Nobody can predict what the next fad what the next fad will be — though it's certain some group of teenagers in Portland or Yonkers are somewhere is up to something that's so unfathomably inane that their brethren nationwide will follow along like so many lemmings. And nobody can predict exactly when a new fad will begin — but it's pretty clear when an old one will end. At this very moment, I can hear a swan song for the "Goth" affectation. Clearly, it's is headed for the "not" list — though it will probably hang around a few more years all the same, because Goths aren't exactly the sort that have the sense to know what's stylish or when to knock it off. I'd say it couldn't have happened too soon ...

... but I felt that way about five years ago.

Here's the thing: this snapshot comes from a "BBG" Web site. The actual meaning of that acronym is "Battleship Battle Group," which smells kinda redundant, but that's the Navy for you. In any case, it's really not that far from the meaning that these "new" BBGs are trying to ascribe to it: a combination of "BBW" (in which the second "B" is just P.R.), and Goth (in which all four letters are just P.R.) That, in turn, means something else:

It's time to sell short on talc futures.

Fashions fade when they're adopted by the undesirables. Of course, the only reason fashions are adopted to begin with is because the undesirables wish to convince the rest of us that somebody else is "the undesirables" this week — but when the hard-core losers hit the scene, the garden-variety ones who have been there all along flee faster than Belgians chased with a bar of soap. And this image, gentle reader, is certain to do to Goth what white kids did to break dancing.