E-Mail This Article to a Friend Gratis expectations, continued

ELECTRONICS

After spending a few hours downloading a few dozen songs from the above-mentioned sources, you’ll need a way to listen to them. And what better way than with a FREE IPOD!?

You’ve seen the sites. You may have even tried some. More than likely, though, you’ve shrugged them off as too good to be true. But they’re not. If you’re willing and able to distinguish between the scamtastic copycat sites and the genuine article, you can indeed get a free iPod — depending on how much hassle you’re willing to deal with and how many friends you have.

They’re not rip-offs or pyramid schemes, but marketing — ahem, "customer acquisition" — gimmicks signed on to by companies like Blockbuster and BMG. As long as you deal with legitimate sites like Freeipods.com, and as long as you’re willing to sign up for a few promotions and convince several friends to do the same, it’s yours.

There is legwork involved, and sometimes money. You’ve got to sign in and wade through a swamp of offers and surveys (almost all of which you can decline). You’ve got to get "credit" from affiliate companies, which can only be had via obligations like signing up for the Columbia House DVD club, or buying $30 worth of printer ink from Inkblvd.com. And you have to make sure your friends keep up their end of the bargain by doing the same.

If you do, mere months later you will indeed find an iPod — or some other electronic gizmo — mailed to your doorstep from some warehouse in the Far East. Gratis Internet, the Washington firm that runs one of the most legit offers, says it’s shipped more than $10 million in products, including digital cameras and computers from Apple, HP, and Sony. New Gratis offers include the forthcoming PlayStation 3, flat-screen TVs, even free condoms. Just don’t be surprised if unsubscribing from the offers isn’t as easy as you might have hoped.

BOOKS

Libraries don’t get enough credit. They’ve got more books than you could ever hope to read, all there for the taking. CDs and DVDs too. But the rub of a lending library is right there in its name: sooner or later you’ve gotta bring the stuff back.

But not always. The Citywide Friends of the Boston Library sponsor sales on the first Saturday of every other month — the next one is February 4 — where the BPL unloads old and overstocked books for next to nothing (hardcovers are often a buck) and often gives stuff away. The BPL’s branches all have their own sales, too. Not only that, but the central library and its 27 branches also offer free movies, free tax help, free tutoring, and free college advice.

The library also recently unveiled digital-audio books — from classics like Anna Karenina to new titles like Helen Fielding’s Cause Celeb, and kids’ books like the Lemony Snicket series and Winnie the Pooh — that are available for download as Windows Media files via the BPL.org site. (There are also more than 400 music titles, including works by everyone from Bach and Beethoven to Berlin and Bernstein.)

More and more e-books, downloadable as Adobe Acrobat files, are also becoming available. Michael Hart’s Project Gutenberg has compiled a modest list of 17,000 public-domain titles — The Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, Ulysses — that are available directly from the project’s site (Gutenberg.org). Printing out War and Peace will make the $30 worth of ink you bought to get that free iPod a worthwhile investment.

MOVIES

As with music and books, the public domain is a marvelous cinematic treasury if your tastes hew more toward the classics than copyrighted modern works. The so-bad-it’s-good Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) is one of the most recent selections downloadable at Entertainment Magazine’s movie section (emol.org/movies/). And if you’re looking for the Three Stooges and the Little Rascals, Dick Tracy and Flash Gordon, or an original print of Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera (1925), this is the place for you. Romance. Westerns. Mysteries. Newsreels. Mighty Mouse and Bugs Bunny, Woody the Woodpecker, and Felix the Cat. Popeye and Betty Boop. They’re all there, the pre-television golden age given new life in the computer age.

If you find the download times — which can be in excess of an hour — prohibitive, another way to score free movies is to keep abreast of promotions from the Phoenix/WFNX by signing up for an FNX card and getting on our mailing list. Invitations to free advance screenings of new flicks are common.

BOOZE

I found this joke — for free! — on the Internet:

Andy and Angus were down on their luck and hanging out for a cold beer or three. After checking their pockets and finding only 50 cents, Andy came up with a brilliant strategy. "I’ll take the 50 cents and show you how we can drink all day for free!" Quickly, he went into a butcher’s shop and bought a single sausage, which he stuck in Angus’s fly. They then went to a nearby hotel. "Two beers," said Andy to the bartender. They downed them as fast as they could and the bartender waited for the money. All of a sudden, Andy got down on his knees and began sucking the sausage hanging out of Angus’s fly. "Get out of my pub, you filthy bastards!" the bartender screamed and booted them out the door. They did this all day, visiting about 16 pubs, or more. "I just can’t do this anymore," Andy whined. "My knees are getting sore from kneeling down on the floor so much." "It’s all right for you!" Angus replied. "I lost the sausage after the third pub."

Those crazy, homophobic Brits! We’re guessing you’ll find the aforementioned a somewhat labor-intensive way to get a free day of drinking. (But, hey, y’never know.) A better way is probably what Seats suggested when asked if he had any inside dope about how to get free hooch. "I dunno, I guess you could crash parties and get free alcohol that way?"

Other options are few. The Boston/NYC competition can get tiresome sometimes, but there’s one way the Gothamites do have us beat. They’ve got Myopenbar.com, an online guide run by Williamsburg hipsters Rob Hitt and Seva Granik, which serves as a catch-all listing of free booze on offer all over town. ("We took it upon ourselves to scour the field and provide this free service to you, esteemed readers, at the expense of our own livers, sleep, and spare change jars.")

Boston, alas, has no such site. So, with Yankee frugality, we satiate ourselves instead with free tastings at the Harpoon Brewery (306 Northern Avenue, Boston) every Tuesday through Saturday. At Samuel Adams headquarters (30 Germania Street in JP), the tour and tasting every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday are also free — as long as you consider a "suggested" $2 donation to local charities "free." Which you should, you cheap bastard.

Another way to drink for free is to get the skinny on promotions and parties sponsored by Stuff@Night and the Phoenix, many of which have an open bar for the first hour or two. Sign up for the VIP e-mail list at Stuffatnight.com (by clicking on "get VIP mail") and keep your eyes peeled for event promos in Stuff@Night and the Phoenix.