“Computer chips that store music could soon be built into a woman’s breast implants.”

CAL TECH SCIENTISTS have announced they’ve discovered the tenth planet of the solar system. The find, if it becomes generally accepted and acknowledged as a “real” planet instead of just a big rock, would fulfill the prophecies of 20th-century astrologers who posited a tenth planet as necessary to make their calculations work out. When Daffy Duck went to explore “Planet X,” he was off to the roman-numeraled world of the astrologers’ theories.

…of fitting science to ideology, from the ol’ USSR.

Junk science for ideology and profit.

… or just another chemical addiction?

…to the hard-working food technologists, never slacking in their efforts to formulate snack products that (1) don’t have the nasty stuff that makes snack foods so wonderful, and (2) don’t taste like cardboard.

When drug companies figured out how to market it as one.

Paul Allen’s gonna spend $100 mill to fund a research study utilizing mice to explore the genetic development of brains. By this time next year, the lab space in Fremont just might become HQ of assorted plots to take over the world.

…recently posted a fake news piece about a “Creation Science Fair.” According to some of the emails I’ve received about it, many readers imagined this was an actual event. I guess the lesson is the site’s authors must have had some real “intelligent design” going on.

…is pushing on all fronts, from public schools to research labs, to promote fundamentalist pseudo-science. Can “two plus two equals five” be far behind?

…the Carl Sagan of his time?

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.

Welcome back to MISC., the pop-cult column that thinks it’s finally figured the reasoning behind the Spice Girls’ second CD cover, which looks almost exactly like the first one except the letters SPICE are tall instead of wide. It’s probably a subtle claim that these women can get anything elongated. Elsewhere in gender-land…

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: By now even the most budget-minded among you probably have your clearance-sale ’98 wall calendars. You few remaining stragglers might consider the just-out Sensitive Geek Boys of Seattle calendar by Christina Malecka and Erika Rickel. Assorted sweet-faced models are photographed (by Trish Dickey and Cory Smith) exploring their feminine sides, in ways ranging from the sublime (smelling flowers, sewing) to the ridiculous (hugging at a “Pet Loss Grief Support Group”). Free at the Lava Lounge and elsewhere, or $6 from Rickel, SBRI, 4 Nickerson St. #200, Seattle 98109.

SIGN OF THE WEEK (at Larry’s Deli on 4th): “`Food’ Stamps Accepted Here!” Perchance a comment on the actual-food status of convenience store staples? Elsewhere in foodland…

PUT ‘EM UP, JOE: In the past couple of years, Metro route #2 has become a veritable study in contrasts for Seattle grocery fans. It passes by or within three blocks of the Plenty gourmet boutique in Madrona, the fancier-than-they-used-to-be Rogers on MLK Way and Red Apple on 15th, the already-mentioned-in-this-column Broadway QFC, the First Hill Shop Rite, the Pike Place Market, Belltown’s quite-fancier-than-it-used-to-be Dan & Ray’s, a smaller QFC, the great big Larry’s, the smallish lower Queen Anne Safeway, the fancy Queen Anne Thriftway, and the exquisite little jewel that is Ken’s Market.

And now the 2 goes right in front of the new Trader Joe’s gourmet convenience store at 1st W. and Galer. As you might expect from the slogan “Your Unique Grocery Store,” it’s from California (Pasadena to be exact). It’s got 113 stores scattered across nine states; this is its seventh Washington outlet. In less than 5,000 square feet (a tenth the size of the Broadway QFC) it’s full of goodies for gourmands with more taste than time. Everything about the store’s designed to increase the company’s profit margins above industry average while offering near-supermarket prices. Fresh meat, produce, and dairy (those notoriously low-margin departments) are almost nonexistent. There’s no bulk bins, no on-premises butchers or sandwich makers, no deli counter, no magazines, few staple goods (sugar, flour, etc.), and few housewares. Just about everything’s prepackaged, and most of it’s under the chain’s own house brands (various ethnic-flavored items are branded Trader Jose’s, Trader Giotto’s, or Trader Ming). This cutesy, “informal” style extends to store design (wood-paneled interiors, fake-driftwood aisle signs) and flyers (set in the Times Roman font family, a la early desktop publishing). The merchandise mix emphasizes wine (natch), prepacked veggies and salads, ethnic rice mixes, trail mix, candy and cookies (like you’d find at Cost Plus), frozen entrees (many of them vegetarian), frozen seafood, canned fruits and juices, soups, organic cat food, cheese, fake milk, microbrew beer and pop (including Ernest Borgnine’s Coffee Soda!), canned unground coffee, and vitamins. Unlike the monster-marts, Trader Joe’s doesn’t try to be everything to everybody. It just sells stuff that tastes good and/or lets you feel good.

THE SCIENCE OF THE LAMBS: Amid all the media furor over the threatened spread of sheep-like cloning to human subjects, there wasn’t much heard from people who might like it. Here are a few groups of potential supporters: Separatist lesbians who want reproduction without any involvement from men; bigots or twisted eugenicists dreaming of a super-race; medical-world types wishing to custom-engineer immunity to diseases (or to cultivate “spare parts” for transplants); sci-fi fans who’d like real-life mutant superheroes; techno-hippies seeking “the next plateau of human evolution;” rich people who want their own personages to live on; caste-society proponents who’d like a real Brave New World; fetishists who want to keep (or bring back) specific examples of human beauty. (Your question this week: Who’d you clone and why? Respond at clark@speakeasy.org.)

OFFAL-LY STRANGE: Your day-earlier-than-normal pre-Thanksgiving Misc. begins with feast-related news from London. In that town where darn near every non-chain restaurant has a veggie page on the menu, where mad-cow disease is still a recent memory, and where vegan activists used to pass out anti-meat flyers outside McDonald’s outlets until the chain sued them for slander (the vegans won), the latest food fad is a return to a UK tradition, delicacies made from offal–organs and other animal parts not normally consumed by modern Western humans. An AP dispatch claims “more than one-quarter of London’s 600 biggest eateries” now serve such items as pig’s-head salad, bloodcake with fried egg, goose neck (stuffed with gizzards), and veal-kidney risotto with crispy pig’s-ears. Many of these meat-byproduct dishes are illegal to commercially serve in the U.S. (you can’t even get a genuine haggis, the national dish of Scotland, ’round these parts); but hey, there’s another air-fare war going on now. In other food news…

BIG STOREWIDE SALE!: Why, you ask, would Fred Meyer (the regional everything-for-everybody chain) want to buy up QFC (the fancy-pants grocery specialists)? Besides the normal drives for consolidation in today’s chew-’em-up, spit-’em-out corporate world, QFC was threatening to infiltrate Freddy’s Oregon stronghold, and QFC’s role in the Pike & Broadway urban-strip-mall complex (with its food-drug-variety-banking combo) is too close to Freddy’s under-one-roof hypermarket concept for Freddy’s to afford to ignore.

Media coverage, natch, emphasized the merger’s potential impact on the Q’s upscale core clientele. The Q responded to this press-generated nonissue by running full page ads promising the Q will remain the Q. Tellingly, there’ve been no ads promising Freddy’s would remain Freddy’s; just a brief reassuring statement from Meyer management. But with seemingly everything else getting gentrified these days, I know I’d be afraid of such possible consequences as Ralph Lauren goods taking over the Pant Kingdom department, Smith & Hawken on the hardware shelves, Aveda at the cosmetics racks, Bang & Olufson replacing the Panasonic boom boxes in the Photo & Sound section, or even a wine shelf with F. G. Meyer’s Choice Beaujolais Nouveau.

MEANWHILE, Freddy’s won an appeal earlier this month in its plan to build a big store at the former Leary Way steel-mill site. The neighborhood advocacy group SOIL (Save Our Industrial Land), which seeks to stop the plan, sez it’ll continue appealing in higher courts. It’s not against a Freddy’s in their part of town, just against it at that particular location. Its latest flyer reiterates a suggestion made in an old Misc., that Freddy’s instead take over the ex-Ernst block up the street. (SOIL’s hotline: 789-1010, fax 789-7109.) In other retail-space news…

WATCH THIS SPACE: The former Kid Mohair on Pine will reopen (maybe as soon as this week) as the Baltic Room, a piano bar (with just beer & wine). While a lot of remodeling work has been done, the space still looks largely like its elegant former self. Why’d Mohair go the way of 80 percent of U.S. small businesses? Maybe the “cigar bar” fad passed its peak; maybe the gentlemanly surroundings clashed too much with the loud, uptempo DJ music. Why might the Baltic Room fare better? For one thing, it’s phase three of the Linda’s Tavern/ Capitol Club cartel, forming a veritable market-segmented lineup of not-specifically-gay watering holes on Pine. Imagine Linda’s as the Chevy of the chain, the Capitol as the Caddy, and the Baltic as the lush-yet-comfy Buick. In other entertainment news…

WET & WILD: Scientists in Quebec City have announced an “invisible condom” they hope to market after a couple years of further testing. According to Reuters, it’s a “polymer-based liquid that solidifies into a gel at body temperature,” forming a waterproof film that blocks STD transmission. Inventors say “it can be used without telling the partner who doesn’t want to use a latex condom.” I’m sure even before the thing gets gov’t. approval, test users will quickly find additional fun uses for the stuff, some of which might even involve sex.

MISC. ISN’T REALLY as ironic as some readers seem to believe. Really. That AFLAC commercial using a cover of John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” to sell life insurance, without commentary–now that’s ironic. In another current attempt at irony…

THE GENERATION-GAP GAP: KMTT’s promoting its “grownup rock n’ roll” format with billboards proclaiming a mantra to “Turn On, Tune In, Drop the Kids Off at Soccer.” The unspoken premise behind the slogan is the same premise that’s ruled darn near all local mainstream media outlets for the past 15 years–that everybody (or at least everybody who demographically matters to advertisers) is an ex-Sixties radical now domesticated with preteen kids. The problems with this particular gross oversimplification: (1) Despite the eternal hype, a lot of folks who were around back in that still-overhyped decade weren’t necessarily college radicals (in fact, more than half the people living in America in The Late Sixties weren’t even college students!); and (2) folks with preteen kids today are far more likely to have come of age in the late ’70s and ’80s. That’s why KMTT’s sister station KNDD peppers its 9-to-5 hours with old U2 and Duran Duran tracks, to attract the commercially-desirable ex-waveoids now toiling away in dreary office parks. Of course, it’d be harder to make a flashy billboard slogan for grownup synth-popper parents. At the youngest end, there are now households with kids who only know Jane Curtin from 3rd Rock and parents who previously only knew Curtin from Kate & Allie. Speaking of TV celebs…

NEWS FROM UP NORTH: David (Red Shoe Diaries) Duchovny, who plays an occasionally-dead FBI agent on The X-Files, wants Fox to move the show from Vancouver to L.A. so he can spend more time with his sitcom-star bride Tea Leoni. I say, they maybe oughta merge their respective shows into one production so they can be together all the time. They could play a couple of intrepid tabloid photographers in search of E.T.s, killer vampires, and other assorted grisly phenomena. They could call it The Naked Truth Is Out There. Elsewhere in the world of romance…

TAIL HUNTING: A recent Cal Berkeley study claims sexual activity can alter the brain. According to an LA Times story, the researchers claimed that after four weeks, a group of sexually-active male lab rats showed much smaller (and perhaps more sensitive and responsive) nerve cells than the control group of celibate rats. While it certainly brings new meaning to the phrase “fucking one’s brains out,” more intriguing is the name of the prof behind the study–Marc Breedlove.

But these findings wouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with TV’s famous cartoon lab mice, Pinky and the Brain. In two episodes, the genetically-altered, super-smart Brain (a sort of pint-sized Lawnmower Man with an Orson Welles voice) neglects his usual obsession with taking over the world. Both times, it’s the lure of a female mouse that does it. Elsewhere in the world of science…

REAL VIRTUALITY: The Seattle-made Virtual i-Glasses (goggles with tiny LCD video monitors inside) are no more, but another local company, Microvision, has announced it’s working on a “virtual retinal display” technology that would, if and when perfected for mass production, would use hi-tech glasses or goggles to scan video images (from TVs, PCs, VCRs, etc.) directly onto the viewer’s eye via a low-level, laser-like beam. According to the company’s PR, “the user believes he’s seeing a video image an arm’s length away.” My question is, what would happen if somebody used Microvision to watch a videocassette that’s been copy-protected with Macrovision?

HALLOWEEN ROUNDUP: Your Misc. party-watch team personally witnessed two Xenas, umpteen sword-‘n’-sorcery warriors, lotsa devils, at least three Pippi Longstockings, two Fred Flintstones, a Grinch (with his dog Max and Cindy Lou Who), a bloodied Princess Di (trailed by a photographer sporting a “Le Press Pass” badge), one Bill Gates, several Catwomen (one with a condom on her tail), a pregnant cheerleader, a martini olive, a pair of potted poinsettias, and a Laverne & Shirley pair (I told “Laverne” how much I loved the film Awakenings; she didn’t know what I was talking about).