Mattel’s got a Web page where you can vote for Barbie’s next profession. The choices offered, of course, disappoint.

I mean, Let’s have some Barbie jobs for the modern age:

• Twitter Update Ghost Writer Barbie!
• Bankruptcy Attorney Barbie!
• Life Coach Barbie!
• Goldman Sachs Bonus Barbie!
• iPhone App Designer Barbie!
• Outplacement Counselor Barbie!
• Doggie Daycare Barbie!
• User Experience Consultant Barbie!
• Day Spa Towel Maid Barbie!
• Chinese Barbie Doll Assembly Worker Barbie!

The “jobless recovery” might stay that way for a while; while construction and office jobs may never come back.

The owner of Salty’s on Alki (and former owner of Red Robin and a string of fern bars) is a big right wing political talker and fundraiser.

The Elements of Style, that ubiquitous writing guidebook, turned 50 last year. I didn’t notice. But linguistics prof Geoffrey Pullum did notice. He took the opportunity to rant against “Fifty Years of Stupid Grammar Advice.”

New York media vet and gossippeer Tina Brown has issued a brief list of “Things to Stop Bitching About in 2010.” Among them, she’d like to banish the notion that “newspapers are dying because of the Internet”:

What a load of Spam! American newspapers are dying mostly because they were so dull for so long a whole generation gave up on them. They needed to innovate back in the Fax Age of the 1980s but were too self-important and making too much money with their monopolies to acknowledge it.

or,

I Survived the Bush Junta and All I Got Was This Lousy iPod

WE’LL WONDER HOW WE EVER DID WITHOUT:

The whole WWW thang, social networking, smart phones, Netflix, Adobe Flash, Netroots organizing, Jon & Stephen, Keith & Rachel, HBO-style serial drama, digital video, Pixar, the gay-marriage movement.

WE’LL LOOK BACK AND LAUGH AT:

‘Sexting,’ Twitter, Auto Tune, tea parties, Jon & Kate Plus Eight, Glenn Beck, CGI-enhanced superhero movies, Sarah Palin, American Idol, Botox, the first dot-com frenzy, the second dot-com (“Web 2.0”) frenzy, the real-estate frenzy, the stock-market frenzy, the war frenzy.

ALTERNATE-HISTORY FANTASISTS WILL DREAM ABOUT WHAT IF:

Gore won, 9/11 was prevented, the print-media and music industries got their heads out of their asses, the New Orleans levees had been properly built.

ALREADY FORGOTTEN:

Y2K, Napster, $4 gas, Enron, Octomom, Balloon Boy.

ALREADY MISSED:

The P-I, the Sonics, Washington Mutual (pre-“WaMu”), “big book” catalogs, Tower Records, the Bon Marché (and all the other Macyfied stores), New Yorker Films, The Rocket, Sunset and Leilani Lanes, the Ballard Mannings/Denny’s, the International Channel, Olds/Pontiac/Saturn/Plymouth, Chubby & Tubby, the Twin Teepees, McLeod Residence, Northwest Afternoon, inauguration morning, Ted Kennedy, Pluto.

GOOD RIDDANCE TO:

Bush/Cheney, all the corrupt cronies of Bush/Cheney, all the graft-happy funders of Bush/Cheney, all the apologists and hucksters for Bush/Cheney (even the ones currently still on air and in print).

I will admit to having uttered statements #4 and #5 on Troubletown cartoonist Lloyd Dangle’s list of “Blind and Unquestioning Ways to Love Obama.” Only I don’t think they’re so blind or unquestioning:

#4: “In case you weren’t paying attention—Obama ran as a centrist—which is exactly what he’s being.”

He certainly was never as far to the left as I am, which is still not as far to the left as many people I know are. And he’s filled his administration with Carter/Clinton vets, Beltway insiders, and lite-right “new Democrats.” I knew he’d do this and still supported him.

#5: “He’s so smart he’s using a secret fake-out strategy. We can’t see it yet.”

Well, I can see what I think his strategy is. It’s to render the Republicans utterly irrelevant, leaving centrist Dems such as himself as the natural “party of business.” This would leave the “conservadems” as America’s conservative party, and allow room for a real liberal party or parties, at least in non-Presidential races.

Whilst perusing SeattleTimes.com’s old stories about the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, I discovered this headline from May 2007: “This is a composite guy’s dream.”

I can see it now:

COMPOSITE GUY! Assembled from spare parts! He’s got the heart of a nun, the brain of a rocket scientist, the hands of a surgeon, the legs of an Olympic distance runner, the arms of a warrior, and the guts of a CHAMPION!

Thanks to Jennifer Manlowe, I’ve heard of two researchers who’ve got a new book called Why Women Have Sex. I haven’t read the book itself, just the UK newspaper story about it.

The story claims the researchers have deteremined there are exactly 237 reasons for a (hetero) woman to do the sex—no more, no less.

You know most of the common reasons—lust, love, baby-making, social-ladder climbing, cash, barter, kicks, comfort, novelty, submission, empowerment, celebration, consolation, getting/keeping/dumping a guy, because all the other girls are doing it, because parents/teachers/preachers say not to, and so forth.

But let’s imagine some reasons that might land a little further down on the list of 237, some of the less-common reasons for sex:

• He cooked a really great dinner.
• He wore something so ugly, she had to get it off of him.
• There was nothing good on TV.
• The only good DVDs at the store were taken.
• Pilates just gets too repetitive.
• That church retreat weekend made her feel too clean.
• To crowd out the noise of the neighbors/kids/voices in her head.
• She wanted to try out a Sleep Number bed and he had one.
• She wanted to prove he wasn’t gay.
• She wanted to prove she wasn’t gay.
• She wanted to prove she didn’t have implants.
• She wanted to prove the rumors about men of a certain profession/ethnic group/nationality/weight class.
• Hey, why not?

Then there are the “reasons” that would fall off the 237 altogether. For instance, I’m pretty sure no woman has ever had sex with a man just because he used a certain brand of deodorant body spray.

Some clever publishers, with permission of the bands being referenced, are putting out an Indie Rock Coloring Book. (I know, some of you snarkers would color all the pages pale, white, or the colors of dingy discount sneakers.)

David McCandless has a handy, and well designed, “Hierarchy of Digital Distractions.” One example: “If landline rings while you’re reading Fcebook, Landline wins your attention—at least until a text message arrives.”

Thanks to iTunes’ automatic search for album-cover art, I woke up this morning to find this image now attached to the brassy 1959 instrumental hit “Manhattan Spiritual.” I’m sure some of you are thinking, “Sad relic of a Mad Men past we’re glad to be over.” Since this is the No-Comment Dept., I’ll let your thoughts carry the day.

…to jump on the grunge-nostalgia bandwagon with a fabricated feature entitled “Soundgarden Inadvertently Reunites at Area Cinnabon.”

The piece’s author and editors might not have known there really was a Soundgarden partial reunion last week at the new Crocodile. Only instead of Chris Cornell (ex-hubby of one of the new Croc’s co-owners), who splits his time these days between Paris and Hollywood, the lead vocal role was assumed by the still charismatic-as-all-hell Tad Doyle.

Of late, I’ve been noting the eerie similarities between two U.S. corporations with similar names:

• American International Group (AIG), the insurance and investment giant now under fire for funny-money shenanigans; and
• American International Pictures (AIP), innovators in teen-oriented exploitation features from 1955 to 1980.

Let us compare and contrast, shall we?

AIP: First release: the original The Fast and the Furious.
AIG: First business: corporate insurance for US and European firms in China.

AIP: Worked on low budgets. Shot some films in as few as two days.
AIG: Spared no expense, at our expense, to enrich its own speculators.

AIP: Carefully market-tested titles and posters before making each film.
AIG: Brazenly insisted its mortgage-based derivatives were safe and secure.

AIP: Redubbed the original Mad Max from Australian into American.
AIG: Stamped questionable investment products with “AAA” ratings.

AIP: Mixed-and-matched film genres to make new hits (I Was a Teenage Werewolf, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini).
AIG: Sliced-and-diced mortgages into credit default swaps and other slabs of tainted loan-burger.

AIP: Used subsidiary names to release even-lower-budget films (including the original Little Shop of Horrors).
AIG: Renamed its consumer insurance division “21st Century” to protect it from the now-tarnished AIG brand.

AIP: Helped launch the film careers of Annette Funicello, Jack Nicholson, Cher, Vincent Price, Pam Grier, Peter Fonda, and producer-director Roger Corman.
AIG: Paid “failure bonuses” to high-ranking derivative traders and executives.

AIP: Taken over by sitcom producer Filmways (The Beverly Hillbillies). Film library now owned by MGM.
AIG: Taken over by the U.S. government.

AIP: In-house formulae of sex, horror, and comedy helped inspire The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
AIG: Media critic Robert Stein has decribed politicians’ and pundits’ response to the bonus scandal as “Bailout Rocky Horror Shows.”

AIP: Known for its hokiness, its audacity, its improbable stories, and its ridiculous monsters.
AIG: Not much different.

“Badpaintingsofbarackobama.com.”