What's with All the Glitter Anyway?

I've been dosed with glitter.

I started cleaning up my Christmas decorations, taking down Christmas cards and just generally starting to get my life back to pre-December "normal." This is a lengthy process, as it involves loading large containers into my Explorer, driving them to a storage unit and stacking them precariously. With the constant snow and bitter cold, I'm in no hurry to get it done. The wreath is off my front door, so as far as the outside world is concerned, I'm temporally accurate. If only they knew.

In the process of putting away the gifts I received and taking the cards off my coat closet door, I seem to have released a plague of glitter. Everywhere I look I see little glimmers of the shiny shrapnel. It is lodged in my carpet, on my sofa cushions, in my dog's fur, in my clothing; hell once in a while, I find a speck on my skin. I believe a portion of it has become airborne, has escaped the heater filter and is probably lodging itself in the lining of my lungs even as I respirate and type. If I come down with some exotic form of gliterthelioma, I'm gonna be pissed.

Everything I bought or was given this year seems to have been covered in glitter. Everything. I'm not even sure what it is. Oh sure, Wikipedia says it is, "an assortment of very small (roughly 1 mm²) pieces of paper, glass or plastic painted in metallic, neon and iridescent colors to reflect light in a sparkling spectrum." That sounds fairly benign, right?

Don't believe it. Here's my theory: remember all those nukes that went missing during the fall of the U.S.S.R.? I think they ended up in China, where they were ground into teeny, tiny bits of ever-so-slightly radioactive glitter that the Chinese use to "decorate" all the cheap holiday crap they sell us. It's a long-term, insidious plot to sterilize the rest of the world.

I showed 'em! I have no intention of breeding DESPITE the accursed glitter-plague!

(Blogger Note: This is a joke. I'm not a paranoid schizophrenic nor do I have anything against the Peoples Republic of China. Rush Limbaugh, please don't quote me.)

And now for something completely different: I keep hearing that the Economic Recovery is upon us and we should rejoice and start spending frivolously again. This week, two more of my friends lost their jobs. Hey, Economic Recovery! Ya wanna hustle it up a bit here?