[Please refrain from sending hate mail until you've read to the end.]

Last week, Oprah graced Twitter with her presence. Or, at least her ghostwriter did. When I saw the tweets about it, I honestly could not care less than if the Pope had just joined Facebook. To me, Oprah represents a lot of things but none of those things include what all her fans love about her.

Photo credit: s.yume from Flickr

My biggest complaint is her promotion of rampant consumerism: whether it’s in the form of her favourite things, book club, magazine, or just her image itself. Think about it for just a moment. Every single show, she’s selling you something. Even if it’s an idea. Still don’t believe me? Well, explain this to me then. Frankly, this level of consumerism is what got the American (and, truth be told, most of the Western world’s) economy in trouble in the first place.

Coming off of Earth Week, I think the discussion of material goods consumption is a fitting one. If we all thought about the lifespan of our purchases, and where they eventually go to die, I think we’d be better global citizens. But that’s not the point of this post.

Today, people want more of everything, right now, without any real consideration of the consequences. I’m constantly floored by feature stories in the news taking an “in-depth” look at poverty to read about how a student can’t make ends meet because she has to pay for her cell phone bill or why one family is concerned about heating bills when they have to make payments on two vehicles. (I honestly did not make up these stories.)

That’s not poverty. This is poverty. Or, closer to home, how about this?

Oprah and everything she represents feeds into the modern myth that you can and should have everything. Whoever the hell told us that was a big, fat liar. Read these words carefully: NOT EVERYONE CAN HAVE IT ALL. PERIOD.

What buying into this myth means though is that people stretch themselves beyond their limits. Whether it’s paying for overpriced lattes and new cars, replacing technologies as soon as the next shiny thing comes onto the market, having multiple gaming consoles, televisions, and the list goes on.

Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with having high expectations or ambitions in life. But you have to work for it. And even then, you have to ask yourself: do material possessions define success? These days your average university graduate is looking for a good—no—excellent paying job. You’d probably be surprised about their expectations. Having recently graduated with people a decade younger than me, I know. And, again, it’s great to have such high ambitions but let’s put things into perspective: according to Statistics Canada, the median dual income family makes about $66,343. That’s dual as in two people whose average age is much higher than 21.

This average couple has to factor in a mortgage for a $289,000 house (that’s the average cost in Canada but here’s a breakdown by city), car payments, and if kids are involved there’s daycare. Then there’s heating the house, paying for necessities like food and water, and hopefully saving something for retirement. But what’s happening is that people have bought into the myth that others like Oprah are selling them. So, instead of skipping the purchase of that margarita maker, they just keep spending one pay cheque after another until they’re spending into the next pay cheque and the next one after that.

Pretty soon everyone’s running a debt that the banks can’t collect. And we know how that story ends.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that Oprah is the reason the American and world economies collapsed. And that is why she and I can never be BFFs.

OK, let the hate mail commence…now.

Photo credit: jbelluch from Flickr

[I'm probably on a plane en route to Nice, France at the moment. But I scheduled this little travel related post to hopefully keep you entertained. Next week, I've got a special treat lined up for you with guest East Coast bloggers filling in for me while I get a little R&R. Until then, here's a post about a travel experience during my youth that left me scarred musically.]

When I was growing up my family was all about the road trips. We saw most of Canada and the continental United States of America by car.

It was torture.

When we were younger, my sister and I went through the whole whiny “she’s brushing up against me” phase where we couldn’t even breathe the same air without there being some kind of issue. Then my sister had bouts of car sickness for a while that allowed her to sit up front with our parents. And even though that helped us get through our quibbling, it brought on another element of torture.

Here’s some non-numerical math to paint a picture for you:
Stench of vomit + heat – air conditioning + rolled up windows = a car full of nauseous unhappy campers.

Plus, we weren’t the kind of family that played car games. We had to maintain silence for the most part so our dad could “concentrate on driving.” The only thing that got us through our long trips were things like reading, writing, and music.

In high  school, I got my first Walkman which I happily brought along on our last family road trip to Quebec city. I only had a small collection of audio cassettes at the time but I didn’t want to have to listen to whatever lame talk radio station my father would invariably tune into. Of the collection that I brought I can only remember two, but they provided a life lesson about music that I have not since forgotten.

And that is: some music is timeless (e.g. the When Harry Met Sally… soundtrack as sung by Harry Connick, Jr.) while others are not to be repeated in an endless loop during an eight hour drive (i.e. Stone Temple Pilots’ album Purple).

To this day even groups that remind me of STP get under my skin. And whenever I hear one of their songs, I feel like my ears are bleeding. In fact, I don’t listen to the local radio stations on the off chance that they might play something by them. Well, that and I’m of the mind that too much pop music makes the brain explode…ella…ella…ella…Thanks Rihanna for making me shudder every time it rains.

So, there you have it. My musical tragedy. What kinds of things have you done that you’ve regretted while travelling?