lived on the west coast and whom I don't see unless someone marries or dies, and now I have an additional first cousin who lives within about forty-five minutes' drive from here and is spookily in synch with most of my thought processes. We are tighter after one month's contact than I ever was with members of my family whom I've known my whole life. (Ooh, know what'd be cool? Say hi to Juma [not her name, but a convenient alias] in my comments, and welcome her to mine and the Mom's family.) The guilty pleasure comes into play when I realize how much my heart leaps when I open my email and see an unread message from her. I laugh with her, I get weepy with her, I revel in our likenesses and am astonished by our few differences (she has no interest in Harry Potter or Monty Python; what's up with that?), but mostly, I rejoice in her.

Well, that got sappy in a New York minute, didn't it?

The reason I didn't put that one last is so that the seventh could bring you back to reality. Just so you know you're still dealing with me and not some glurgy email that you must send to fifteen of your closest friends or monsters will invade your closet and eat your expensive shoes.

I love that new Alltel commercial with the stop-motion styling of the old Rankin/Bass Christmas specials. It's going to wear off before we even get to Thanksgiving, I imagine, but for right now, it's rocking my world to the point where I'm tempted to sign up for Alltel based on how much the dorky "other carriers" remind me of Hermey the Misfit Elf.

Tags: guilty pleasures

drinking: coffee
listening to: NRBQ, Ridin' In My Car
livin' at: the intersection of nerd avenue and route geek