“Party invitations are going out — and the buffets once again include shrimp.”

If that doesn’t sound decadent to you, then I don’t know what does. Read more about partying like Prince in a recent USA Today article fabulously and predictably titled Silicon Valley starts to party like it’s 1999.

The pictures certainly don’t make the scene look too glam, and neither does a detail about what goes on at YouTube: “Staffers maintain a chatty blog about [YouTube's] inner workings, including a recent video of them goofing around with a dead rat caught in the office.” (Check out the rat video here. ) I guess if they have rats in their office, things can’t be that posh, but somehow even rats seem dot-commy.

Out here in New York, conspicuous wealth always come from Wall Street, so I can’t say I’ve seen any signs of a bubble firsthand, except for of course our coverage of this party last winter.

But the third gold rush is on for real out in the West Coast: “‘I hear the agents talking about the Googlers and eBayers looking at $3 million houses,’ [real estate broker] Cain McMurtrie says. A home in the tech-executive hamlet of Woodside recently sold for $10.3 million.”

Forget B-school, forget banking … it’s time to saddle up. Yee hawYipeeKayEh.