Thursday, October 31, 2002

A STORY ON KIRO-TV, not included on the station's website, claims Seattle's second (and Portland's first) in the number of unmarried living-together couples. The news item claims one in four Seatown pairs haven't bothered to get the legal certificate of wedlock, compared with one in ten nationally. The station didn't say whether the region's lousy economy (which causes folks to delay or forego all sorts of commitments) might have something to do with it.

posted by clark 12:59 PM

IT SHOULDN'T come as a surprise that Amazon.com's getting into online clothing sales. The surprise is that mainstream media outlets have characterized clothes as a difficult item to sell online.

Apparel has been sold in mail-order catalogs for over 120 years. Anything that can easily be sold in a mail-order catalog can also be sold in an on-screen catalog at least as easily, and probaly more easily. Size and color variations, and fabric close-ups, can be viewed as instantly as the speed of a user's modem allows. Images of garments and accessories can be combined, like digital paper-doll ensembles, to ensure the right total look. Custom sizes can easily be calculated for the perfect fit.

The only real barrier to online clothing sales thus far has been the perception of Internet users as all males (more specifically as slovenly, fashion-challenged males). Now, the Net's far wider appeal has been proven in demographic surveys. The online realm's gotten its walls repainted and its lawn mowed; it's officially a lady-friendly place now.

And since females traditionally control more than their share of consumer-spending decisions, that means the bigtime may have finally come for those e-tail entrants, such as Amazon, that have managed to stick it out thus far.

posted by clark 12:41 PM

THE UNREAL SKINNY: Local scientists and engineers are striving to concoct a simpler, less-invasive alternative to liposuction, using ultrasound transmissions to break up internal fatty acids.

If the technique works out, it could become as routine an upper-middle-class practice as breast implants or "permanent make-up" have become. From there, volume and technological advances might make it affordable to all (or at least to most).

I can see it now. Parents giving the gift of instant weight loss to daughters (and sons too) as 18th-birthday presents. Middle-aged couples routinely getting new summer bodies to go with their new summer wardrobes. Clinics offering annual visits on a membership plan. (Remember, the device would help you drop weight, but wouldn't prevent you from gaining it all back.)

At the turn of the last century, in the first Gilded Age, obesity was considered an asset for "men of substance" (big bank and railroad bosses). It proved you could afford to eat well. These days, in the second Gilded Age, obesity symbolizes that you're eating a fatty white-trash diet and can't afford a personal trainer. The rich (and those desperately trying to become rich) follow fad diets and belong to private gyms. The working poor are often stereotyped as unkempt blobs of cellulite, forever gorging on Big Macs and Big Gulps.

But what if instant skinniness were available to anyone who with the cash (or credit-card room) for a new car? What if millions could simply walk into a clinic fat and walk out that same day skinny? Perhaps the upscale would run the opposite way, as if to the Sneeches' Star-Off Machine. Perhaps voluptuousness would become the new ideal. Maybe the famale beauty standard of the 2010s could be the More of Everything woman—huge bosoms, huge butts, a roomy mini-mansion of a physique. And the new masculine ideal could be an SUV of a physique—a big-boned, big-muscled, big-waisted piece of solidity that stands large in the face of trouble, but also has plenty of sensitive soft spots for an ambitious lady to explore.

Alternately, the new body-type dichotomy could be rooted back at the gym. Ultrasound fat-removal would do nothing for muscle tone. (It might even conceivably leave some patients with flappin' expanses of unshrunk skin.) The mark of a member (or wannabe member) of the elite might be a body that you'd still have to work for, not just pay for.

posted by clark 11:51 AM

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

WANNA TURN a fun kiddie evening into a commercial for religion? Give out some Halloween candy with Bible verses on the wrappers. No, I don't know of any pagan, Gnostic, or Coptic equivalent products. (Thanx and a hat tip to Marlow Harris.)

posted by clark 11:03 AM

Tuesday, October 29, 2002

A NEW REPORT ranks different countries on their relative freedom of the press. The U.S. ranks 19th of some 130 countries on the list, behind Costa Rica and Slovenia. Canada's in the #5 slot.

posted by clark 3:00 PM

Monday, October 28, 2002

GEORGE W. BUSH ISN'T THE SECOND GEORGE BUSH, HE'S THE SECOND RICHARD NIXON. Remember that and everything will become much clearer. Including this story noting the unprecedented use of government officials in GOP Congressional campaigning.

posted by clark 9:34 PM

STANDARD TIME HAS BEGUN, the real start of autumn in the GreatNW. Before long, there'll be as little as eight and a half hours of daylight—and even when there is daylight, there won't be much of it.

I luuvv what other folks think of as Seasonal Affective Disorder season. The air is crisp. The light is diffuse. An overriding blanket of gray hovers over everything like a half-comforting, half-smothering blanket. It's the closest you can come in the Lower 48 to Alaska's wintertime "midday moon."

It's time to break out the sweaters, scarves, boots, and long coats.

Time to spend long nights and short mornings cuddling for warmth, or to spend short afternoons and long evenings in cozy gathering places in search of a co-cuddler.

Time for cocoa, mochas, hot buttered rums, and red wine.

Time for thick oatmeal, toasted foccacia sandwiches, stew, chili, lasagne, teriyaki bowls, and roasted veggies.

Time for bright interior colors and dimmer switches turned up to 11.

Time for video-viewing marathons, group dinners, and house parties.

Time for basketball, ice skating, bowling, skiing, and pool. Time for home beer-brewing, bookshelf-building, book-writing, and political organizing.

Time to reconnect with what makes each of us truly human.

posted by clark 9:19 PM

HERE'S A TOPIC I'd been intending to write about but someone else already got to—online discussion boards for escorts and their clients. I might still write about the topic sometime, because it's so darned fascinating and the story hereby linked doesn't come close to including all its most intriguing aspects.

posted by clark 12:05 PM

IN THE LAST PRINT MISC, I ran an only-slightly-satirical piece about corporate CEOs as today's objects of cult worship. It turns out a Harvard prof agrees with me.

posted by clark 11:08 AM

Sunday, October 27, 2002

GORE VIDAL submitted a long, scathing anti-Bush essay to the UK paper The Observer. It's not online (which means the American masses on whose behalf he speaks won't get to read it). But a short summary of it sez he calls for a big investigation (by whom?) into whether the administration knew about 9/11 in advance and chose to do nothing, because it would further the Bush gang's anti-freedom domestic agenda. The summary also includes the following quotation:

"We still don't know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday, or for what true purpose. But it is fairly plain to many civil libertarians that 9/11 put paid not only to much of our fragile Bill of Rights but also to our once-envied system of government which had taken a mortal blow the previous year when the Supreme Court did a little dance in 5/4 time and replaced a popularly elected President with the oil and gas Bush-Cheney junta."

(Of course, it should be noted the "popularly elected President" in Vidal's quotation is his own distant cousin.)

posted by clark 10:49 PM

THE WEB'S GETTING SO SPECIALIZED, there are now weird-news sites just for people who care about specific types of weird news. One example: A page of nothing but stories about people struck by lightning.

posted by clark 10:49 PM

YOU DON'T HAVE TO have ever studied the language to enjoy this short list of "Slightly Less Common Latin Phrases." "Is that a scroll in your toga, or are you just glad to see me?"

posted by clark 10:15 AM

I DON'T THINK majhonng, miniskirts, and trampolines belong on a site devoted to "Bad Fads," but at least CB radios and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made the list.

posted by clark 9:55 AM

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