"The Noughties" are almost over.
I just had someone tell me that the last decade was called "The Noughties."  I had no idea.  I'm fully convinced that the reason nobody's tried to define this decade as anything is because nobody's come up with a decent name for it.  "The 70's, The 80's, The 90's," the minute the decade clock ticked over, everyone fell over themselves to say how it had all changed.  Then we got to 2000, and there's a few feeble marketing stabs at "The New Millennium," and then that was the end of it.

The decades have always been defined more by presidents than by numbers, anyway.

The 50's started with Eisenhower and ended when JFK was shot.
The 60's started with LBJ and ended when Nixon was kicked out over Watergate.
The 70's started with Gerald Ford and ended when Reagan swept Carter out the door.
The 80's were the "Reagan Revolution" of God and Money... but I'm pretty sure the 90's started in 1989 with Bush Sr. and kicked in with first Gulf War. 
The 90's were all about Clinton, peace, prosperity, technology, good drugs and more sex.  And we thought the good times were holding on until...
The 00's began with 9/11 and the sudden realization that we had to take George W. seriously, and not because we had any good reason to.  "The Age of Irony is over," said one idiot Republican pundit, when in fact, the Age of Irony had just kicked in hardcore.

For me, this past decade has been a lot about working on my career and getting my brain sorted out, but as for the rest of the country, it beats me.  Culturally we've been a sea oatmeal and motor oil, functionally, we've lived in grind and fear. The war damn near wrecked us.  Music sucked, though TV was pretty damn good.  Underground culture was either ignored or mostly collapsed, depending on how you look at it.  All the girls in Playboy universally started shaving their pubes.  I don't know what we're left with, really.  Maybe it's because I'm too old now and think the music sucks.

I'm hoping Obama is signaling a new vibration in this country.  I hope the 'teens open with Dick Cheney getting butt-raped by a pack of wild dogs and the underground dance scene kicking back in with a truckload of heavy funk.

Hey, it could happen.