Here's a little thing to make you feel ancienter and terribler than you already do: On Monday, the most watched show of all the shows was iCarly. Yes, Nickelodeon's techno-feminist revision of I, Claudius is very, very popular.

That is what it's about, right? Clearly we should know, because from 8pm to 8:30pm on Monday night, 11.2 million people watched the episode "iSaved Your Life" (every episode begins with an "i"). That's more than anything else on the air — cable or broadcast. (More than 24! Whatever happened to patriotism?) Two things about that. 1. There are 11 million tweenagers/pedophiles in this country? 2. "Freddie prevents Carly from getting hit by a taco truck, only to be injured himself in the process." That is the episode description. It is basically the plot of White Christmas except with slightly less Danny Kaye. Slightly. So why was that particular episode so popular? What the hell is going on? What's an iCarly? Where are we?