The endless train of online armchair quarterbacks endlessly trying to engage you with endless rounds of mental masturbation.

Items 1 and 3 through 10 are much less disturbing, unless you're into quarterbacks. Not that there's anything wrong with that. [Gapingvoid]

Calling Mark Zuckerberg a "fucking genius" and now telling him to "fuck off" suggests Macleod is out of ideas. The gratuitous profanity draws attention away from his more thoughtful blog commentary. His latest point isn't new but worth noting: it would be trivial for the social network to introduce better controls on silly invitations and games, but Facebook, with traffic and user numbers still booming, has little motivation to change its ways. Traffic has more value, at the moment, than user satisfaction. It's a good point. Too bad the cartoon he drew misses it. We wish Macleod had illustrated, instead, his newest law of social networks: "If you piss in the soup for long enough, eventually it stops tasting like soup."

• Tuesday: Pictured above: Moonalice, the band comprised of Elevation Capital partner Roger McNamee and former Saturday Night Live band leader GE Smith, performs a free lunchtime show in Union Square. [Moonalice]
  
• Friendster and Socializr founder Jonathan Abrams leads the GeekSessions at the City Club of San Francisco. [Upcoming]

• Wednesday: Lunch 2.0 hosts a happy hour at Facebook's offices in downtown Palo Alto. [Facebook]
  
• Former MarketWatch columnist Bambi Francisco is among the all-women presenters at this month's San Francisco New Tech Meetup. [Eventbrite]

Nick Douglas writes for Valleywag, Prezzish, and Look Shiny. Wanna fight?

• Pictured: Blog cartoonist Hugh Macleod, somehow able to make fun of all his colleagues deftly enough that they link to him when he does it, this time mocked blogger Dave Winer for gushing about the "chicks" at the recent BlogHer conference. [Gaping Void]
• Bloggers didn't get laid at WordCamp, the conference for users of the WordPress blogging platform, but they did a good job pretending so. [Blog Herald]
• Nerds everywhere geared up to cream their pants today at Steve Jobs's keynote for Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. [Technorati]
• The juvenilely-named CalacANUS.com wrapped up the story so far for "Kevin Rose and Digg vs. Jason Calacanis and Netscape." [Calacanus.com]

One expects to hear these words from entrepreneurs or engineers — but not from a savvy guy like satirical cartoonist Hugh Macleod. And yet, he writes on his blog:

What is an Object of Sociability [OoS, or "Ooze" for short]? "Ooze" is simply something that allows you to engage with another person. It could be anything. It could a party. It could be a bottle of wine. It could be a hyperlink. It could be a social gesture. It could be social currency. It could be doodling a cartoon on the back of a business card at a bar and giving it to the cute barmaid. You tell me.

Ooze. Gross.

Ooze: short for "objects of sociability" [Gaping Void]

That's right, I'm talking about the Bubble.

Today's Bubble Threat Level is Elevated. The causes:

• The Valley's best on-camera snarkers just sold out to the bubbliest podcast company, PodTech. Blogger Robert Scoble, who just left Microsoft for PodTech, hired Eddie Codel and Irina Slutsky of Geek Entertainment TV. Some say it's their wit and experience, but everyone knows it's just because Eddie's got great tits. [Laughing Squid]
• Mark Cuban, who sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion, is calling the Internet overhyped. This is like Paris Hilton saying there are too many fake celebrities. [Mark Cuban]
• Cartoonist Hugh MacLeod has invaded Chicago with his wine-shilling art. [Flickr]

Photo: "it was this big" [vvt on Flickr]

PaidContent.org founder Rafat Ali threw an NYC media party last night to celebrate his blog's first investment round. The "guys in nametags making pitches" reminded media pundit Jeff Jarvis of the bashes of the dot-com boom. The Gawker Media overlords were bouncing biz-dev people back and forth like Web 2.0 ping-pong. "All the hookups had the blandness of lesbian sex," said one attendee. "Nobody has any money, so there's no penetration."

Not everyone felt the same queasy deja vu. ZDNet writer Donna Bogatin felt the party was, well, too boring and productive to match those "just-for-fun" free-for-alls of the 90s. (Or Bogatin's learned to network since then.) Valleywag asked expert socialites: What makes a party a sign of the tech bubble? It boils down to the food, the drink, the entertainers, the partiers, and the scene.

The food
Spot On editor Chris Nolan (who welcomes Ali and GigaOM blogger Om Malik to the funded-content-site fold, which Spot On entered a year ago), has attended (and thrown) parties since her days as the Valley's gossip columnist. "You need free sushi," says Nolan, "and lots of it. And not veggie sushi, free raw fish. Made before your eyes by real Japanese guys."

"An entire table devoted to cheese, preferably with a cheese sommelier," says Business 2.0 online editor Owen Thomas, who wrote for the snarkzine Suck during the Bubble.

The drink
"It can't be a 90s bubble party without Absolut," says Dot-com marketer David Parmet. "Could we say Stormhoek is the new Absolut?" With marketing blogger Hugh MacLeod pimping this wine in the Valley through branded prints, blogging, and sponsored geek dinners, Stormhoek is the official drink of the Valley alcoholic.

The entertainers
Everyone agrees, the bands have to be cool. "Ask Jeeves had Elvis Costello," says Nolan. "AMD had Bob Dylan and his son's band, the Wallflowers. RSA had RunDMC. So you need some bought-and-paid-for musical talent. Or someone like Courtney Love, who showed up at TED one year."

Judging by that, the five-year party hasn't even started. "The bubble's on the way back," Nolan says. "But until I see Diana Krall cooing to the Flckr kids, I wouldn't get too excited."

Slate and Wired writer Paul Boutin says, "It's not a bubble-era blowout unless The Who's on first."

The partiers
Who shows up in a bubble party? "Hot chicks," says Thomas. "Specifically, hot chicks there to pick up free drinks and Internet billionaires. God, you're giving me flashbacks, STOP!"

Thomas also cites "the presence of anyone whose business card includes the words 'business development.' More than half the crowd works in public relations. The rest is looking for a new job."

Parmet goes glassy-eyed. "When you see Jeff Daschis of [profligate Internet marketer] Razorfish appear with Kyle and Chan of Agency.com on the balcony, kind of like Gatsby...then it's a bubble."

The scene
In the end, it's all about the memories. "The most over-the-top private party I went to," says Nolan, "was the one Amy and Ted Barnett threw at their house on [San Fran's] Dolores Street. Valet parking in the Mission District. Oyster in champagne shooters and everyone getting stoned in the backyard."

"When I'm using a piece of corporate shwag to funnel candy up my nose," says one tipster, "then the bubble is upon us."

Party like it's 1999: LAUNCH PARTY: Betting on One Big Night [Industry Standard]
Photo: Dance floor laugh [Mr. Wright at Flickr]