I watched I think 2 episodes of "Landscape Smart" I think was the name of the show. The designers they had on those episodes were definitely on some sort of hallucinatory agent; they were doing ridiculous, hideous things to people's yards.

I did keep watching "Landscape Challenge" - they have 3 teams, and usually one of them is high on something but they usually don't get picked to do the final design.

I thought the real weirdos were sticking to clothing design (there are some freaky things on Project Runway from time to time) but it looks like there are also some with shovels in their hands. And, amazingly enough, they get people to pay them to wreck their yards.

I'm getting addicted to HGTV. After all, I am building a house!

Often, the final result (be it carpentry, color, interior design, landscaping, whatever) is something I can recognize as coordinated, chic and not my style. But, almost invariably, I will get one little nugget of information that makes me glad I watched. Sometimes it's a product from the commercials. Sometimes it's a technique I never thought of. Sometimes, it's not any one thing. For example: while I don't always like (sometimes hate) the paint colors on walls, the more I see of it, the more comfortable I am with the thought of color on walls at all. I've lived my entire life with Antique White walls. I'm actually going to paint two accent walls, one in the master bath and one in the kitchen, in the new house. For me, this is a huge step.

So, yeah, I'm addicted to HGTV.

This entry is a little old, but it was an interesting coincidence: The other night Carol was watching the Clean House show on cable, and the woman had painted the entire living room bright red. Then when the cleanup/redesign team went through it, they said, "These red walls are really overpowering," and redid them in a soft beige.

What Slashdot would tag as "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense."