Cindi Lauper, you can't be right about everything.

I turned down an interview today. I was walking from Weeds to the library at the U, reading and walking, when my delightful encounter with Sherman Alexie was interrupted by a short man in a suit and his counterpart carrying a CTV camera. He asked if he could borrow a moment of my time. There's a camera, a chance to share my opinion with the masses, to save the world with my own conclusions about...

"Sure. For what?"

"We'd like to ask you a few questions about the economy."

Maybe I could share something that would really change the way people thought about money. Sure, it's one of the biggest stresses in my life. But who really needs it? It's just a number right? A measurement; a weight. It's gains far too much attention. Hell, I don't even have a steady income. I just do my thing and hope the number on the ATM machine doesn't wane too much when I punch a few buttons. Money. Pah. I could live without money. I dream of a little cabin with no electricity or running water where I grow my own carrots and spin my own wool. I welcome this economic downturn with open arms. It's about time we realize that money isn't everything. Sure, it's convenient. I mean, it's just frivolous really. Money to pay my phone bill so I can call my parents and ask for help to fix my car so I can burn increasingly expensive fossil-fuels to get to school, or work, or the mountains or the grocery store so I can buy groceries and not carry them home and risk a back injury and avoid health care fees so I can be productive at my non-steady semi-volunteer job(s) and get good grades at my financial giant of an academic institution so I can go on to an even more expensive academic institution and not earn any great deal of money (except to pay phone bills and fix cars and buy groceries) and earn a piece of very expensive paper that says I should be getting a certain amount of money so I can slowly pay my way out of a financial hole while dividing up what little income I will be able to make into car payments and a mortgage and children and RRSPs and then pass on what ever money I don't have to future spawn and force them to shell out mass amounts of money to bury my worthless body in an expensive fraction of land with an expensive piece of rock that says everything in my life was important except money.

"Um, oh no thanks. I'm not really good with that kind of stuff."