…a lot lately, letting interesting-sounding links take me any which where. While browsing the “Stores” page listings, I ran across something called “I Love ‘Boobs.'” Within the “Wall” (comments thread) was a lovely, loving ode to women’s self confidence. (Hint: It might have scrolled off of this particular page by the time you click on it. Keep going back through the thread.)

I like the idea that a woman telling other women how smart, daring, and beautiful they are can coexist, with seemingly no contradiction whatsoever, in an online discussion dedicated to the most superficial expression of admiration toward the female physique.

This year’s most famous (real) pregnant teen happens to live in a town that’s a homonym for the name of last year’s most famous (fictional) pregnant teen. The result, of course, is a Photoshopped movie poster advertising that quirky comedy hit, Juneau!

A few of you might have noticed that the Obama campaign’s got a a really slick graphic-design department.

One of this design team’s major motifs is a solitary, serif capital “O.”

To many, that letter, presented in that context, is reminiscent of a magazine whose figurehead and co-owner is a big Obama supporter.

To others of us, it reminds of The Story of O, the classic novel and movie about bondage, discipline, submission, pain-as-pleasure, and the total surrender of one’s being to a figure of strong authority.

Damn, doesn’t that sound exactly like the ol’ Republican seduce-n’-swindle syndrome, from which Obama promises to deliver us.

Oh, and the time remaining until Election Day? Nine and a half weeks.

Certain commentators and bloggers on Tuesday were all outraged or snickering or both. The reason: John McCain, in a campaign stop at the Sturgis bike rally, “jokingly” suggested his wife ought to enter the event’s biker beauty pageant–a contest known for nudity and sexually suggestive stage acts.

But across the proverbial pond, a veteran model who’d appeared in dozens of topless/bottomless stills in the 1990s is now the first lady of France.

Mind you, there are differences between the two situations.

Carla Bruni had retired from that sort of public exposure before she became a political wife. Cindy McCain already was a political wife when her hubby made his joke, which was applauded by the Sturgis audience but jeered and mocked elsewhere.

But a bigger difference is context. The French edition of Elle is a far different space than the Buffalo Chip Campground.

I’M THINKING OF TURNING the print version of MISCmedia into something closer to a slick magazine, with prettier paper and a real cover and everything.

Three things are keeping me from making the jump:

1. The startup costs.

2. The time commitment involved (which is really an excuse for the emotional commitment involved).

3. The iffy current state of the magazine biz.

Specifically, there’s a glut of newsstand magazines out there. Publishers have tried to seek out every potentially lucrative demographic niche market, and have accordingly shipped hundreds of new titles in recent years.

We’ve previously mentioned such hi-profile attempts as Talk, George, Brill’s Content, O: The Oprah Magazine, those British-inspired “bloke” magazines such as Maxim, those corporate-warrior business magazines such as Fast Company, and those Helvetica-typefaced home-design magazines such as Wallpaper.

But that all’s just the proverbial flower of the weed.

The shelves of Steve’s Broadway News and the big-box bookstores are verily flooded with unauthorized Pokemon collector mags, kids’ versions of Sports Illustrated and Cosmopolitan, Internet magazines forever searching for excuses to put movie stars on the cover (“This celebrity has never actually used a computer, but somebody’s put up an unofficial fan site about her”), superstar-based music magazines, genre-based music magazines, fashion-lifestyle magazines, ethnic-lifestyle magazines, and “ground level” magazines a step or two up from zinehood (Rockrgrl, No Depression).

(Then there are all the ever-more-specialized sex mags, from Barely Legal to Over 50.)

In all, there are now over 5,200 newsstand-distributed titles big enough to be tracked by trade associations. (That figure doesn’t include many ground-level titles. It also doesn’t include most comic-book titles, which these days are sold in specialty stores with their own distribution networks. It does include many regional and city magazines that don’t try to be sold everywhere.)

The good news about this is that it proves folks are indeed reading these days, no matter what the elitist pundits rant about our supposed post-literate society. Or, at least, that the media conglomerates are willing to place big investment bets that folks are still reading.

And it means a lot of writers and editors (even mediocre ones) have gotten work.

The bad news is it can’t last. Literally, there’s no place to put them all. Not even in the big-box stores.

Even the ones that make it into enough outlets can’t all attract attention through the clutter. Some big wholesalers now find only 33 to 36 percent of the copies they ship out actually sell through to consumers. The rest are shipped back to warehouses, stripped of their covers (which go back to the publishers for accounting purposes), and either recycled or incinerated.

One industry analyst estimates more than half the newsstand mags out there now will be gone within a year.

Granted, there are still enough startups in the pipeline that the net reduction will likely be smaller than that.

And many, many of these threatened titles won’t be missed much, maybe not even by those who work on them. (Though I could be wrong; perhaps in 2002 there will be eBay auctions for scarce old copies of Joe or Women’s Sports & Fitness).

So where will all the thousands of potentially soon-to-be-jobless word and image manipulators go?

Barring a sudden revival of commercial “content” websites (now intensely disliked by investors), a lot of them might end up trolling the streets of New York and other cities, trying to round up nickel-and-dime investments from pals to start up their own publishing ventures.

Just like me.

TOMORROW: Men’s designer fashions become just as silly as women’s.

ELSEWHERE:

• “Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About”….
• Can the lowly banner ad be raised to the status of an art form? Should it?…

The nonexistent (outside Africa) hetero AIDS scare that was supposed to hit us any year now has cost governments and health groups about a billion bucks. Bucks that could’ve been spent on treatments and possible preventions for those who really did have it, or who really were at risk.

There was once a time when the Seattle Times wouldn’t run ads such as the following, at least not in a quarter-page size in the middle of the A Section. (OK, sure, they ran those scary “bed wetting” therapy ads back in the day, and those all-text ads for “The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches.” But not this.)

Ex-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s sudden downfall has engendered infinite rants, jokes, comedy sketches, editorial cartoons, and, oh yeah, blog posts.

A few of the commentators actually talked about the Spitzer case. Some of them, particularly the Wall St. Journal editorial page, postively gloated in the comeuppance of a former prosecutor, who’d risen to fame by aggressively targeting sleazy tactics among stock traders.

Some wingnut bloggers smirked that a Democrat had been “got” in a sting after several Republican sex scandals. (Historically, male politicians of all parties, races, and nationalities have loved them hookers, through pretty much all of recorded history.)

Some progressive bloggers questioned why Spitzer, a fighting Democrat on the rise, was targeted by the highly politicized Bush “Justice” Department.

Some of the Spitzer commentators veer far from the original, simple scandal, digressing into what the writers/artists/comedians would really rather talk about. Among these digressions: wives who stand by their men too much; men with reputations on the line who do compulsive, dumb things.

I also want to digress to a side issue.

With every famous sex-work client who gets caught and pleas for public understanding, an opportunity is lost.

I want one of these guys to stand up forthrightly and announce:

“I’ve been a John. I AM a John. I admit it. No, I proclaim it.I liked it. I may do it again, maybe soon, maybe even today.

These women are fabulous. They deserve our utmost respect and admiration.

If my own darling daughter or beloved son chose this as a temporary or even a permanent career, I’d offer my sincerest support. And so would my dear wife. And so would my dear wife’s gardener/lover, and her driver/lover.

And so should all of you.

That’s why, as one of this state’s top public figures, I introduce a bill today to legalize, tax, and regulate this vital sector of our economy.

Furthermore, this bill will provide full health benefits for these workers, plus a great retirement plan.

And finally, I’m authorizing the state tourism board to launch a new campaign aimed at the clean, upscale sex tourist—especially if he’s paying in stable Euros. ‘Come for the brothels; stay for the restaurants.'”

I’m not in a position to create such legislation, only to advocate it.

And I might never get the opportunity to create such legislation.

Because I may never get elected to public office.

Because I’m admitting to have been a customer of escort services.

I’ve also had close friends who worked for escort services; some as service providers, some as office administrators.

I’d like them to have some more respect from our governments and our society, for the fine work they do and for the fine people they are.

And I’d like the profession’s private customers to become its public supporters.

…your Starbuckless evening. Now on to a new day!:

• Did you know Seattle’s got a waterfront maritime museum? Well, you better see it now, while you still can.
• Seattle U to students: We wanna become the undisputed top private college in the region. To do that, your tuition’s going up.
• A local politician is heeding the siren call for capital-C Change. It’s Republican Dino Rossi.
• Real headline: “Seattle home prices up a tad in Q4, says report.” I’ve been around the Seattle music scene too long to think of “a Tad” as something small.
• Jus’ for fun, let’s take a look at who’d like to buy the Seattle City Council.
• Urban townhomes: Could they possibly look any less dorky?
• Did a honeymooning hubby really invite two strippers to his and his bride’s hotel room, or was it all, as hubby now claims, an unsolicited break-in?
• The European Union’s fined Microsoft $1.3 billion. To put it into perspective, that’s enough to pay Bill Gates’s household expenses for almost a day.

The Utah guy who wanted to sell “sanitized” (i.e., censored) versions of Hollywood DVDs has been arrested and accused of having sex with underage girls.

…you might not have seen before: Serious, respectful sex advice for straight guys!

…anxiously awaits the long-threatened but still nonexistent Snowstorm ’08, here’s what else has been going on:

• That plan to restore the boarded-up, aluminum-clad windows at the King County Courthouse? Not gonna happen.
• That plan to channel state money for a Husky Stadium remodel? Not dead yet.
• Seattle’s finally getting a new strip club; sure enough, it’s situated right alongside the unofficially-named South Lake Union Trolley.
• The many human services groups based at First United Methodist Church are packin’ up and movin’ out. The last church service at the classic sanctuary: Easter, 3/23. That building’s being saved for commercial use, but the ’50s-era annex building’s going away.
• There’s good news for music lovers: Capitol Music, the city’s top vendor of orchestral instruments and sheet music for more than 90 years, has reopened in Roosevelt, a year after development consumed its last downtown location.
• Caucus or primary? Wash. state’s got both.

…for Evening Magazine went lovely yesterday morning. We shot at a variety of locations, including the freshly re-closed (alas) Andy’s Diner and the under-destruction Rainier Cold Storage building.

Elsewhere in recent days:

• Blood bank bias. Say that five times fast.
• The next local company to potentially get bought out: Getty Images.
• Today’s AT&T: Wannabe Internet censors.
• Washington Mutual used to call itself “The Friend of the Family.” We didn’t know “the family” meant its own top execs.
• Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren: One more year, then it’s quits.
• With all the hoopla concerning oil spills and sludge, one can forget that diesel watercraft pollute the air too.
• This is the dawning of the age of asparagus.
• More Catholic boy-abuse claims are made, this time dating back to the 1950s.
• A research study by two “nonprofit journailsm organizations” concludes: Bush lied. A lot.

…electioneering going on today in NV and SC. Around here:

• Strippers at Sugar’s in Shoreline are fighting back after cops staged what the dancers call a pattern of mass arrests and harassments.
• The standardized-testing backlash in the schools continues, as the State Senate considers delaying the last WASL graduation requirements.
• The legislature’s also pondering whether to impose a cop on condo conversions, and is allocating money to provide financial counseling to foreclosure victims.
• A Canadian border guard insists he didn’t take cavity searches too far.

And these are among the stories you might discuss at work, on the bus, or in chatrooms:

• A “person of interest” is in custody in the New Year’s Eve stabbing on Capitol Hill.
• A stage musical based on the Shrek movies premieres in Seattle this fall. As you all remember, the plot of the first Shrek film involved an egomaniacal feudal lord who wanted to banish from his realm anything funky, funny, strange, or otherwise less than upscale. Seattle will be a perfect place to retell this. Speaking of which…
• Will any arts groups be left at the Capitol Hill Odd Fellows hall after the new landlord’s done raising the rents?
• Bush decreed the Navy doesn’t have to follow environmental regulations; allowing sonar transmissions no matter what they do to whales. Remember: The military is here to protect.
• The SeaTimes points with pride to a volunteer patrol that’s helping drive the hookers away from Aurora Avenue. Of course, without the hookers, all Aurora has to offer is the Beth’s Cafe 12-egg omelet.
• Reversing past trends, the developers of a partially-built condo project in Lower Queen Anne will instead convert the building to rentals.
• The Seattle Monorail Project will soon settle its affairs and shut down; while vague plans for an Eastside commuter rail line begin to take shape.
• The revised date on a city hearing to discuss preserving the endangered Manning’s/Denny’s building in Ballard: Feb. 20.
• State Sen. Eric Oemig, D-Kirkland, would like the Legislature to go on record supporting Bush’s impeachment.
• Not so painless: The anesthesiology staff at Northwest Hospital asked for a pay raise. Instead, the hospital’s CEO fired them all.