AN EARLY REMINDER to make plans for our MISCmedia@1 party on Thursday, June 8, starting around 7:30 p.m., at the quaint Ditto Tavern, 5th and Bell. Yeah, it’s 21 and over.

TO OUR READERS: Yr. ob’t corresp’d’t has been summoned to that great spectator sport known as jury duty. Daily site updates may or may not, therefore, be spotty over the next few days. Stay tuned for more.

SOME SHORT STUFF TODAY, starting with a few attempts to correct some commonly-believed but untrue “facts”:

• There is no “healthy cigarette.” Not even (or rather, especially not) that brand that’s also commonly but falsely believed to be made by Native Americans. Yeah, the additives and flavorings stuck into some other cigs aren’t nice to inhale. But tobacco itself’s lethal enough on its own.
• Safeway Food and Drug is not owned by the Mormon Church. It’s really owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the leveraged buyout/junk bond kings chronicled in Barbarians at the Gate. The Mormon church also doesn’t own CBS, Coca-Cola, or Hershey’s.
• You can’t really get away with a racist joke by backtracking and claiming you were only making a “parody” of a racist joke. That tactic’s known in the trade as a “lame excuse.” Try it too often, and you’re likely to end up with a “parody” of a punch in the face.
• You’re not ‘the next step of human evolution,’ no matter how much E you take. You’re just a normal, mortal, fallible human being like all the rest of us.

THE FINE PRINT (in the masthead of the women’s bodybuilding magazine Oxygen, no relation to the women’s cable channel and website of the same name): “Oxygen reserves the right to reject any advertisement without reason.”

At last, someone strikes a blow for rational arguments in advertising!

JUNK E-MAIL OF THE WEEK: “The domain: www.miscmedia.com, is ranked #68919 out of 400118 domains in the WebsMostLinked.com database.”

Alllrigghhttt! This month, we’re gonna try to make it all the way up to #67324!

THE MAILBAG (via Nick Bauroth): “Enough with the baby-boomers already! Can’t you find something else to blame for your shortcomings? And no, yuppies and fratboys are not acceptable substitutes.”

Actually, when I criticize others it’s for the sake of criticizing others, not out of misplaced blame or jealousy or any other excuses.

And as for any “shortcomings,” they’re just about all my doing (or the doing of specific, deep-rooted, influences upon my individual personal/career development).

I come, after all, from the same age group and race/gender status, in the same metro region, as folks who’ve gone on to win Pulitzers and Emmys, get elected to public office, record triple-platinum albums, and/or threaten to permanently stifle all present and future competition in the software industry.

IN OTHER NEWS: It may be the end of the company Seattle’s landmark Smith Tower was named after.

MONDAY: Never mind Never Mind Nirvana.

ELSEWHERE:

• The creators of this Bad Candy website appear to have a cross-cultural phobia thang going on. Just about the only product they dislike that’s not from Asia or Latin America is Circus Peanuts (which I, naturaly, love)….