THE 'FREE PILE': The amount of free crap that marketing departments send to newspapers is truly amazing. (James Lileks did a riff on this the other day. Go check it out.) Over the past two years, I've probably added 30 decent CDs and 10-20 books to my collection just from perusing the "free pile" over in the corner of the newsroom. (Best CD find in the past 12 months: Jon Mayer's "Room For Squares." I got it last August, and it's finally getting a lot of positive radio play.) But I just scored my greatest piece of "swag" yet: a bobbing-head George Washington doll, courtesy of The History Channel. It's a promotional item for the upcoming "Founding Brothers" series. This is going in the rear window of the Corolla tonight, much to the horror of the Amazing Techie Girlfriend.