I don’t know about you, but I give this ridiculously misguided experiment three weeks.

Three weeks until – at best – Arrington comes to his senses and realises that there’s a reason why I’ve been fired from every job I’ve had, most recently as a columnist for the Guardian. Three weeks until – at worst – I say something so insanely actionable about a deep-pocketed venture capitalist that TechCrunch finds itself sued out of existence.

But in the meantime, here I am, and it’s traditional in the opening episode of a new column for the writer to introduce himself and to generally sketch out his plans for the column. So here we go…

Hello TechCrunch readers, my name is Paul Carr and I’ll be your Saturday columnist for the next three weeks. Shortly after I was booted from the Guardian, Arrington called me and asked what it would take to bring me and my weekly column to TechCrunch. I immediately gave him a list of four things…

- Hookers
- A case of good rum
- Editorial independence
- A desk

The Editorial independence thing was particularly important to me. TechCrunch is a publication that never shies away from a good story, which sometimes means it makes embarrassing or amusing mistakes. I called out these mistakes with glee when I was at the Guardian, and I see no reason why I should stop now. Or to put it another way, the next time Erick asks the question “Did Last.fm just hand over listening data to the RIAA?” I need to be able to say “no, you idiot” without fear of reprisals. (Hello Erick. Love you, man)…

Read on at TechCrunch…