Okay, I know. Nothing (really) since Thursday. I know. I suck.

See, this weekend snuck past me before I knew what was happening. There were errands, and cleaning (my room is about 62% de-cluttered), and napping, and I saw a movie (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – if you liked the book, you’ll really like the movie; and if you haven’t read the book, you’ll like the movie anyway, and for God’s sake go and read the book). And, yeah. Here we are.

I also got drawn into that time-honored, bad-weather weekend tradition: TV marathons. You know how every cable TV channel shows something – anything – on a loop for twelve hours, and you sit down and think “eh, what the hell, I’ll watch an episode” and suddenly six hours have passed? That’s usually my Saturday. I have the best intentions of productivity, but I’m a connoisseur of television and laziness. I might as well schedule a multi-hour bloc into my BlackBerry calendar with “Crap, I got sucked into (insert TV show here).” The weekend usually ends with me forlornly contemplating the remnants of my mental to-do list.

Here’s the weird thing: the TV marathons in question aren’t shows that I watch otherwise. I don’t watch new episodes of Law and Order: SVU, just the reruns that air – constantly – on cable. I almost forget that show exists in anything other than eight-hour increments.

And as I mentioned on Saturday, I managed to watch four – count ’em – episodes of the true crime reality show Forensic Files. While I wouldn’t put TruTV on my list of must-see television, I somehow watch in bulk, and I always feel like a warped human being for spending several hours invested in real-life murders and their aftermath. And this marathon viewing has consequences: about a year ago, after devoting a full weekend to Forensic Files and The Investigators, there was an unfamiliar man knocking at my apartment door. Working on the logical assumption that he was probably a serial killer, I glanced frantically around my apartment to gauge what could be used as a weapon in the event of an attack (I settled on my Guitar Hero guitar, which I figured I could wield as a club). Apparently, this man was an upstairs neighbor asking if our air conditioner was working (his wasn’t), so the guitar remained in its place. I laid off of the true crime TV for a while after that.

So anyway, that’s what I was doing this weekend in lieu of blogging. Go ahead and judge me. Or, join the shame party and tell me – which TV marathons suck you in during the weekend?

In a comment this week, I got asked to compile a list that included my favorite “guilty pleasure” movies. I’ve also kicked around the idea of posting some of my guilty pleasure TV. We all have those; we just don’t usually admit them unless to close friends, who we hope will say, “Ohmigod, I love that show too!” and then, like the Mighty Ducks, our shame will fly together.

But in the spirit of honesty, here’s a guilty pleasure of my life: I read celebrity gossip online like a hypochondriac scouring WebMD.

Got a few minutes to surf online? I’m checking out Perez Hilton. Ted Casablanca on E! Online? Natch. (If that didn’t make sense, google Ted Casablanca and sample his, um, unique writing style). And the People mag site, even though it has – to put this delicately – devolved? I check it eight times a day. A celebrity blind item? Ooh, that’ll keep me fascinated for days.

I’d like to be clear: I wish I didn’t read this crap. I should probably be studying up on the health care bill or the progress in Haiti or something that enriches my understanding of the actual world around me, and not just the celebrity stratosphere. I feel the proper amount of guilt; I was raised Catholic, after all, so shame is not in short supply. I try to soothe myself by saying that my curiosity is both a byproduct of my obsession with movies and television – it follows that I’d be fascinated by the lives of those in them – and also simply human nature, that slow-down-and-stare-at-a-car-wreck mentality that seems so imbued in, well, everyone.

But I reached a crossroads this week. I was checking out the Entertainment Weekly site – which has a lovely mix of gossip, commentary and news – and saw that they had a link to the top couple headlines of Popeater, a gossip site that I don’t visit regularly but will if I see a salacious headline, of course. Popeater’s top two headlines were: “Sandra Bullock & Jesse James Split Rumors” and “Kate Winslet’s Divorce: Do We Really Need to Know?”

Now, the first thing that happened was that my irony alarm started blaring at full decibel. I immediately wrote the headlines down and thought, I have to blog about that. That’s hilarious.

But when the irony wore off – which took a while, frankly – I was left with the thought that, No, I don’t really need to know about either one. These people are having their lives made bare for the world – and why one actress gets the benefit of “do we really need to know” while the other doesn’t is curious in and of itself – and it’s really not my business. I know it’s not. I wish I didn’t care. But if there’s a headline about it, well…I’m clicking on it. Of course I am.

But for a week, I’ll try not to. I’m going to skip the gossip this week, and remove the temptation. No Perez. No Casablanca. No People or Popeater. When I check out the Entertainment Weekly site, no gossipy items, only recaps and TV/film news. Just the facts, ma’am. Let’s see if I miss it more or less than I think I will, and if I can reprogram my fingers not to automatically type “perezhilton.com” when a browser opens. I probably won’t make it a week, to be brutally honest. If a big scandal breaks, I probably will too. But a week from today, I’ll let you know how I did. Shame and all.