#5 The Gift that keeps on Giving

So the other day it’s Valentine’s day. It’s so romantic. Kisses and hugs everywhere. The day for lovers. Unless, of course, you happened to be a certain group of gangsters in Chicago in 1929, who got a different kiss-off entirely.
Valentine’s day has emerged as a major spending holiday across this fine land of ours. A shot in the retail arm after the post-Christmas doldrums and before the spring merchandise hits the store and gets everyone all-a-twitter shopping for their Easter bonnets. And, with more and more people buying into the mass merchandise offerings available, unfortunately Valentine’s day has also emerged as a major threat to wildlife and the environment. Putting aside for a moment the endless trees meeting their untimely doom so that pithy and saccharine phrases may be inked on their pulped, pressed and dioxin-bleached remains. And not mentioning the tons of algal-bloom-inducing and stream-choking fertilizers needed to grow all those pretty cut and soon-to-be-dying flowers gracing the abodes of snugglebuns from here to the Love Canal. And not daring to point out the gallons of insecticides also used to keep those flowers so pretty, spreading through the environment causing untold havoc to the genetic pools of every species from the regal eagle to the asthmatic biped.
No, as if that weren’t enough to contend with, today’s gift-challenged Valentonian need only enter the supermarket for a lovely and environmentally permanent gift alternative. The Mylar balloon. Yep, Mylar. Aluminum and plastic. What groaning planet could ask for more? Completely non-biodegradable. And oh so cute. You can put printing on it. Indelible dyes are so wonderful for the waste-stream. You can even perch a Mylar balloon on a stick or, if you really want to proclaim a love that the whole world can see and that keeps on giving, you can inflate it with helium and have an errant breeze waft it into the sky. If it makes it past the power lines without browning out a major metropolis, it’s likely your love messenger will soar to the upper atmosphere, where it will freeze and crack open, then plummet to the sea to be gobbled up by an unwary dolphin or marlin, there to lodge painfully in it’s digestive tract until our finny friend dies of acute starvation. Hmmm.
I think I’ll just send my lover a six pack ring this year. And because I really love her? I’ll dip it in mercury first.
America, ya gotta love it.