Ok, so maybe there really aren't 100 gazillion Beanie Babies out there.  Maybe there are only 99 jillion, give or take an oodle or two.  The fact remains that they outnumber us adult-style humans by a very wide margin, and how they chose to vote in next year's election will shape our society for generations to come.
     I don't know about you, but my Bill the Cat doll is scared shitless at the prospect.  
     Or maybe he's just dead.  Hmmm....
     In an irrational burst of optimism, I've decided to curl up into a little ball and rock back and forth yelling "He's just shitless!  He's just scared shitless!" until I believe it.  
     BRB....    

     Back.  Sorry it took so long but in an attempt to calm Bill down a bit, I've been doing some Beanie Baby research.  Let's hope it does the trick since shitless stuffed animals have always made me very, very nervous.

     As best as I can tell after spending an arduous three minutes performing web searches and waiting for pages to download, there are 47 different Beanie Babies that will retire come January.  I don't know how many of each type are still out there on the job at the moment, but that's just as well since 47 is a big enough number to boggle my mind when it comes to babies of any sort.  Indeed, it's quite possible that an encounter with a single infant back in 1981 left my mind in a permanent state of bogglement.  At least it wasn't a married infant - that really would have been too much for me! 
     Anyway (as Truman said after bombing Nagasaki), 47 different types (species?) of Beanie Babies are gonna retire in less than 4 months, so buy stock in companies that make those funny retirement party gag gifts TODAY. 
     Or not, since just a bit more research reveals that no fewer than 196 different species (types?) of Beanie Babies have already retired without significantly inflating the profits of these companies.  
     Maybe people are getting their funny retirement gag gifts on the black market these days?  Or under the table?  Or from that debris field surrounding Rosewell, New Mexico??  The hell with Waco - this is what they really ought to be grilling Janet Reno about! 
     Who knows - maybe they'll find that incendiary tear gas canisters are merely the retirement gag gift of choice among religious fanatics....

     Personally, I think even that 47 number is suspect.  I mean, come on - is the Derby the Horse that has a white patch on his head really different enough from the lame Derby the Horse they had to shoot in December, 1997 or the Derby the Horse with the Fine Mane Hair that retired back in 1995 to be called a separate type/species (genre?)?  And instead of helping drain the Social Security fund so that there's no money left for us Baby Boomers in only 5 years instead of the projected 7, can't he keep working - maybe in Grecian commercials?  It seems a shame to let a good white patch go to waste.  I myself would be more than willing to pay money to see if any of the other Beanie Babies can actually go up to him and his freshly tarred head on camera and ask "Been working out?  Lose weight?" with a straight face. 

     Regardless of the details, you have to admit that these Beanies got themselves a pretty sweet deal.  The oldest of them are only 6 years old, after all, and here they are - retiring!  When I was 6, I still faced another decade of work, for cripe's sake.  And then when I did retire, nobody gave me a free office in Washington plus lifetime Secret Service protection like these guys are going to get!!
     Couldn't we, the taxpayers, demand a little something in return?  Couldn't at least a few Beanies agree to do some volunteer work as pin cushions and fishing lures after January 1?  Or are all of them just going to end up on porches all over America for the rest of us to trip on for the rest of our lives??

     Maybe it's all just a ruse to boost public interest in their flagging careers like some say - I don't know.  My own Snort the Bull just snorts when I ask, smartass that he is. 
     Fake retirements have been known to occur in the past.  Frank Sinatra's much ballyhooed sayonara, circa 1971, lasted less than 23 months, I think.  Both Gary Hart and Ross Perot pulled the plug on their presidential campaigns, only to come right back and fumble around in the dark until they somehow got that plug back into the outlet.  The Hundred Years War actually ran 116 seasons.  Maybe it'll be like this with the Beanie Babies. 
     Then again, maybe they're getting out now before that book comes out in March with its graphic pictures of a masked group of Beanies weighing down the accelerator of Diana's car.
     Whatever.