Long time no see! The following is intended as a joke... I can't resist, although it might cost me...
Between you and me, ttuuxx, if you're so anti-bling, someone under Ubuntu influence has written... INX. http://inx.maincontent.net/
Try it! Maybe emulate it? Really no bling at all!
But seriously, in your post above, I understand that you might feel a responsibility to affirm a sort of "Puppy party line" as to "non-blingness". The reality is that Puppyists will adapt yours or Barry's or any other Puppy to suit their needs. To me, there are three main needs on a desktop:
1* easy access to programs
2* quick monitoring of computer functions
3* backdrops potentially reflecting your mood or a quest for beauty.
In my opinion, a good distro should offer a good balance between the three elements. I will venture to say that factory issue Puppies often lack in no 2.
Each user should be able to decide the balance between those three (s)he's comfortable with. Some will go spartan and opt for musca or aewm as a wm, others prefer their desktop to be crowded (or blingy) as in some renditions of KDE or gnome or what have you. Some users prioritize monitoring over access to programs, and that's fine too. Some like it hot, some like it cold.
In my opinion, the job of a top-level Puppy programmer (I'm speaking in general terms, this is not at all personal) is not to impose his choices, but on the contrary to provide many choices for fellow users. Suggest is the key word here.
Frankly, it does not matter how the programming guru dresses up his own desktop for his own private use. In his private computer life, he may like blingy or minimalistic. That's his business. To impose it on other users, however? No. To suggest, yes. As the author or co-author of a distribution, he should remain selfless and provide as many choices as feasible to the user.
What the user wants from the programming guru is choice, and furthermore ease of choice: to be blingy or spartan, if the user wants to be, it should not matter to the "guru".
Choices mean efficiency. If "Jo" is efficient blingy, so be it. If "Gert" is efficient with a minimalist desktop, so be it. (Fictitious names, of course.) The most knowledgeable guys in the Puppy distribution chain should be perceptive and psychologists enough to recognize that trait of human nature and provide choices.
A testimony to that freedom is the unstoppable flux of puplets that the more knowledgeable puppy-ists turn out every year.
I will be frank with you: I felt that Puppy 4.2 and Puppy 4.2.1 had the above balance right. To me, it wasn't blingy at all. It provided ease of access, monitoring at a glance and a choice of nice backdrops. Sorry if that ruffles your feathers the wrong way, but that's how I felt about it.
As well, if the developers of dpup think wbar should be on the desktop, why not? If you personally wouldn't like wbar to be included in the final Puppy 5 version, at least have the elegant gesture of offering a choice for it, because, as you can see, some people like it. Maybe I don't particularly like it, maybe you don't, but that is none of our business. Some people like it.
Only my two cents, and with all due respect for your past and present contributions, of course. Sorry if the above sounds like hitting on a nail, but I felt it needed to be said.
All the best.
Um, in the wbar-setup-alpha-0.0.2.pet "pinstall" should have been "pinstall.sh". Sorry. Please delete "/pinstall". I suppose this is why we have alphas.. 
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