My article about sundry electronic thingies brought lots of mail, some calling me old-fashioned and others alleging that I was not old-fashioned enough. Probably both things are true; I'm easily confused in these areas.

But my profession of love for the Kindle, Amazon's digital reading device, brought this note from Bill Petrocelli, co-owner of Book Passage. (Full disclosure: I teach classes at Book Passage twice a year or so.) After chiding me for praising Kindle, he continued:

"Amazon is the only company that prevents readers from downloading books from any other bookstore. ... Book Passage and other independent bookstores are now selling e-books that can be downloaded to every other device on the market except the Kindle. It was Amazon's decision to shut out other booksellers - not ours. It's part of their plan for monopolizing the e-book market, which is a key step in controlling the entire book business. So with your heavy endorsement of the Kindle, you are basically telling your bookstore friends that you don't care if they stay in business or not.

"You also failed to mention that Amazon is the only major seller in the book market that refuses to collect California sales tax. Amazon has resorted to every trick in the book ... to avoid collecting this tax, because it gives them a 9-10% price advantage over their competitors. So by shilling for Amazon, you are not only hurting your bookstore friends but depriving the State of California of hundreds of millions of desperately needed tax dollars."

Amazon has said publicly that collecting sales tax in all the many jurisdictions where people buy books from it would be burdensome. However, Netflix charges the sales tax, and there are services designed to help online business make those computations and collect those taxes. Given how bad California's budget crunch is, and how big Amazon's business is, it does seem only fair that it charge the extra money and pay the state.

It wouldn't hardly cost them any money, either - just a little market advantage, which God knows they can overcome because, you know, they're as big as that muddy ol' Amazon River.

P.S.: One thing about these digital reading devices: They do save trees. Whether they contribute to other forms of environmental degradation I cannot say.

In unrelated news: People have asked me: Is Alternate Reality correspondent Suzanne Rogers a real person, or is it just you playing some silly game? To which I say: Define "real." No, that was the silly game.

Alternate Reality correspondent Suzanne Rogers is real and she is not me. This is the second in her series of communiques. Please, take it at face value:

"Ashrita Furman, who is single, has attained a world record by crawling 100 meters in seven minutes and 29 seconds while simultaneously holding a three toed sloth and blowing a postage stamp across the floor. The sloth, while exerting no energy other than that of holding on to Mr. Furman, evidently tired during this event but gamely held on to the finish line with a smile on his face.

"Irktuck, a Peruvian spider monkey living in Topeka, has walked the Appalachian Trail three times, shredded by hand everything written by Noam Chomsky, dismantled and reassembled a kabob kiosk and replaced an entire oak floor with Brazilian cherry, and he's not tired at all. Zimka Solzenichen, who purchased Irktuck in 1993, believed at the time that he was ordering a Panama Hat spider, made famous in the best selling book 'The Panama Hat Spider and You.' MasterCard refused a refund.

"The roundhouse kick is appreciated and practiced by many people. Maybe you have come home to find that your ex-boyfriend has hung a punching bag where your Boston fern used to be and waist high holes now punctuate your walls. Perhaps as you enter the foyer, your ex hurls himself across the living room holding a hunting knife and hissing between clenched teeth the word 'Die.'

"After the police leave, ask some friends to come over for cocktails. Use words like 'process' and 'closure' as you enjoy a lemon drop martini and a crab cake. Call up Irktuck and ask him to join you. Who better to demonstrate the abandoned exercise equipment that blocks the door to your bathroom and clean up by eating all the paper napkins? Do not invite the sloth. He finds the concepts of processing and closure extremely boring because he really doesn't want to start anything in the first place."

LEAR: Doth any here know me? - This is not Lear: Doth Lear walk thus? Speak thus? Where are his eyes? Either his notion weakens, his discernings are lethargied - Ha! Waking? 'Tis not so. Who is it that can tell me who I am? FOOL: jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle