Our surprise added co-feature is The Genius Factory, the poignant/hilarious saga of a failed sperm bank.

…by yrs. truly covers Truth, a Brit academic’s guided tour through the ideological minefields of what we can or cannot ever really, truly know.

…already the subject of some sketchy “alternative guidebooks,” now have to face the “creative” advice contained in some guy’s “Dirt Cheap Guide to Portland.” (Sample entry: “Motorized vehicles are illegal in Portland. Perpetrators are stoned to death…”)

…I can heartily endorse: Guys Read, a literacy and reading-promo program aimed at the young male mind. (Yes, males do have minds!)

…my ongoing effort to get back to some of my dozen or so unfinished book ideas, I’m taking on yet another.

This would be a straightforward how-to title, for folks buying their first digital TV set. In the next few years, millions are expected to go through the same ordeal of tech-terminology and salesperson-doublespeak I recently faced (see a few entries below). If I can help just a few thousand consumers past this potential purchasing minefield, I can pay for my own recent DTV set.

Thus, I’m asking all loyal MISCmedia readers who’ve gone through this ordeal yourselves for advice on what should be in the book. As always, email your thoughts.

…sooner, but I’ve got another Seattle Times book review online now. It’s about Finding Betty Crocker, depicting a Minneapolis women’s-history expert’s search for the legend, and the reality, behind the brand name.

…Seattle Times book review today. It’s about Love’s Confusions, a delightful little academic treatise comparing how various thinkers have thought about desire and devotion over the centuries.

The most famous brand in romance novels, “Harlequin Romance,” is apparently to be retired next year. The company’s still churnin’ out the paperbacks; but the firm’s specialty lines have taken the sales, and the shelf space, away from what had been its flagship series.

Masculine-oriented readers might scoff at ’em, but romances are the last commercially successful branch of old-fashioned pulp fiction. They’re “adventure” stories written to precise pubilsher-decreed formulae–just as the Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, the Shadow, Tarzan, and Doc Savage had been.

Horror, sci-fi, mystery, and action novels are still being published in paperback, of course; but those industry segments are, for the most part, not as centrally editorially-controlled as they used to be (with some exceptions, such as Star Trek novels).

No, it’s the romances that are still this heavily pre-planned by the home office. Each “series” brand has its own characteristics–length, setting, characters, explicitness level (some of the racier romance lines are now the only sexual material allowed for sale at Wal-Mart).

This obsession with order and contrivance can be seen in some of the “chick lit” novels marketed to women who consider themselves too hip to read romances. “Chick lit” stories might not always have happy endings, but they seem to all have perky young heroines who all live in glamorous cities and all have glamorous AND high-paying careers, just like the heroines in certain romance series. (Trust me on this: In the real world, nobody who writes for an alternative weekly newspaper can afford Sarah Jessica Parker’s wardrobe.)

We’ll leave this item with a totally unrelated aphorism from the source of this news flash, “Superromance” novelist Susan Gable: “Beware of men with expensive, flashy cars and expensive, flashy teeth.”

According to the alt-media conventional wisdom, when TV and radio ratings decline, major-label CD sales slump, and major-studio movie ticket sales stagnate, it’s supposed to be a hopeful omen toward the impending demise of the “dinosaurs.” But when book sales show a similar slump, we’re all supposed to get outraged n’ frightful that those rubes out there in bad ol’ mainstream America aren’t consuming what’s good for ’em.

The truth lies elswhere.

High, low, and middlebrow content throughout the mechanical (print) and analog (broadcast) media have had to make room in the public “mindspace” for these newfangled digital media (Internet, DVDs, video games, et al.). It’ll all sort out eventually, leaving some investors (of time, energy, and/or money) into various of these media prosprous and others forlorn.

…a novel that had an illustration for every page was called a “Big Little Book.” Zak Smith’s personal project to create “Illustrations for Every Page of Gravity’s Rainbow“ might be considered a Big Big Big Book.

…Lemony Snicket (hearts) H. P. Lovecraft.

…by yrs. truly in the Seattle Times concerns two memoirs with one plot-point in common—that high-flyiin’ enlightenment salesman Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

Erotic Harry Potter fan fiction.

I arrived at the notorious “can of Spam building” on Howell Street, across from Re-bar, promptly at 7:15 a.m. Entercom now runs four stations from the building, including KNDD, where I was supposed to speak.

The 16th floor entrance beheld a permanent sign on the glass doors: DOOR IS LOCKED. RECEPTIONIST WILL OPEN. Only there was no receptionist. There was nobody in sight. Here it was, commercial radio’s most competitive day-part, and the joint seemed deserted.

After fifteen minutes of this ominous/glorious silence, Justin Chamberlin, KNDD’s morning show producer showed up at the door, let me in, and guided me down a thin, steep spiral staircase to the studio.

Down on the fifteenth floor were all the usual radio-station wall decorations—”goofy” promotional displays, Gold Record Awards honoring the station’s part in promoting assorted silly corporate-rock hits. After a short walk we were in the studio, overlooking I-5 and the west slope of Capitol Hill. DJ No-Name briskly introduced himself. I sat at a vacant microphone, quickly donned some headphones, and the interview was underway.

This is an hour at which, if I’m awake, I’m usually incoherent. Nevertheless, I managed to speak at least semi-lucidly for twelve uninterrupted minutes (a rare privilege in bigtime, morning-drive-time commercial radio, as I don’t have to tell you).

I talked about how Cobain wrote that he’d wished he could have been as audience-lovin’ as Freddy Mercury. I listed a few of the most important people in NW music history, such as early recording engineer Kearney Barton. I plugged Loser and The Myrtle of Venus. I mentioned my attendance at Neumo’s for Kim Warnick’s “retirement roast” the previous night. (More about that later, perhaps.)

Then it was time to play another Green Day oldie or whatever. Chamberlin efficiently saw me out the door. My bit to help save an endangered industry was through.

…in the Seattle Times today. This one’s about Strange Angel. It’s the biography of John Parsons, a sci-fi fandom pioneer, a sex-cult leader, and one of the inventors of modern rocket science.