…before WashState’s Presidential caucuses, but Tim Egan’s already got one Seattleite’s perspective on the election: How does Obama sell himself as an Historic Moment in American History without mentioning race?

AS A HYPER-HUSTLING SOCIETY pressures folk to be smiling and assertive 24/7, one Eric G. Wilson dares to praise good old-fashioned melancholy.

…(other than the spendorifical live book event occurrin’ tonight at 2407 First Avenue (note corrected address)):

• Another Gregoire big idea: Start charging tolls on the current 520 bridge, to help save up for a replacement span.
• After what seems like an eternity, the Northwest African American Museum will finally open in March at the old Coleman School building.
• The City’s new plan to deal more “humanely” with the homeless: Give ’em 48 hours’ notice before confiscating all their stuff.
• December retail sales: up at Costco, down at Nordstrom.
• SW Wash. floodwater makes livestock a little less live.
• Many more state residents are living in poverty compared to 2001.
• Laurelhurstians: So rich they can hire their own cops.
• Hanford’s got some nuclear waste that could possibly spontaneously combust if exposed to air. Officials say they’ve got a plan to deal with it.

(Other than the NH primary, in which candidates won who hadn’t won in Iowa, leaving everything still pretty much wide open):

• Port of Seattle bosses told a citizen hearing they’ve got a surefire reform agenda in place. Citizens responded with a rousing chorus of “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
• It’s cheaper to get homeless folks off the streets than to just let ’em wind up in emergency rooms and prisons.
• Larry Craig’s new line of defense: I only did it once. Try and prove I didn’t.
• Ex-Gov. Booth Gardner supports an assisted-suicide initiative. Current Gov. Gregoire doesn’t support it.
• Everybody loves Children’s Hospital, unless they’re Laurelhurst residents and the hospital wants to totally ruin their views with new tall buildings.

As always, this, the most accurate In/Out list published anywhere, compiles what will become hot and less-hot in the upcoming year, not necessarily what’s hot and less-hot at this current point in time. If you believe everything that’s hot now will just keep getting hotter in the future, we’ve got some subprime mortgage hedge funds to sell you.

• Clearcuts, landslides. Could there possibly be a cause-n’-effect thang goin’ on?
• The Church of Mary Magdalene, a vital ministry to downtown’s homeless women, needs a short-term home.
• Did a Boeing subsidiary operate charter flights to CIA secret prisons/torture chambers? That’s what an ex-employee alleges.

• The giant bowling-pin sign from Leilani Lanes will be saved and put on display, out in rural Snohomish County.
• MS Windows Vista made Cnet.co.uk’s list of the worst tech products ever. Number one on the list: The Sinclair C5, a three-wheeled electric scooter from the creator of the SInclair computer. (I think it looks rather charming myself.)
• The feds won’t demand the names of thousands of Amazon.com book customers after all.
• Mayor Nickels’s office has declared a temporary lull on harassing the homeless.
• How long will it take to get full ferry service to Pt. Townsend again? Maybe a year.
• Seattle no longer has America’s fastest-inflating home prices, losing that dubious spot to Charlotte, NC.
• Keeping one person in prison in Wash. State costs $30,000 to $50,000 a year.

…to our last update to our piece about the Amazon Kindle: That NEA study that claimed (or was interpreted by some pundits as claiming) Americans don’t read anymore? Probably not.

…Seattle’s last un-gentrified neighborhood? You might already be too late.

THE URBAN REST STOP, a hygeine center for the homeless situated at 1924 9th Ave. along downtown’s edge, is holding a grand re-opening Thursday morning to celebrate a remodeling and expansion. The new facility is already busy to capacity.

WEIRD CRIME UPDATE: A guy claims he’s the brother of “D.B. Cooper,” the pseudonymous skyjacker who parachuted from a plane in 1971, carrying a suitcase full of cash, and was never seen again. The alleged brother claims “Cooper” survived the jump, settled down quietly in Bonney Lake, WA, and lived until 1994. Believe what you will.

…of the non-denominational “winter” decorations being designed for display at Sea-Tac Airport this December, they seem to be preparing to celebrate Festivus.

Every now and then one of these “gender” pundits proclaims that political conservatives have absolutely no tolerance for, or vision of, female sexuality.

Bosh.

There is a right-wing female sexuality. Several, in fact. You might not be particularly turned on by/approve of ’em, but they’re there.

This was proven back in the pre-Reagan ’70s, with Marabel Morgan’s once-popular paperback book The Total Woman. In it, Morgan extols the ultra-eager-to-please wife, who might not have a career but who works damned hard to keep energy in the marriage bed.

The current edition’s Amazon page is chock full of juicy, snarky customer comments. Most of the commentors howl at Morgan’s vision of female totality as little more than passive-aggressive bimbodom.

But is Morgan’s fantasy woman really that passe?

Perhaps she’s simply been succeeded by another set of ideals.

Morgan’s vision of the conservative feminine libido belonged to a conservatism that was already fading when her book came out.

It was a conservatism of hierarchy, of rules, of clearly defined social roles. A conservatism of modest luxury and quiet good taste, when business executives at least still talked about prosperity for all; when politicians at least still talked about civility.

Those days are long gone.

The organized thuggery and egomania that are today’s “conservative” culture are topics I’ve ranted about before, and probably will again.

But with a changed culture come changed personal roles. That includes female roles. (I’ve already written that the sole positive thing I can say about Bush is he respects strong women.)

I happen to have had acquaintances of differing degrees with a few of these modern right-wing women. I won’t get into the sordid particulars.

Let’s just say I’ve seen what a new Marabel Morgan might write about in gushing tribute.

I’m sure you can, too.

And as soon as I’ve figured out how to add them newfangled comment threads to this site, I’ll ask you to add your own suggested chapter titles for a new self-help tome, Nookie for Nubile Neocons.

‘Til then, take these as inspiration:

• “You don’t need a pool to have a pool boy!”
• “You never feel so empowered as when you’ve fired half your employees!”
• “Jamaica’s best gigolos!”
• “Keeping your lover away from hubby’s mistress!”
• “Fine handcrafted dildos for under $3,000!”
• “Your new corner office–it’s incomplete without your own ‘casting couch!'”
• “Marrying a closeted gay politician–no pesky sexual demands, AND you get to be a public victim when he’s found out!”
• “Turn that spare guest house into a dungeon! Have fun, AND frighten the household staff!”

Seattle artist Chris Jordan, whom I’ve mentioned here before, is now displaying his work in L.A. His politically-charged, computer-assisted photo murals really need to be seen life-size, but this link shows successive close-ups to show his creative expression of (usually negative) factoids about American life.

…Joe Martin (not to be confused with the All My Children patriarch) delivers a terrific speech to a “Building the Political Will to End Homelessness” conference. Martin’s topics include America’s need for a “theology of hope” that would combine compassion with effective action.

Meanwhile, Real Change has run “A Seattle Manifesto,” Tim Harris’s call for more social justice and less demographic cleansing.

…the rhetorical question of whether Americans are all now living within someone’s insane delusions.

…who have sex with boys (or girls) really be perceived as less icky than men who have sex with girls (or boys)?

…is a longstanding advocate of inventive thinking and of progressive politics. It turns out that these two causes just might be more than coincidentally related. Some UCLA and NYU researchers now claim there are distinct “liberal” and “conservative” brain patterns.

If true, it would help explain why I, and most of my lefty friends, always fail to be persuaded by righty lines of argument, as seen in the op-eds, the talk radio, the Fixed Noise Channel, etc. Those screeds are meant to appeal viscerally to what conservative-bashing liberals call “the lizard brain,” via calls to fear, greed, and prejudice.

Still, I wouldn’t take this study as gospel truth. But then again, a healthy regard for skepticism’s a key component of the liberal brain…