By Danny Katz
Q: Every Christmas, some of my friends send me cards covered in glitter, which, much to my annoyance, spreads everywhere as soon as I remove the card from the envelope. Would it be churlish of me to send a similar card in return? A.J., SOUTH MELBOURNE, VIC
A: Ahhhh, glitter: also known as carpet shrapnel, burlesque dust, the Devil's Skittles, rainbow dandruff, kaleidoscope herpes, The Big G, clown anthrax and Lucy on the Floor with Dustpan. Glitter is bad news, no matter what form it takes: make-up glitter, hairspray glitter, craft glitter, Gary Glitter. And adding glitter to a greeting card should be a criminal offence.
Danny Katz.Credit: Mike Baker
That stuff is very hard to clean up: you have to use brooms, dustbusters and the tip of your finger dabbed with a blob of your own saliva, one glitter flake at a time. Greeting card glitter is so universally despised there's even a website, ruindays.com, where you can pay $5.99 for a "Glitter Everywhere Envelope" to be anonymously posted to an enemy of your choice. (You can select your glitter size, too: "Extra fine glitter will really f*@k their day up!")
So at any other time of year I'd be encouraging extreme churlishness. I'd say go churl-crazy and send back a package filled with glitter, topped with paper confetti and decorated with those tiny silver cake balls that roll under fridges, then all packed in safely with mini-Styrofoam packing balls: the kind that run away when you chase them because they have rudimentary electrostatic nervous systems.
Illustration by Simon Letch
But it's Christmas, a season of forgiveness and kindness, so you should send back a more mature and subtle glitter bomb: a DVD of 2001 box-office bomb Glitter, starring Mariah Carey as a singer who finds "the road to her dreams leads straight to her heart". Once that film spills all over your brain-floor, you'll never be able to get it out.
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