I'm not even sure I believe that stuff about the 9-hour sexings.

New term, Internets: "Sting it up." As in, "The Rock n Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary show had its moments, but I could've done without the parts where Sting was Stinging it up."

It means "unnecessary beboppin and scattin or undeserved and unnecessary ponderousness instead of singing something straight; a condition born, one presumes, of an extraordinary sense of entitlement and deeply entrenched pomposity on the part of the singer." Anyone can Sting anything up -- this condition isn't reserved for Sting alone. Paul "Congratulations, You Met A Black Person Once, But Did That Really Deserve A Whole Album Written About It" Simon is one of the worst offenders. James Taylor loves to Sting stuff up (he's a practitioner of a subset of the art, known as "dickimento," in which the fact of what a ginormous dick you are tends to seep through into whatever you do so we can see it no matter what you've overlaid it with). Anybody who performs stuff in a way that's just pointlessly self-indulgent instead of the thing that made you famous? That's Stingin it up.

NOTES:

--DKGOML is not a Sting-hating enterprise, by official policy; we don't hate him at all, actually, especially in context as a Police, and of course as a bassist. It's just, you know -- Sting, GOD.

--In fact, we once chose a black-and-white photo of him from Rolling Stone as the image we copied for our stippling assignment in high school art class, and it turned out pretty well.

--In further fact, we received additional confirmation that we had met someone special when we saw this same image tacked to the wall of our college boyfriend's bedroom, back in his hometown the first Thanksgiving we spent with him. Reader, we married him.

--Try -- just try -- to say "stipple" without sounding like South Park's Big Gay Al.

--You can't do it, can you? Us either.