For the last week, eBookNewser has been asking publishing’s brightest minds a simple question: what do you think the Apple Tablet will do for publishing?

Today publishing consultant Richard Nash contributed the most recent installment of “Apple Tablet & Me” (an excellent romantic comedy title, by this editor’s estimation) channeling a hardboiled lounge singer in a song about the mythical device. “The iSlate/iTablet/iRock will help us sing karaoke better, including, for example, the iconic Tom Waits song, ‘Step Right Up, the Apple Shuffle,’ which goes a little something like this…” A lengthy ode to the Tablet follows at eBookNewser.

Here’s Publishers Weekly senior news editor Calvin Reid on the fabled Tablet: “Now I’m not sure that the Tablet will be the be-all device for reading either but certainly a device that offers multiple functions and a high quality UI experience (color, multimedia, web browsing, high res screen) seems closer to what we all think the digital reading experience should be. Or at least what I think it should be.”