Back in high school, I once talked to this girl, who I met at a concert, for a week. Every other word she said would be "dude." Kind of annoying, in general, but now that I think about how I had been evaluating her as a potential intimate, this revelation about the word "dude" puts things into a new light.
She annoyed me for many other reasons, also, though. . .the whole dude thing was just the silliest of them all.
For those who don't read my Livejournal, but are into linguistics, check out "Adventure in English" on the History Channel. It runs weekday mornings, and chronicles the evolution of the language.
Your first link reminds me of this article from the premiere issue of the Annals of Improbably Research (AIR): "The Taxonomy of Barney: Evidence of Convergence in Hominid Evolution"
An abridged version of the article appears here:
http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume1/v1i1/barney.htm