Consumerism gone wild

I was flipping through the BC Place schedule looking for an RV show to attend so that I could go there and watch the poor RV dealers listening to crickets and crying in their little tiny RV bathrooms because nobody, but NOBODY in their right mind would buy an RV today, when I came across something called the Vancouver Gift Show. That's right, a 3-day gift show on the gigantic floor of BC Place Stadium! What the fuck is going on in our society when there is a market for a 3-day show to promote a bunch of crap that nobody wants!? More fondue sets! More tuxedo shapes wine bottle cozies! More hot-rock relaxation sets that the recipient *might* use once and then stow in the basement until a few years later when it makes its fateful journey to Salvation Army. How much of the world's now precious resources have gone into and are going into gifts that never get used? I estimate the "miss" rate on gift giving is at least 50%. That means 50% of all those materials and all that energy and labour that went into making those gifts was pure waste. Don't get me wrong, gifts have their place. I love my family and friends and appreciate every gift I have ever received and I make an effort to use every gift and respect it as a gesture of love from someone else. Things I can't use I usually exchange for something I need if I can, or even [gasp] regift them. But we humans have pillaged the earth for too long, mining metals, cutting trees, killing animals, burning oil, and polluting everything, and we really ought to draw the line somewhere and say "no more waste". Let's show our love for each other in other ways that aren't so wasteful. My next point is going to offend some people, but I'll say it anyway. The biggest waste point of the gift industry is on children. I love my son, and I love kids in general, but trust me, they don't need all these fucking toys. We are breeding a generation of ADD kids because they are literally swimming in toys. Are we scared they might get bored if they only have a few toys? Or as adults are we projecting our boredom on our kids? Or do we just want to make sure they have an unlimited number of toys so that they can't possibly get bored so we won't have to actually play with them ourselves? Now, I know kids get really excited about Christmas and parents get no better rush than from seeing their kid squealing with excitement at all their wonderful presents. Sure, toys can, in the short term, evoke those beloved smiles that send endorphins racing through our "parent brains". But in the fullness of time there are usually only a small handful of toys that actually get used, and the rest just sit at the bottom of a massive toybox (if they get opened at all), and meanwhile we have set an expectation with our kids that they have to get a huge haul of toys every Christmas, birthday, Easter, even Halloween (the retailers and advertisers help propel that expectation along too!). We could give our kids a better gift than that. The gift of preserving some of the earth's resources for their lifetimes after we are gone. The way we are going, there won't be much left for them.
In case you were wondering, the gift show runs from September 7-9 and, not surprisingly, there weren't any RV shows. ;-)

P.F.