It needed to be said.

And Lileks has addressed it:

Back to the house. Get to work. Call up browser. Learn that Howard Dean temporarily called himself a “metrosexual.” Shudder. Do they have that on tape? Lee Atwater would have the commercial in production already: Split screen. On the right, Bush in flight suit, walking on the deck, waving, giving the thumbs up. On the left, Dean in a loop: “I’m a metrosexual. I’m a metrosexual. I’m a metrosexual.” Nothing more. Tagline: Bush. He doesn’t moisturize. He doesn’t tweeze. And he never had a pedicure.

Klass.

With a capital K:

Jurors in the corruption trial the former Tyco chairman [Dennis Kozlowski] on Tuesday watched PG-rated scenes of debauchery as prosecutors tried to sway them with video of his wife's birthday party on a Mediterranean island.

New York prosecutors showed about 20 minutes of video footage from the 2001 party that cost $2.1 million -- about half paid by Tyco -- and featured singer Jimmy Buffett, gladiators, chariots and an ice sculpture of Michelangelo's David spewing vodka from his penis.

The footage, edited from four hours of film, was a welcome departure for jurors who have sat through three weeks of often tedious testimony. One juror on Monday nodded off in the courtroom. Money 2004.

But Judge Michael Obus ruled that jurors wouldn't see footage of the ice sculpture or a birthday cake in the shape of a woman's breasts with sparklers mounted on top.

After all, what's a $2.1M party without a sparkler-adorned titty cake and an ice sculpture of David pissing vodka? And the worst part isn't the waste of the money...it's the waste of it on stupid, vulgar things without a trace of subtlety or wit. I mean, **damn**, you blow $2.1 million dollars on a party in Sardinia and the best band you can book is Buffett?

Welcome back to the 80's, folks. Unpack the parachute pants and kick back with a cold one, it's going to be a weird few years.

[Thanks to Paula, who knows the good stuff when she sees it.]

Navel-piercing as navel gazing.

Sticking bits of metal into one's skin goes utterly mainstream, as people try to stand out as individuals by doing exactly the same thing everybody else is doing. The fifteen minute timer is ticking on the coolometer, kiddies.

One girl, who had just had her tongue pierced, writes: 'I've always been kind of quiet in school and very predictable…. I wanted to think of myself as original and creative, so I decided I wanted something pierced…

How original. How creative.

'Now people don't think of me as shy and predictable, they respect me and the person I've become and call me crazily spontaneous.'

Then again, one man's "crazily spontaneous" is another man's "dangerously unstable".