First of all, congratulations to Eric and Wednesday!

Second thing: You can help them with their expenses for the upcoming wedding by checking out their eBay auctions.

Kassia Krozser over at Booksquare posted a piece called “The eBook Problem and the eBook Solution,” which we read with a great deal of interest. Because, for various reasons, we’ve been quite interested in the whole eBook issue. In that post, Krozser says, “I am intrigued by the fact that the discussion about ebook standards and devices is taking place without the input of the key constituency: readers. Anyone ever ask them what they want?”

We’ve never been asked what we want; this hasn’t stopped us from talking about it. But, it occurs to us that our position has been outlined in rather a piecemeal sort of way — usually in posts that have very little to do with eBooks as a whole. So, we figure, in case anyone asks, we’re going to reiterate some of our opinions on the subject. If we seem to be repeating ourselves (or restating several points that other people have made), we apologize. But here we are, anyway.

We were going to write some bloody huge thing, but we’ve managed to restrain ourselves. There are two things that need to come together in order for ebooks to truly be great.

Hardware: What would the best ebook reader look like? Here’s what we’d like to see.
- ePaper/eInk
- trade paperback sized, or smaller
- displays almost any digital format (txt, rtf, pdf, whatever)
- connects to a PC with a standard USB cable, shows up as a hard drive, lets you drag and drop files into it
- expandable storage (SD cards, etc.)
- costs $149 or less

Software: This is the important bit. Because good software can make up for bad hardware.
- digital books come free (or discounted) when you purchase a hard-copy
- cheaper than the hard-copy if bought separately
- published in a standard format (txt, rtf, pdf, doc, whatever)
- no DRM
- NO DRM!
- discounts on hard-copies, if you’ve already got the digital version (and you love it so much you decide you want the fancy, leather-bound edition to sit on your bookshelf)
- device independence: You want to read it on your PC, laptop, cell phone, ebook reader, or pda? You should be able to do exactly that.

These requirements are not — we repeat, not — the only way that ebooks could succeed. They are the future, they’re going to happen, and they will eventually constitute a large portion of the total number of books sold. Nobody has to take our points seriously, it’s going to happen either way.

All we’re suggesting is how ebooks could be wonderful. Very, very, wonderful.

Would you like a drink? Me too. All right, then — where shall we go? Ah, well that’s the problem, isn’t it.

Drinking, unlike a lot of other pastimes, has always been a democratic sort of thing. Because human beings have three basic drives: to eat, to have sex, and to get completely fucking wasted. (Wooooooo!) The algebra of human nature allows for conversion from one impulse to another (note the orgasmic expressions that emanate from the dedicated gourmet and wino — excuse me, I meant to say “wine aficionado”). A person can even sublimate his or her desires into some pretty interesting off-shoots; consider the stereotype of the sexless comic book fan, which is less true now than ever, but nevertheless has roots in a very real condition.

As for drinking; it’s historical, you know. Some of the oldest written records that we have are beer recipes, for example. Booze is an important part of our traditional culture. In America, it’s possible to tell what holiday it is simply by paying attention to what and how you’re drinking. If you’re sloppy drunk on champagne, whilst kissing the snot out of someone else who is also sloppy drunk on champagne, then it’s probably New Year’s. Slumping into a sofa, practically comatose from a combination of boxed wine and l-tryptophan? That’s Thanksgiving, now isn’t it? If you’re slightly buzzed, and coated in a thick layer of smelly beer-sweat, it’s definitely one of the great Summer holidays; if you see lights in the sky, it’s either Independence Day, or you’ve had one too many, pardner. Secret drinking in the basement to avoid having to deal with Uncle Henry, who always wants you to sit in his lap, even though you’re in graduate school? Must be Christmas.

And everyone can drink. Sure, there’s some sort of rule about how anyone under the age of 21 is prohibited from buying alcohol, but that’s a bit silly, isn’t it? All the kids who are likely enough to seek the touch of demon rum have a plethora of boozy parents with liquor cabinets to steal from. Even babies can get loaded with a little assistance from their elders.

The problem is that, though everyone can drink, not everybody drinks in the same way, or for the same reasons. Take me, for example. I like a drink, sure I do. But whenever I’m invited out, or even when I bring up the prospect of heading out for a quick one, everybody wants to go to the same place — a place that I simply am not cut out to deal with: the restaurant bar.

Which restaurant bar? Pick any: Applebee’s, BJ’s, TGI Friday’s, Fuddruckers — whatever. Any place that strives to maintain an air of casual, family dining, and slaps a bar in the middle of the damn thing. I ask you, how can any responsible adult want to get loaded in a place where there’s every possibility that some demon-spawn on the way back from the can will sucker-punch you in the junk, and then run away giggling hysterically at the sight of the tip of your tongue flying out of your mouth like some kind of blood-powered rocket?

I admit it: when I drink, I become vulnerable, maudlin. Don’t take me to a place where I’ll have to talk to strangers. It’s hard to achieve the kind of inner-death that I require occasionally in order to deal with my life, when the local team is completely fucking up and pissing off everyone else at the bar. And they’re shouting. When the day sharpens your anger and misanthropy to a fine edge, all you want to do is blunt that razor a little bit, and drink is good for that, sometimes; but when some jackass drapes his leaden arm over your shoulder, and slurs the opening chorus of “You Give Love a Bad Name” in your ear, the work of the liquor is undone, as all of your inner hate is forcibly stropped back into hair-splitting keenness.

I do not drink in order to lubricate social situations, or to wear down my inhibitions so as to unleash the catty, yet entertaining, bitch within — well, all right, I do that sometimes, but that’s not the kind of drinking I like. No, I’d rather sit and sip quietly in a place where the people act as though they’ve all got terrible headaches. Someplace dim, and silent. Not some restaurant where they’ve managed to transplant a sliver of spring-break in the midst of a room full of people who think it’s a bright idea to order an $11 plate of gummy chicken wings.

On the other hand, I suppose it’s nice to be able to drink in a place where you’re probably not going to catch a shank to the kidney.

Inspired by this post over at the Consumerist, in which Ben Popken lists some of the cuts he’s made in his discretionary spending, we thought it would be a good idea to do something similar. So, basically, here are the things we’ve done to reduce the amount of money we spend every month.

Haircuts: Fourteen dollars every two weeks? Ridiculous. As of today’s date, it’s been about three months since we last got our diminishing locks clipped. Sure, we might work at a rather conservative company, where we’re teased for having longer than average “hippie-hair”, but so what? We didn’t need that promotion, anyway. Amount saved: $30/month.

Books: We’ve been getting books from the library for years, and buying $0.25 paperbacks from various sources as well. But, the desire to read (especially to escape, especially these days) means that we’ll end up doing things like driving to the library, which uses gas and decreases the life-span of the car. So we’ve been working on not only reducing our interest in reading, but also our ability to read (it’s the only guaranteed solution). So, mxkslm bip slfmskl. Vapeiosl!

Health-care: There are probably things we should have a doctor look at. But, frankly, the return on investment is not really great here. It is costly to get sick, your employer and/or insurance company are powerfully motivated to see that you don’t get a dime from them, and they’ve got the lawyer with the million-dollar retainer to back them up. On the other hand? Dying is really cheap. And they can’t collect a mortgage from a corpse. Amount saved: $200.

Retirement savings: Old people often express the surprise they feel over how long they’ve managed to live. We say, they’re not trying hard enough. Retirement savings is fine for people who have something called “a future”, but how many of us are going to make it that far, when we’ve got no health-care to speak of? We fully expect to drop dead a work (serves them right, cleaning up our Final Mess), but on the off chance that we do make it to retirement age, as long as we’ve got enough money for a bottle of whiskey and a shotgun, we’ll be all set. Amount saved: $50/per fortnight.

Gasoline: This one’s been a little tough, we’ll admit. We’ve had to call in sick a couple of times in order save gas, actually. Boy, those environmentalists were right: four dollar a gallon gas really is a wake-up call! Specifically, it’s woken us up to the fact that the earliest bus, departing from the nearest stop to our house, doesn’t arrive until 7:15am. That means, given the hour it takes the inter-city bus to go to the nearest stop to our office, we’d clock in just around 9:45am. We have to be in at 8am, of course — oh, and we’d have to walk the 30 miles back to our house at night. So, basically, we’ve been woken up to the fact that public transit is completely inadequate, leading us to begin a campaign to improve service which will require intense lobbying in order to generate a plan that should have the problem completely solved sometime around 2015, assuming the economy picks up and we actually have the funds we need to pay for the guidance committee. Meanwhile, upper-middle class people will knock a few channels off their digital cable packages, and keep on paying for gas as if it were heroine or tobacco. Amount saved: $10,000!