Electronic Dog Polisher

I got myself an ebook reader the other day. Now, I need more reading material like I need a hole in the head. No, I do not intend to go to this company's designated website and download "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" for $9.95 (or whatever they're asking- I haven't actually checked). Firstly, I don't intend to read TGWTDT, because it's a fat book and I've got other stuff on the go, and secondly, if I did, I've got ready access to a hardcopy; I'd just have to pluck it off the shelf and bear it home for some gratuitous page-flipping.

No, the reason I got this electronic dog polisher is to polish electronic dogs. Oh, pardon me- you don't know what an electronic dog polisher is? It's an electronic device that does one specific job and nothing else, preferably a job that you wouldn't need or want to do in the first place if you didn't have the item (like polishing dogs). We've used that term in this family for a long time - and then, one day on TV, I actually saw an electronic dog polisher advertised! Well, it was a special vaccum cleaner attachment for vaccuming your dog or cat, but the principle was the same. The hilarity was considerable.

So, back to my electronic dog polisher - um, ebook reader. I got it because there are times when I need to read ebooks, and reading them on a computer screen is a pain in the you-know-what. (Have you ever wondered if You Know Who ever gets a pain in the you-know-what? No, me neither.) Turns out that most of the ebooks I need to read actually won't download onto my reader, because their publishers are holding onto them for dear life and won't let Jane Average download them; you have to look at them on the proprietary e-library website. Ah well. That's okay. I still have stuff to read on my reader, because it came pre-loaded with 100 free ebooks- ooh, aah, wow! Never mind the fact that they've swiped all those books from Project Gutenberg, where the world's classics happily sit in the public domain. I can now read Jane Austen on an electronic screen, instead of picking up the hardbound gold-edged copies I've got on my bookshelf. Oh, the wonders...

But honestly, it is fun. And I do enjoy the fact that I can carry around Austen, Dickens, and Carroll in one lightweight slim package to access whenever I feel like it. I've even got The Communist Manifesto and The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire on there. I'm sure they'll come in handy next time my dentist's appointment is running really late. I'll let you know what they're like.