Freedom, freedom, freedom, oi! I'm a real employee now, which means that my workload has just tripled. Now instead of making as much in a month as a part-time mentally-disabled sweeper of floors, I'm making as much as a struggling part-time comedian.

One hundred years of debt repayment begins today.

Otherwise, lately I've been reading my way through The Dark Tower series and playing through Zelda on the SNES. Well, who cares what you think?

I know quite a few people for whom it seems like God, in their mind, isn't so much looking down and judging our sins as he is judging our apparent geekiness. The God of Hipsters, if you will. Looking back, I may regret being too straight-laced or awkward or paranoid or cowardly, but I've never regretted being geeky.

And so it also gives me great pleasure to admit that I love "The Wire." The first season, at least, which I just (yarrrg) downloaded last week. I'm constantly on the lookout for a good procedural drama. Preferably without sanctimonious lawyers.

(I mean, if, in the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two "separate but equal" groups, then why is the lawyer half of Law and Order almost always longer?)

There's a lot of good television out there, it's just really, really hard to find. The "vast wasteland" allusions of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip notwithstanding, I really do think that we're in a new golden age, especially for people much less picky than I am.

Lost has upped the ante for network dramas, comedies are trying a lot of interesting stuff (e.g. My Name is Earl's classic rock soundtrack and reliance on bit players), and even reality shows, by shifting their focus to talent and real-world achievement, seem to have improved.

The problem is that there are hundreds of shows to sift through; there's still a market for crap, because not everyone has perfect taste like me. If you want to take the medium seriously, you have to do the work. The same goes for... prettymuch every other medium. Ah, generalities.

T.v. junkie though I am, I don't know what's good this season yet; it's so easy to get wrapped in a show that stumbles a few episodes in and never recovers. It goes without saying that The Simpsons season is the worst ever, stay away.