I know I should be going to bed (since I’ve declared to anyone who will even pretend to be listening to me that I *must* go to bed early and deal with *everything I’ve neglected* tomorrow), but I’m finishing glass 2 of wine and I’m just not quite bed-ready yet. So I was bopping around the blogverse and noticed that Eating an Elephant has a post about guilty pleasures, coming out of an earlier post by Dean Dad about guilty pleasures and their opposites.

Now. The thing is, I am Guilty Pleasure Girl. So I am all over this topic, and while I feel bad for hijacking both Histgrad and Dean Dad’s posts, I have way too many of these to go in comments. And it seems like exactly what I need to meditate on before taking my anxieties and my sleeping-partner cat to bed. Plus, I mean, I’m knee-deep in one of my favorite guilty pleasures (Carlo Rossi Burgundy), so, you know, it’s meant to be.

And there was some discussion over at the Community College Dean’s about the term for the opposite of guilty pleasure…and I’m kind of partial to Adjunct Kate‘s “pleasure guilt,” though I’m not sure it quite captures exactly the opposite….so all right. Enough ado. Here they be:

“Stuff I’m supposed to like, but don’t”: Most of the work in my specific sub-field; everything about my field’s annual conference except the drinking; Marge Piercy novels (I get her in principle, but she’s really a terrible writer); long pompous intellectual discussions about my field; jazz; babies (I try. Goddess knows I try. But babies bore the hell out of me.); the vast majority of the people I’m writing about for my dissertation (and *that’s* why it’s an anonymous blog); scotch (I’d feel cooler if I did, but I don’t); cigars (ditto, plus I wish I could use them as a cigarette alternative); long noodly instrumental jams (despite my deep and abiding love for the Dead, I hate all the Dead-like jam bands).

“Stuff I like, but I’m not supposed to”: Meatloaf’s “Bat Out of Hell”; lots and lots of 80s music; pepperoni; Rossi Burgundy in the giant jug; “Sex and the City” (which I recently confessed to Buttercup, but I’m so embarrassed to be watching it that I actually feel *dirty* when I do); hair accessories; Jane magazine; Hamburger Helper-type foods (well, with fake meat); polyester pants; those Little Debbie plastic-wrapped brownies with the nut pieces; pizza from bad chain restaurants; all the Whedon-verse shows (though I’m in the process of not feeling guilty for this, I still feel like I spend a lot of time explaining it); action figures (just Buffy, Angel, and Firefly/Serenity ones. For now. Oh, and Tim Burton stuff. But that’s it.); Kitten War; Johnny Depp; new agey-hippy shit like Tarot and astrology and Ouija boards and feng shui; fan fiction.

Wow. That was really cathartic. I’m ready for bed.