"clicking" under the dash

You guys ready for this?

So I found some time saturday to tackle this issue. The clicking was still coming from underneath the dash, so before i yanked the entire dash out, i wanted to isolate where it came from. I crawled underneath and started poking around. I found that the sound was coming from the wiper switch! Weird to say the least. I then remembered that I finally hooked the wiper arm back up while the dash was out last time.
Thinking the motor and arm were bound, and just needed aligned, i took the arm back off, well, the clicking sound immediately went away. even more weird, so i tried connecting it again, and saw sparks! WTF?! i grabbed my meter, and sure enough, the body of the wiper motor has 12v to ground. unreal. so when i connected the arm, it shorted to ground, causing some relay inside the wiper switch to open periodically.
I've left it disconnected, and deal with it over the winter. just crazy.