The Guilt meme

I'm not doing the nifty table version, mostly because I suspect it of harvesting LJ names, but since I'm tagged I'll answer:

My Guilty Pleasures:

Culinary - This one shifts, actually. I have a tendancy to obsess on a food for about a month and move on. (Although if you want my "never turn it down" bad for me, that would be mint-chocolate ice cream.)

Literary - Potboiler regency romances. Especially the Christmas ones they crank out every year. My mother always flips when she sees me reading them, but I consider them just as much a part of Christmas as cookies.

Audiovisual - I'm a fan, so there are plenty of shows on here that only a fan could love - She Wolf of London, Probe, The Librarian, etc. Bollywood. But for pure "that's utter crap and I adore it passionately" I'm going back to Christmas, and a fromage fondue called "Scrooge."

Musical - Bubblegum pop music. Love it, love it, love it. Not only do I have an immense number of CDs with "70s" in the title, I still listen to my Partridge Family albums, still have the Leif Garrett single, and even have a piece of vinyl by "The Kids From C.A.P.E.R."

Celebrity - see comment under Audiovisual. The two Scotts reign supreme here; Wentworth, who I've crossed national borders to see, and Cohen, who seems to have disappeared for a while.

Ain't NASA-sarily So

(I wonder how many people are going to recognize where I got that title.)

For those who haven't seen it hit the NYTimes or their f-list yet, the latest salvo in the Intelligent Design Wedge - the Deutsch memo, in which a young political appointee (his resume is listed as only showing an internship in the Bush election) has started dictating terminology to the NASA wonks. The Big Bang, he insisted, is only a theory and should be listed as such on the websites for students.

The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

Because the last thing NASA should be doing is discussing actual science, don'tchaknow!

I guess that part of the Dover trial where Professor Behe admitted that his standards of "science" would admit astrology back into the classrooms wasn't a misstatement as much as a prediction.

New York State of Mind

I love travel and I love NYC, so I have no idea why I'm finding it so hard to actually make solid decisions as to where I'm going, what I'm doing, and who I'm seeing.

In order to get a decent spot at TKTS, I'd either have to get up at the crack of dark or come in on Friday night; given the two options, I'm leaning heavily on coming up Friday night. As yet I have no place to stay then, but Expedia is offering several reasonably-priced options on the upper-upper West Side. (Although it suddenly occurs to me that if I have to pay for a hotel I'm not saving any more money cosmically speaking than if I just got a full-price ticket to the show and came up at a reasonable time on Saturday.)

The plan, such as it is, is to come up on Friday night, arriving around 9-10ish. So far, the only Saturday plan is to get into the TKTS line at 9am and get a ticket for the Chicago matinee when they open. I'd like to have dinner or lunch with some of y'all, maybe go shopping.

Saturday night I'm heading over to shayheyred's to hear all about England, and then Sunday's plans are even vaguer... there's a combined flea market/craft show/antique mart I'm half interested in looking at., but other than that...

The return of Ikea

That nastygram that I sent to the head of Ikea US Customer Service turns out to have been my second smartest move. (Paying with AmEx being the first.) Tonight I got a call from Central, referencing the letter and explaining how they'd make it right. Basically, I get the second half of the right wardrobe; the box with the wrong parts will be taken away, and I get $50 back.

At this point what I really want is someone named Sven to strip down, oil up, and build the sucker for me, but I'll take this. Especially since it came with a direct phone number to call and her working hours so I don't call when she's not in and get all pissed off again.

What gets me is that even the woman at Central is all "Why didn't Carolyn at College Park just fix it for you?" I said that she'd said she was a franchise and not responsible, and Central insisted "Yeah, but she could have made a direct phone call and not sent you home like that." Damn right, and if this means trouble for Carolyn, I won't lose a wink of sleep over it.

And I'm still buying the closet organizer from Home Depot. Gonna be less than half the price, too.