y u mad tho? cuz i aint even mad.

Even though I blogged extensively about Ronn Moss last weekend, it behooves me to blog again this weekend because frankly, I feel like whining. What does this mean? It means that this blog is having its period, so shit’s about to get all emo and uterusy up in here. The good news is that I won’t be blogging next weekend. 

So did yougaiz see this yougaiz? Tote bags, t-shirts, coffee mugs and fridge magnets that say Namaste, Bitches and have that folded Indian hands thing that Indians do, complete with exotic Indian religious symbols also. My first thought when I saw this was, aw man I wanted to think of that first! The product descriptor says, and I quote, “Enlightenment has never been easier. Plus this way you don’t have to go to India and swim in raw sewage. (All proceeds benefit charity)”.  I couldn’t help but agree on this one. Because don’t you just hate it when you’re like all in India and stuff and swimming in raw sewage, as it is your wont to do because you live in India, and you’re like ‘I wish I didn’t have to swim in raw sewage. I wish I could swim in chlorinated peewater like the cool people in America.” I am hoping that they will make one another totebag that says ‘Vanakkam you moist motherfuckers’, with religious symbolism of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity neatly lined up at the bottom, thus reflecting the unity in diversity of this country.

That’s not even what I wanted to whine about, I wanted to whine about ebooks. Or I wanted to whine about how other people are whining about ebooks. I’ve always been a little flabbergasted by the good folks who have very strong anti-ebook feelings, especially those who haven’t actually read one and on further investigation, one discovers that they aren’t really sure what an ebook is, they just know they reallyreally hate them and they suck. I know I’m being superracist here but it seems like these illustrious folk always say the same thing- 

‘One needs to be able to touch, smell, lick, and fornicate with certain parts of the book’s binding in order to experience the real and truly complete reading experience. Anything else is not reading. Also you can read the words on the pages if you want but this is not necessary.’

Ok first, wow. Second, am I missing something with this booksmell thing? Because I feel like a lot of the books I have been unfortunate enough to smell somehow managed to be sour, bitter and kind of like musty ass and once I may have accidentally inhaled a small silverfish also. This may have been because most of these books were not second or third hand books but eleventy-twelvty hand books which spent a large amount of time on the pavement and people may have peed on them at some point also. Which led me to think, hay maybe this aspect of molesting your reading material as part of your reading experience is actually a privilege. I say this as someone who has often not been able to get my hands on “real” books, but I could access ebooks and podcasted books which were available even in my tiny corner of the world and often for totes free. I think that eating and rubbing a book all over your body may be one of many reading experiences. I don’t think it’s the only one, the real one, the true one, the authentic one, the original one, or the best one ever. Not all of us have the means to buy and do that to our books. Many of us may not want to do that also. I don’t think that means that we are not reading because we are not reading like you are. 

‘Ebooks have no soul’

Feel like it would be more interesting if peeps said, I hate ebooks because they have no large intestine. 

'Ebooks will make it easier for horrific, substandard literature to be published.’

Oh noes! What are we going to do yougaiz??!!! Somebody call the book police so they can save us from the horrific, substandard literature!!!1 When peeps say things like hay if I was the king of the god of everything, I wouldn’t let shit like Twilight get published and I’d teach everyone what good books are, it’s scary like Scientology scary. I feel that people will always read things that other people will find horrific and substandard, but even if you don’t respect what they’re reading, maybe we can respect their right to read and like whatever they want to. Which I understand is superscary because if I don’t like it, nobody else is allowed to like it either, right? I feel like the issue here is actually ‘Ebooks will make it easier for horrific, substandard literature to be published.’ Which is probably scary for a lot of people who believe that certain people and certain kinds of writing don’t have a right to be published or read. 

‘EBOOKS ARE KILLING REAL BOOKS!!!111 I FUCKING HATE THEM AND I WILL KILL THEM ALL WITH MY FACE WHEN I FINISH TALKING ABOUT HOW MUCH I HATE EBOOKS AND DIGITAL LITERATURE WHILE USING THIS DIGITAL FORMAT!!!1’

This kind of argument reminds me of the illustrious people who love to tell everyone that they “support gay couples” because unlike “real” couples, gay couples are gay people having gay sex, and if all you know about homosexuality comes from porn, you believe these gay people are having gay sex all the time which just makes them so gay.  It’s similar to this je ne sais quoi that makes us say gay marriage, like it is different from “real” marriage possibly because it consists of gay people having gay sex all the time. If you work real hard and try to wrench your focus away from the gay sex (which is hard, I know), one realizes that gay couples are just couples and gay marriage is just marriage. And if you take the ‘e’ and the scary internetedness away from the ebook, you find that the ebook is just a book. People write them and other people read them and hate them or forget them or enjoy them and collect them and take them along on vacay and if the thing isn’t DRMd to death, they share them with other people. It’s a fucking book, whether you like the format or not and while it may not be in keeping with your romantic, privileged and narrow notions of what a book should be, ebooks (and audio books and podcasts) make reading easier and a lot more accessible for a lot of us.

I would like to end this with some anti-ebook quotes by two rather famous authors, which just goes to prove that ebooks really do suck and the ebook haters win.

Maurice Sendak on ebooks

“I hate them. It’s like making believe there’s another kind of sex.There isn’t another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of book! A book is a book is a book.”

“F— them, is what I say. I hate those e-books. They cannot be the future. They may well be. I will be dead, I wont give a s—.”

Ray Bradbury on ebooks

“Yahoo called me eight weeks ago. They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’”

And because it’s Maurice Sendak and Ray Bradbury I’ll just say 

 Namaste, bitches