Was visiting my brother, and at one point he said something ... I'm paraphrasing, don't remember the exact quote ... but something like "you've become one of those cable teevee snobs."

Most of my friends know that we went without cable for many, many years. And when we got cable Internet, I started "borrowing" basic cable with a splitter, but only to the teevee in the computer room. And then my wife bought our supercool Loewe teevee, and we hooked the basic cable up to that. But it wasn't until last March that I finally got "real" cable into the house, when the Internet people said we could get a discount on our service if we added cable teevee, but our Internet would go up in price if we didn't get the teevee. And when that happened, I opted for digital cable with HBO, and four months later we got HDTV and added Showtime since they had an HD channel, and now here I am, watching HBO and Showtime and INHD, not to mention Fox Sports World and Trio and IFC.

And so I guess my brother was right.

But what am I supposed to do when the best shows on television are almost all on premium cable? I understand and sympathize with people who have basic or no cable teevee ... I've spent most of my life in that position. But when I start to talk about great teevee, there's not much I can do about the part where The Wire and The Sopranos and Curb Your Enthusiasm and Six Feet Under and Oz and Sex and the City are all on HBO, Queer As Folk and Dead Like Me and Penn and Teller: Bullshit and Soul Food and The L Word are on Showtime, The Office is on BBC America, Jon Stewart's on Comedy Central, Trio lives up to its motto ("pop. culture. tv."), Fox Sports World shows soccer day and night, MLS offers a pay-per-view package that allows me to watch virtually every match for the entire season for less than one PPV boxing match would cost, the Giants and Warriors have most of their games on cable ... and against that, I have at the moment a grand total of three broadcast shows I watch regularly, one each on Fox, ABC, and CBS, with my favorite show of perhaps ever, Buffy, no longer running new episodes, and my fave new series of the season, Karen Sisco, cancelled by ABC.