DIY

One thing I have been doing lately is watching the DIY Network.  Enough, at at any rate, to have formed some opinions about the shows.

There are shows I like.

Holmes on Homes appeals to me.  I like the way his outrage overflows when he sees some particularly egregious example of bad workmanship, and the way he sighs, throws up his hands, and says "Tear it all out.  Gut it."

Renovation Realities is also a hit with me.  Sometimes I think I'm better than the amateur renovators on the show and sometimes I think I'm worse, but I'm always pleased to see that I'm not the only person who ever missed the stud with a drywall screw.

Rehab Addict isn't bad.  I don't learn much from the show, or find it very motivational, and I just never caught the "flipping" wave.  But the woman earns my respect, and the little dog is cute.

And there are shows that I'm not a fan of.

Most of the ____ Crashers shows don't work for me.  I usually don't care much for what they come up with, and if someone stuck a bunch of red-painted electrical boxes to my wall, they'd be in for a knuckle sandwich.  And there's a desperate sameness to them, as though all of human history is driving us all toward owning exactly the same kind of cabinets.  But it's often the hosts that turn me off.  The trendy guy who constantly says Sa-weeeeet!  The woman whose schtick seems to mostly amount to look at my tits!  The overly effusive guy who bellows and blows the car horn and generally makes a nuisance of himself, to say nothing of the way he seems to hang all over the women in the show in a less than entirely decent way.

Mega Dens is pretty bad.  The woman's bizarre hand gestures annoy me, and she seems positively co-dependent, as though wrenching fake acclaim from the homeowners because she gave them a big-assed TV is the cornerstone of her emotional life.  There's an ad for the show where she says "We are going to hook this place up!"  I swear it sounds like she's really saying "We are going to fuck this place up!"  And the second is closer to the truth.  There's another ad where she says "It's like we literally changed their lives!"  Well, dearie, so does botulism, but that doesn't mean I want it.

But the worst, the very worst, is Man Caves.  I don't like the expression "man cave" to start with.  But when I look at the man caves they produce, my uneasiness turns to nausea.  A bar?  Sports junk?  A huge-screen TV?  Is that what a man cave is, a place where we sit around, drink beer, and watch the big game on TV?  How about a workbench and a lathe?  How about an airbrush booth?  How about bookshelves and a nice reading chair?  No?  Then I don't need a big TV, or a video game console, or sports junk, or a bar, or someone who unselfconsciously adopts the nickname "Goose" making such decisions for me. 

It Happens

Sometimes it happens - sometimes I just run out of things to say, even to myself, and my own "inner discourse" (to the extent that I even have one) strikes me as singularly uninteresting.

It isn't as though I'm undergoing a crisis of any kind.  My cancer is still dead, and the fact that I whimper about being overworked is evidence that I am working.  Nor have I slid into the icky, slightly moist mess of a midlife crisis.  Last time I checked, I had not begun getting tattoos, and I'm still driving the same green Hyundai, and I haven't begun consorting with women thirty years my junior.

But I DID wake up this morning and think "Maybe I've been away long enough; maybe I can write on my blog today without boring myself."  So I'm trying it on for size.

But here are a few things, up front.

I don't intend to write about politics, because really, I am so over this election thing.  I'm tired of being "mobilized" by my own side - hey, I already voted, so leave me alone!  And I'm tired of being "challenged" by the other side - hey, I already voted, so leave me alone!  And it frustrates me that presidential elections now seem to be the largest single sector of the American economy.  We spend how much on elections?  Holy shit!  We could have build the Superconducting Supercollider for that sort of money - and maybe we should have!

I don't intend to write about sports, because my lack of interest in sports has grown even more lacking.  I tried to watch an NFL football game a few weeks ago, but just hearing the music made me think of Juvenal's famous "bread and circuses" line.  And I hear enough sports blather from the guys at work as it is, thank you very much.

We'll see how it goes.