It started, innocently enough, with Hometime on PBS. A little framing, plumbing, or wiring (CAT-5… gaaahrgh) never hurt anybody. Then I started watching This Old House, even though Bob Vila makes me itch, when the 10-a-week syndicated reruns of Hometime on TLC weren’t enough. Then I came to Joanne Liebeler’s post-Hometime effort, despite its inane and repetitive instructions on how to do simple things like wire a light switch. If I surf through and see a wall being ripped open or cable being dropped, you have me. I will put the remote down. And eventually, I gave up all pretense of just “catching” these shows, because “nothing else is on.” On the other side of that mental leap, there lies HGTV. I am transfixed by Before & After, Lofty Ideas, Fantasy Open House, Extreme Homes—which is basically the home-show heroin. I’ve watched more HGTV in the last week than I normally watch television, total. I leave it on all the time now. If you snuck into my house while I slept and turned on my TV, you would find it’s tuned not to CNN, not to NBC, not to UPN, not to FX. (You’d also find a world of hurt, but that’s beside the point.) And now, just as I’m on the cusp of total addiction, comes a sign that not only am I not alone, I’m also far from the worst off among the pantheon of home-improvement addicts: the Hometime drinking game.

Five Latest Representative Songs
It’s been quite some time since the last update, so here are some highlights:

» Hedwig and the Angry Inch - The Origin of LoveAlong with a slew of the rest of the songs from the soundtrack.
» Diana Ross & The Supremes - Some Day We’ll Be TogetherOh yes. Oh yes.
» Toni Braxton - You’re Making Me HighAlong with half her back catalogue.
» Garbage - Androgyny“When everything is going wrong / And you can’t see the point in going on / Well nothing in life is set in stone / There’s nothing that can’t be turned around”
» Nicole Kidman - Sparkling Diamonds“Men grow cold as girls grow old / And we all lose our charms in the end / But square cut or pear shape these rocks don’t lose their shape / ‘Cuz diamonds are a girl’s best friend” Along with the rest of the soundtrack.

Horizontal scrolling is evil. Particularly when unintended. That is all.