…the Museum of Menstruation and Women’s Health in Washington DC is, alas, currently inoperative as a real-world attraction and is only available online. The site’s so fascinating it makes one long for a physical display site. Take this pairing of two tampon magazine ads: a repressed American one and an outrageous British one.

…TV viewing is good for the brain. Now stop your anti-pop elitist whining already.

And if you don’t like what’s on TV, go out and make some of your own.

Local scientists and engineers are striving to concoct a simpler, less-invasive alternative to liposuction, using ultrasound transmissions to break up internal fatty acids.

If the technique works out, it could become as routine an upper-middle-class practice as breast implants or “permanent make-up” have become. From there, volume and technological advances might make it affordable to all (or at least to most).

I can see it now. Parents giving the gift of instant weight loss to daughters (and sons too) as 18th-birthday presents. Middle-aged couples routinely getting new summer bodies to go with their new summer wardrobes. Clinics offering annual visits on a membership plan. (Remember, the device would help you drop weight, but wouldn’t prevent you from gaining it all back.)

At the turn of the last century, in the first Gilded Age, obesity was considered an asset for “men of substance” (big bank and railroad bosses). It proved you could afford to eat well. These days, in the second Gilded Age, obesity symbolizes that you’re eating a fatty white-trash diet and can’t afford a personal trainer. The rich (and those desperately trying to become rich) follow fad diets and belong to private gyms. The working poor are often stereotyped as unkempt blobs of cellulite, forever gorging on Big Macs and Big Gulps.

But what if instant skinniness were available to anyone who with the cash (or credit-card room) for a new car? What if millions could simply walk into a clinic fat and walk out that same day skinny? Perhaps the upscale would run the opposite way, as if to the Sneeches’ Star-Off Machine. Perhaps voluptuousness would become the new ideal. Maybe the famale beauty standard of the 2010s could be the More of Everything woman—huge bosoms, huge butts, a roomy mini-mansion of a physique. And the new masculine ideal could be an SUV of a physique—a big-boned, big-muscled, big-waisted piece of solidity that stands large in the face of trouble, but also has plenty of sensitive soft spots for an ambitious lady to explore.

Alternately, the new body-type dichotomy could be rooted back at the gym. Ultrasound fat-removal would do nothing for muscle tone. (It might even conceivably leave some patients with flappin’ expanses of unshrunk skin.) The mark of a member (or wannabe member) of the elite might be a body that you’d still have to work for, not just pay for.

LAST SUNDAY IN THIS SPACE, I discussed the value of continuing to read local newspapers, not just the NY Times.

But I also see value in trudging one’s way thru the Cadillac of American newspapers (i.e., it’s bigger than the others and weighted down with more luxury features, though it’s still built on the same Chevy drive train).

F’rinstance, Paul Krugman’s Sunday magazine section think-piece on America’s immensely growing economic inequality, and how it’s polluted politics, health care, foreign policy, social discourse, etc. etc.

It’s good to see something this honest in a paper that’s long (actually, just about always) been the voice of the economic elite. (I vaguely remember a writer (I don’t remember who it was) complaining a year ago that the NY Times Sunday magazine section’s editors rejected a piece he’d written about the homeless, asking him to make it more upscale.)

The backward distribution-O-wealth toward an increasingly out-of-touch Overclass isn’t exactly an untold story. But it is undertold. Or rather, when it is told it’s in a can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees manner.

Anyone who regularly peruses the “alternative” press knows about the symptoms of an Overclass economy:

A Republican Party whose “ideology” is just a ramshackle structure of excuses for big-money butt kissing and power-grabbing.

A “New” Democratic Party concerned solely with preserving its own institutional existence, by striving to become just as big-money-friendly as the Republicans.

A “conservatism” prescribing authoritarian brutality to the downscale, libertine excess to the upscale.

A “liberalism” with plenty to say about recycling but little to say about luxury lifestyles that produce all those wastes; that abstractly worships M.L. King as a courageous leader (a sort-of civil-rights CEO) but ignores most of the issues he fought for; whose favorite “minorities” are upscale white women and upscale white gays.

A ‘radicalism” centered parimarily around issues friendly to the “rebel” kids from affluent families (the fates of plants, animals, and “exotic” humans who conveniently don’t live on the same continent).

A corporate society built not around making stuff, or even around profitably selling stuff, but around supporting the insatiable material demands of top executives by propping up the Almighty Stock Price.

An urban environment defiled by smoggy SUVs.

A suburban environment defiled by minimansions, ever larger and ever further apart.

A dumbed-down “mainstream” media in which only the big-money boys’ side of any issue gets mentioned, in between lengthy pieces about entertainment celebrities.

A dumbed-down “alternative” media in which politics is reduced to demographic target marketing (“Oh how much more englightened we are than those mainstream dorks”), in between lengthy stories about “alternative” entertainment celebrities.

A “digital age” that was aggressively hyped as a tool for expression, empowerment, and equility; but which, in its pre-stock-crash form, generated even more obscene levels of stock-price and luxury-lifestyle nonsense, contributing to real-estate hyperinflation and massive demographic cleansing in many cities.

The Overclass economy might have carried the seeds of its own fall from grace. Between certain CEO scandals and a depression that’s made millions aware of their own precarious fiscal states, it’s at least a little harder this year to make excuses for giving the ultra-rich every damned thing they want.

But a fall from grace ain’t the same thing as a fall.

The U.S. economy might not currently even know how to reform itself toward greater equity, despite experts’ warnings that middle-class consumer confidence might be the only way out of this slump.

Most politicians are deathly afraid of doing anything that might threaten big-money campaign donations.

Most media outlets don’t even want to think of showing or printing anything that would tarnish the upscale image they sell to advertisers. (When I interviewed for a job at the short-lived local mag Metropolitan Weekly, the publisher’s first statement was the minimum average income he wanted his readers to have.)

No, the way out of our socio-political-economic mess won’t come from the systems and institutions that helped us get into the mess.

It can only come by developing viable, inclusive, true alternatives to those systems and institutions; forcing those systems and institutions to adapt or die.

The latest research sez tobacco could be even worse for you than the previous accepted wisdom believed. That’s tobacco in and of itself. Yes, even without additives.

…to one of the true greats at the still-new art of web writing, Rodney O. Lain, who passed away over the weekend.

Lain, who at various times wrote for nearly every Macintosh-centric website, quickly established himself as an outspoken, well-written, detector of pomposity and dissecter of corporate hype. In perhaps his most memorable piece, he audaciously compared his status as a black man in a white world to his status as a Mac man in a Windows world.

AS WE APPROACH the 10th anniversary of the filmed-in-Seattle semiclassic Singles, Forbes magazine has placed Seattle right in the smack-dab mediocre middle of its listing of “America’s Best Cities for Singles.”

As you might expect from the magazine’s other priorities, its index included “cost of living” and “economic growth” among its criteria–areas in which the Nor’West is admittedly doing piss-poor these days. But SeaTown also ranked less than stellarly in the more subjectively-defined areas of “culture” and “nightlife,” areas in which I firmly believe we’re more than fully competitive with other cities in our population “weight class.”

But then we come to the most potentially damning part of the piece: “Seattle ‘solo artists’ say the town is still a bit tougher than other places when it comes to dating, as denizens tend to be more reserved than folks in sunnier spots…” As one who’s proud to call himself one of those reserved denizens, I think it a badge of honor that I don’t stoop to screaming dorky pickup lines at women; and I enjoy that my taste in the single ladies tends more toward smarties and less toward silicone.

Yes, Nor’Westers might be a little harder to get to know. But, like so many other advanced disciplines of life, we’re darned well worth it.

OPPONENTS OF MODERN ART have a new pet accusation. Instead of calling it obscene, at least one critic is now saying it’s bad for your mental health.

Our ol’ pal and street musician extraordinaire Artis the Spoonman had a heart attack. He’s recovering steadily in a Seattle hospital, but might need a little help with the bills.

a virtual exhibition of some 100 vintage 45 RPM record labels.

ANOTHER GENDER-MYTH CHALLENGED: As certain bestselling books have been noting lately, females can indeed do less-than-great things to other females.

F’rinstance, that Eastern Hemisphere ethnic tradition known there as “female circumcision” and around here as female genital mutilation is a practice passed on from mothers to daughters (see the item at the bottom of the page linked here).

THE REAL REASON I haven’t updated the site every darned day lately, as promised in the header graphic: I’ve been struggling with anxiety over money and related issues.

The gaming-website writing gig that’s kept mealmost meeting expenses these past two years is ending this month. Much pavement-poundin’ has yielded only “opportunities” that, at full-time hours, would earn less than my currently contracted expenses. Apparently, after 12 years of doing nothing but writing, editing, publishing, and creatiing web content for a living, I’m considered underqualified to perform any other “professional” occupation and overqualified to perform most so-called “shit jobs.” Available work within my various fields of expertise, as you might have guessed, spiked up during the dot-com boom but have greatly receded during the recession.

I’ve been loathe to mention this on the site because I never intended this to be a “personal diary” site, and also because I prefer to maintain a positive vibe here, even when discussing downbeat topics.

Nevertheless, I feel compelled at this time to tell y’all this, in hopes one or more of you might be able to help. If you know of any paying gigs in any of the fields you’ve seen work from me in, dispatch an email posthaste.

Also, I continue to ponder business plans by which the print MISC might be made profitable. All the schemes and number-crunches involve either (a) charging a cover price, (b) finding someone who’s a better ad seller than I am, or (c) both of the above. Any thoughts of yours on this conundrum would be most appreciated.

IT’S SIX DAYS N’ COUNTING to our next glam-filled live event, The Clark Show, Monday nite at the redone Rendezvous lounge in Belltown. Be there.

PASSAGE (Former ACT Theater boss Gordon Edelstein in the NY Times, on his return to the NY tri-state area): “[In Seattle] when the curtain rises on a play, the audience is open, but their tacit agreement is that life is pretty good, it’s important to be comfortable, and that human beings actually can be healthy…. The curtain rises on a New York audience, and everybody agrees we’re basically sick and we want redemption and we want a good time but we’re not made uncomfortable by deeply disturbing news about our psyches. In fact, that feels like the truth to us.”

Medical researchers now claim to have evidence that longterm pot smoking can cause memory loss, disoriented thinking, and a lack of ambition; and can be at least psycologically, and perhaps chemically, addictive, with withdrawal symptoms that include anger, aggression, and irritability.

Well, like DUH.

Now we have to figure out what chemical agents make certain heavy tokers believe themselves to be at one with the plants and the animals, but treat non-pot-smoking humans as a separate/inferior life form.

THOSE OF YOU who looove written English as composed by non-native-English speakers will undoubtedly enjoy this instruction sheet from a box of imported Chinese “stop-smoking” tea bags. (Warning: 235K .jpg file!)

A wake was held Sunday afternoon at the Two Bells Tavern for its longtime owner Patricia Ryan, who’d died of lung cancer one week previous. To get to the memorial, one had to traverse the Fourth Avenue sidewalks past the triumphant participants in a breast cancer walkathon. Once inside the event, of course, the cigarettes flowed like pre-dam spawning salmon.

The happening itself was, as expected, a mixture of pathos, celebration, and reminiscence. The bar and its back-alley beer garden were full with Ryan’s family and friends, and with Two Bells employees and regulars past and present. Ryan’s widower Rolon Bert Garner was in relatively good spirits most of the time; he and several close friends and coworkers offered brief, touching remarks.

(‘Twas truly great to see so many old faces again. Let’s hope it can happen again under less unfortunate circumstances.)

Ryan’s legacy, of course, is the Bells, which has (thus far) survived under new owners in the midst of Belltown’s ongoing Monoculture takeover.

One of Ryan’s original ingredients for success, according to several of the speakers at her memorial, was that she continued to make the old regulars welcome after she’d bought the place in ’82. A lesson we hope will be heeded by the nearby Rendezvous’s purported incoming new operators.

Thanks to ye who attended our intimate little MISC Salon yesterday evening. Apologies to whomever tried to make it but couldn’t, because for a period of time that day another tenant of the space locked the front doors without telling me. We’ll do another gathering soon; watch this space for particulars.

GET YER MERCH HERE!: The luscious MISC Boutique is now online. T-shirts, coffee mugs, tank tops, mouse pads, even boxer shorts are offerred bearing Sean Hurley’s hand-drawn logo from our Summer 2001 issue (which is nearly gone from most dropoff spots–to make sure you get yours, subscribe.)

SPEAKING OF MR. HURLEY, our print mag’s illustrious illustrator has an art opening this Tuesday evening at the Little Theater, 608 19th Ave. E. (at Mercer) in Seattle’s east Capitol Hill neighborhood. His paintings and drawings never cease to amaze and astound. Be there, amigos and amigas.

ELSEWHERE:

You don’t have to use southern-California slang in your own life, but a UCLA student survey reveals a new regional definition down there of the term “ballerina”– as “an immoral person with a moral facade.”

“AIDS is not the wrath of God, nature’s revenge, or the new bubonic plague; it is a nasty infectious disease that requires clear thinking and investigation to overcome.”

A research study publicized in July claimed conservative Republicans have worse dreams than persons of other political persuasions.

Maybe it’s due to the ol’ “angry white male” syndrome, in which rabid-right commentators try to whip up their secular congregations into all number of extreme fears (including but not limited to fears of women, gays, blacks, English professors, big cities and the people who live in them, civil servants, immigrants, nasty music, and any politician who doesn’t toe the GOP party line).

Or maybe the wealthy individuals who comprise the Right’s real beneficiary caste have more stress-related nightmares due to their supposedly more complicated lives.

Whatever the cause for this situation (if it even really exists), it’s a cool excuse to fantasize about what dreams and/or nightmares might typically befall humans of various political persuasions:

• The pro-business Democrat: Dreams of conviving over fine food and beverges at a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser. Speakers wax elequently about why mergers are good for consumers, clearcuts are good for the environment, and media conglomerates are the greatest defenders of free speech.During the subsequent meet-‘n’-greet, she sparkingly chats up with many well-dressed, beautiful, affluent people. She and they jointly pooh-pooh the idea that the Democrats had forgotten any past commitments; why, the party’s at the forefront of defending the rights of affluent women, affluent gays, affluent blacks, and affluent left-handed people. They also discuss the best foreign countries for importing well-hung houseboys.

  This person’s nightmare: That someone might start taking that line about We The People seriously.

• The law-and-order Republican: Dreams of standing tall, tough, and proud. His whiskey gut is clad by a tan microfiber suit; his fingers are clad in three or four gold rings. He’s at the lectern of his beautiful church in his beautiful gated suburb. He’s exhorting his congregation of The Select to remain steadfast in the knowledge of their special status with God, as exemplified by their abundant material blessings.At this same time, his strong-but-submissive wife is taking off her multiple platinum necklaces and earrings. She’s driving toward the main gates of the prison camp that used to be the central city, to perform her volunteer mission work. Her sermon has a Pentacostal aesthetic but a classic Anglican theology—that her charges are doomed sinners, who can only attain a blessed afterlife by selflessly working themselves to death here on earth.

  This person’s nightmare: That someone might start taking that line about not serving both God and Mammon seriously.

• The militia member: Dreams of looking out stoically over a decimated landscape from the safe vantage point of his compound. Wrathful disasters have destroyed all cities and crushed all governments; but he, his comrades-in-arms, and their multiple wives have survived to build a new world built upon the law of the gun.This person’s nightmare: That nothing sufficiently disastrous ever happens.
• The still-believing socialist: Dreams of a society still dominated by heavy industry (coal mining, iron smelting) and mass agriculture; as maintained by a cadre of hearty, proud workers who fully share in the fruits of their labors.Our dreamer, however, doesn’t have to break his back at such toil. He’s on the planning team, crunching the numbers and tweaking the blueprints for ever larger and more efficient factories to produce improved industrial implements.

  This person’s nightmare: That too many workers might not want to remain workers.

• The anarchist: Dreams of a peaceful and harmonious life in a communitarian village, in which most work is performed for barter and the private accumulation of wealth is severely restricted. All TV stations have long ago been signed off; the Fortune 500 companies have all been dismantled; and all sorts of voluntary associations are either mandatory or close enough.Our dreamer works in the local Hemp Research Center, testing new organic strains of the plant that has become the mainstay of the world economy. The results of his diligent research are freely shared with other centers developing new varieties of hemp clothing fabrics, hemp motor-scooter fuel, hemp construction plastics, hemp breakfast cereal, hemp guitar strings, hemp furniture, hemp wine, hemp dog food, hemp cologne, hemp bicycle helmets, hemp condoms, etc. etc.

  This person’s nightmare: Either a hemp boll weevil or the threat that someone, someday, might actually want to live any differently.

• The eco-militant: Dreams of awakening to a perfect morning in a perfect world reclaimed by nature, following some unspecified event that had removed most of the earth’s human population. The trees gently bend in a warm breeze; the birds chirp; the whales and dolphins cavort; the minks and mollusks scamper freely. Our dreamer is among the few remaining humans, who spend their days fixing the ecosystem damaged by their insensitive forebearers. Her day will be spent tending an organic garden, on the reclaimed site of a former strip mall.This person’s nightmare: That the few remaining humans might not include her.
• The techno-Libertarian: Dreams of a 21st-century version of the old Greek philosophers’ salons, in which men of social standing and property (the only full citizens in that old “democracy”) civilly debated the issues of the day while enjoying the finest wine, food, and women (or boys).In the modern dream incarnation, this soiree takes place in the daylight basement of a $3 million beachfront “cabin.” During all-night rounds of networked shoot-’em-up computer games, various members of the Cardmember Caste (all bearing the platinum credit cards required for citizenship) discuss new router technologies, the latest plans to privatize the Supreme Court, and other weighty topics. Players who temporarily tire of this routine can enjoy a glass of wine, a snort of coke, or a blow job; all expertly served up by contract-servants from the Permatemp Caste.

  This person’s nightmare: Finding himself in the Permatemp Caste.