Times Square, the meretricious hellscape of midtown Manhattan, will host approximately one million people who plan to watch an enormous crystal ball descend an equally enormous pole. There will be lights! And Anderson Cooper! And, according to CBS New York, 17 million individual, "hand-made" pieces of multi-colored confetti that, at the stroke of midnight, will rain down on the Square's misguided revelers:

"We actually fluff, throw, and then it floats down on the crowd below," said Jeffrey Straus, President of Countdown Entertainment. The confetti is then strategically placed to flow with the wind.

"What is even more special about the handmade confetti," the report continues, "is they colored  papers [sic] have been on display so people can write their 2013 wishes on the papers." Here's our wish for the new year: that this evening's confetti improves on the confetti deployed during the Macy's Day Thanksgiving Parade a month ago. That confetti was apparently made using old Nassau County police reports, and inadvertently revealed random Social Security Numbers and — worse — the license plate numbers of undercover detectives.

Happy 2013!

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at jtrotter at theatlantic dot com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.
J.K. Trotter