| Bombast was, in the beginning, the term for the cotton waste used to stuff Jacobean codpieces. In the present day it portends to an illustration or manner that tries to exaggerate its own significance or the importance of what it depicts. It's all puffery, hot air, boasting, padding, vainglory, and affectation.
My friends and I just use `bombastic' as another word to describe anything totally shockspasm and *fantastical* and splendiferous and PHANTASMAGORIC!
Some examples of all that is bombastic are Media art, Theater of Cruelty, The Beastie Boys, young British artists, Tarantino, Janis Joplin, Neo-expressionism, Arte Povera, Nietzsche and Hemingway. | 
