(on a package of Overload peanut butter cups, one of them topped with “rainbow candy” coated chocolate pieces): “Mars, Incorporated has no affiliation with the producer or distributor of this product and has no participation in the production of this product.”

THE FINE PRINT #2 (from the introductory disclaimer to the e-book The Top 100 Lovemaking Techniques of All Time): “Some of the techniques described in this book call for you or your partner to have cough drops, mints, ice cubes and other objects in your mouth. Be very careful not to swallow these objects while performing these techniques. If you think there is even the slightest possibility that you could accidentally swallow one these of these objects, STOP PERFORMING THE TECHNIQUE IMMEDIATELY. There are plenty of other ones that you can do instead.”

…may be viewed at the UW’s collection of historical Seattle-area restaurant menus. See the mementos of meals gone by at such fondly-recalled spots as the Dog House, the Cloud Room, Frederick & Nelson, the Jolly Roger, Maison Blanc, and the original Olympic Hotel; plus the still-extant Space Needle and Ivar’s Acres of Clams. Bon Appetit!

BusinessWeek has proclaimed the death of the “Mass Market” in the U.S.

With the rise of tertiary cable channels, ultra-specialized magazines (my current fave: Physicians’ Travel), and the Web, advertisers are increasingly moving to media that target specific audiences. Caught in the resulting fiscal death spiral: Network TV, local TV, and daily papers.

Perhaps you won’t miss the days when half the country watched the same sitcoms, and 80 percent of households received “the paper” (typically a dully-written, Republican-partisan sheet) every day.

But if Procter & Gamble or General Motors wishes to no longer support general-interest journalism, who will? Not web ads, not sufficiently, at least not yet.

A lot of us lefties have had our beefs against the news coverage from the networks and the daily papers this past year and a half. To a great extent, the big media’s superficial, authority-driven war coverage was driven by the twin drives to keep costs down and to gain readers/viewers with spectacular stories/images. Thus, the mania in 2003 for “embedded” reporters, who got to cover the war up close as long as they saw and said what the White House wanted them to see and say. Undercover, investigative stuff is much more labor intensive, and doesn’t guarantee any flashy payoff.

As a long-term-unemployed journalist myself (will someone out there please hire me please?), I’ve seen the long-term effects of this shift in ad support. It’s undoubtedly the real reason the Seattle Times wants to end its joint operating agreement with the Post-Intelligencer. It’s the real reason chain-owned radio stations are decimating their news departments, and national magazines are buying fewer freelance articles. It’s a trend that won’t be fully reversed even when the general economy improves.

So what’ll save quality news in the U.S.? Pledge drives? Church subsidies? Foreign imports?

I haven’t the answers. If you have, lemme know.

The latest wackiness from Marysville, WA: A little company called “Nature’s Advantage” is in legal trouble for hawking dubious beast-enlargement pills to teenage girls.

Some survey somewhere claims the Seattle-Tacoma metroplex has got more “arts-related businesses, institutions and organizations per capita than any area of the country.”

So go out this First Thursday and buy a painting. You’ll keep the local economy solvent.

Now we know what Kroger will do with its adjacent QFC supermarket and Fred Meyer variety store on Broaday. It’ll move the QFC into the Broadway Market building, displacing the Fred Meyer operation and also some of the indie merchants there. The current QFC will close when the new one opens, and presumably would be available for retail redevelopment.

The losers, aside from the small businesses to be displaced, include everyone in central Seattle who buys any Freddy’s merchandise. It’s the only place in Capitol Hill/First Hill that sells paint, hardware, board games, VCRs, underwear, patio furniture and countless other products. No other chain that even bothers with these lines is situated anywhere near Broadway. (Walgreen’s and Bartell’s don’t come close to matching Freddy’s selection in most nondrug categories.)

If anyone wants to start a Save Freddy’s campaign, they can sign me up. If anyone wants to start a new store to replace it, they can hire me to promote it. (Come back, City People’s Mercantile! All is forgiven!)

Conflicting news reports hint at what might happen to the Broadway Market minimall, which has suffered during the recent retail slump like many other merchant sites. A P-I story claims Kroger, which owns both the relatively-small Fred Meyer drug/variety store anchoring Broadway Market and the QFC grocery across the street, may stick a Fred Meyer food department into the Broadway Market building. A Stranger news brief last week suggested Kroger would pull its existing QFC operation into the building.

Either way, some of the current mall spaces would be shuffled around or displaced altogether. I happen to think that’s not necessarily catastrophic for small business on Capitol Hill. There are other vacant Broadway storefronts (including the former Orpheus Records, Godfather’s Pizza, and Chang’s Mongolian Grill sites) available for subdividing on behalf of indie merchants. There’d be even more such space if the Broadway/Republican QFC (one of the last former A&P buildings in Seattle still used for grocery selling) is vacated. Some smart developer could fashion one or more of those lots into a funky mercantile destination that’d be perfect for some of the smaller current Broadway Market retailers. Let’s just hope such future developers do a better job of landing and nurturing tenants than was done at Pike Street’s short-lived Capitol Hill Independent Mall.

David Kipen claims US studio blockbusters have become so loud and dumb because they’re not even made for North American audiences anymore, but for a global everywhere/nowhere.

PHOTO PHRIDAY TODAY begins with some standard beautiful cityscapes.

I’ll miss University Used and Rare Books, closing after 40 years. It was your classic college-town used-book store, complete with tall shelves, cats, grizzled customers, and that amazing out-of-print cult classic you’d never seen before.

Major League Baseball is selling ads on the bases.

(via Arthur Marriott):

“Your mention on the ‘Misc’ page of Boeing and the 7E7 reminded me of two things that occurred to me when I read the piece about the first 7E7 order last week in the Times.The first was that there was a photograph of and quote from one Ellen Piasecki, who’s some sort of marketing VP at Boeing. I’ll bet there’s a whole story there.

Piasecki Aircraft was the original name of the East Coast company that eventually became the core of Boeing’s helicopter division. Their specialty was always big heavy-lift ‘copters with two main rotors instead of a ‘tail boom’–their Korean-War ‘flying banana’ was the precursor to the present-day Chinook. What would you bet that she was born into that family, with aviation in her blood, and that eventually led to what she’s doing now?

The other thing I perceived was more ominous. The rendering of the 7E7 in All Nippon Airways colors accompanying the article showed only one person in the cockpit.

Over the last several decades, we’ve seen the flight crew of large airliners reduced from three to two as the flight engineer was automated the way of the railroad fireman. The effect of this on safety has been open to question, as evidenced by reading John Nance’s first major book–when things break, it helps to have more brain power at work and more hands to manipulate whatever controls are still working.

However, economic forces and corporate and technological arrogance may be leading to the day when it’s assumed that the aircraft can flawlessly run itself, and having a token ‘attendant’ sitting up front will be a transition to putting hundreds of passengers in a pilotless aircraft. At that point, I don’t think I’ll be flying anymore.”

As the local media cheerlead over the official start of Boeing 7E7 production, the current-affairs zine The Next American City has a long, lucid essay about “Seattle’s Boeing Fixation.”

Writer Sarah Kavage cites the 7E7 assembly-plant location derby as a classic example of corporate job blackmail, a now-familiar ritual that encourages communities to give companies too much to get too little back. (In the case of Seattle/Everett, it’s a mere 1,000 final assembly jobs.) Kavage suggests cities and states find the courage to back away from the game:

“Ultimately, the Puget Sound region will likely have to wean itself off of Boeing, whether it wants to or not. Even if the company stays in town, the region’s influence over it, for better or for worse, will continue to diminish….”Nationwide, our leaders must better manage the difficult balance between long-term regional needs and the needs of large employers. Doing so requires more than passing regulations and bribing companies with incentives. It means actively investing in the infrastructure, environmental protection, education, and social services that keep the quality of life high. And it means investing in local business development and potentially forging agreements with other states and countries to limit the size and nature of incentives.”

…whether the government and the news media (and, by extension, the private sector) are now run by autistics.

…why “Books Are the Hot Medium,” specifically referring to the current deluge of White House insider scandal tales.

One answer: With modern production technology, a hardcover tome can be rushed to the stores as quickly as a monthly magazine.

Another: Interviews with authors (and with govt. officials on the receiving end of authors’ accusations) can cheaply fill some of the unlimited time the cable news channels have to fill.

A third reason, which the NYT story doesn’t give: As we head into the dawn of a long-attention-span generation, books simply seem to be more worthy of one’s time. Classic “short-form” TV programming keeps losing viewers, while feature films on DVD have become the US consumer market’s most successful new product. Even video games have evolved from pinball-length short entertainments into 45-hour-long epics of level after level. When today’s children-not-left-behind graduate into adolescence and adulthood from years of relentless studying for standardized tests, a long, hefty read will seem even more like a natural way to relax at the end of the working day.

I’m not completely thrilled by all this. For nearly two decades, my local professional reputation has been that of a writer specializing in short, sharp shocks. With the ascencion of Jean Godden from the Seattle Times to the Seattle City Council, my li’l monthly half-page in the Belltown Messenger is the only three-dot column left in local print media.

So I’m moving into books. They’ve got higher profit margins and longer shelf lives than periodicals. (A fourth reason why books are “hot.”)

It’s a whole different type of work, requiring stronger legs and a sturdier torso. You can’t just stretch a short topic to feature length, no more than you can enlarge a spindly-legged spider to movie-monster size. But it’s where the flow is going, and all the self-help books say I gotta go with the darned flow.

…is good for business. Just not for the drug and insurance industries.