5 Reasons My Dog Is a Lazy, Worthless Millennial
So it seems to be all the rage these days to complain about "millennials" (which I guess is the new word for "kids these days"), and as an Asian, I always enjoy 1) conforming to society and 2) criticizing my children. So why not kill two birds with one unnecessarily large cleaver?
It's the only tool a Chinese chef needs in the kitchen. This is why Chinese poultry is cut into cubes instead of body parts. Anatomy shmanatomy.
I only wish I had a millennial of my own to tell terrible anecdotes about and extrapolate into criticism of an entire demographic. Unfortunately, my only child is currently a baby, so he's no use.
I do, however, have a dog. Frobolome is 4 years old, which I believe makes him about 28 in dog years, which makes him an exact one-to-one representation of an entire generation of humans.
Here are some unassailable conclusions about all American 20-somethings we can draw from looking at my dog.
He Lacks Follow-Through
Frobolome has never graduated from anything. Puppy school doesn't count. Everyone graduates from puppy school. I have. You probably have. You know Kanye's albums Late Registration and Graduation? Those were referring to puppy school.
He's never finished a class since then (Frobolome, not Kanye). We signed him up for agility courses once (Frobolome again) because he enjoys jumping over things (applies to both Frobolome and Kanye).
Proof.
Agility is a dog competition event where your dog navigates an obstacle course involving jumps, ramps, tunnels, poles, putting together a military rifle, and firing at a target.
It turns out that agility is a super serious sport, at least for that agility school, and that the first rule of agility (after not talking about agility) is that you're not supposed to have any fun. The trainer yelled at us to not let the dogs actually touch any of the equipment for the entire first course, otherwise it would "ruin" the dogs because they would think a tunnel or ramp is something to be scared of or to play with and never accept it as the serious dog career achievement it is meant to be.
That probably seems ridiculous to a normal person who thinks dog activities should be about having fun and not about certificates or trophies or whatever dumb symbols of achievement that dogs don't care about because they can't eat them. That's not why we ended up pulling him out of that class, though. It was because there was a gentleman in the class with us who liked to call his dog up onto his lap and kiss it on the mouth. Gross.
Anyway, it's fine with me that Frobolome doesn't want to pursue agility, but he hasn't taken the slightest initiative since then to enroll in anything else, let alone stay the course. Just last week, I tried to interest him in a computer certification course I found in the local community college catalog. He ate it.
He Mainly Interacts With Other Dogs on Social Media
It seems like "social media" (the Twitters, the Face Books, the chat programs where you send pictures of your penis to other people) is taking over everybody's social interactions, at least according to magazines and other media for old people.
Back in my day, we didn't interact with all our friends through computer screens using Facebook and Twitter. We interacted with our friends through computer screens using MySpace and Friendster. But even before that, I hear people interacted with people in person. And dogs interacted with other dogs dog-to-dog.
Sure, Frobolome will go out in the backyard and bark to all the other dogs in the neighborhood about how there sure is a lot of poop in the yard, or whatever they talk about. But instead of scheduling get-togethers at each other's houses where they can show off their poop, like I assume dogs used to do in the old days, he just posts his latest poops on his Instagram account. They keep removing his poop photos because it violates their terms of service or something, so here's what's left, basically:
He Doesn't Vote
Like the disengaged young humans of his generation, Frobolome refuses to vote.
Part of it is probably that dogs are not legally allowed to vote, but I think that is a cop-out. People who can't vote can still be politically engaged. Young teenagers can participate in discussions and raise awareness of issues, albeit in an overly simplistic manner, convincing themselves they are making a difference by shouting catchy, meaningless political talking points at each other over Facebook ... which I guess makes them identical to older adults, except for the actual voting part.
Part of it is also that voters of all demographics have lost all trust in our political system, which is not unreasonable, because the government is pretty awful. My personal philosophy is based on the same idea as the Churchill quote about how democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other ones. From the way people talk, you'd think things couldn't get any worse, but if no good people ever voted again, we could theoretically end up reinstituting slavery or storing nuclear waste in schools or something, I don't know. My vote may not be able to stop my state from periodically bankrupting itself, but I guess at least we can try to keep our kids from being irradiated while they fail to learn math.
So I can't interest Frobolome in any of that. I think he's disillusioned because he's always had a strong belief in trickle-down economics, as he keeps hanging around the kitchen counter and dinner table waiting for the theoretical payoffs from this system. Which never come, by the way, because that's people food, Frobolome! It'll make you sick!
He also should care about free speech issues, as he always complains he is the victim of heavy-handed censorship in the matter of expressing his opinion to UPS deliverymen, outdoor cats, passing cars, and neighborhood children. (His opinion is "BARKBARKBARKBARKBARK.") But no, he'd rather sit around and whine about it than try to vote and make a difference.
He Can't Drive
For some reason, everyone is very worried about millennials getting fewer driver's licenses and, logically, driving less than previous generations. Because, you know, everyone always complains there aren't enough cars on the road.
Once again, Frobolome is typical here in that he does not have a driver's license and does not drive, which more responsible dog owners will no doubt reprove me for. Heaven knows I've put the time in to get him driver training and take him out on countless practice drives, but we just can't seem to get him to pass the test.
Sure, he's good at acting like a responsible driver -- he makes a big show of checking his rearview mirrors and making sure that he's shifted into the right gear (even though he can only drive automatic, big whoop).
And I guess he can navigate local streets all right, more or less, but what trips him up on the test every single time is the parallel parking:
I've searched the Internet to see if this is a common problem with the breed, but I haven't seen parallel parking come up as an issue on any Corgi forums, so I guess he's just a defective freak.
What? Oh yeah, millennials. They're probably bad at parking, too. I didn't have time to look it up, I was busy taking dog pictures.
He Has Never Had a Job
If you've done any research on Corgis, you probably remember that they're herding dogs, because once you found that fact out you probably laughed at it, because look at those stubby legs.
For those too lazy to have done much Corgi research in their lifetime (MILLENNIALS AM I RIGHT), Corgis were historically bred to drive cattle by nipping at their heels, so ancient Welsh people created a dog that was low to the ground to avoid cow kicks. How this was done, I don't know, but I think it involves hydraulics.
(Consult the following diagram by SIR to further understand Corgi mechanics.)
Well, the first step to getting your dog into herding is to take him to a "herding instinct test," where they check to see if your dog still has the herding instinct bred into his ancestors or whether he is a defective specimen of the breed good for absolutely nothing. You can probably guess which category Frobolome fits into, but let's just keep going with the story.
The test involves putting your dog into a pen with a few sheep and seeing if he exhibits any desire to herd them. The bar for passing is actually extremely low. Some of the dogs made a go of chasing the sheep, but really any interest in the sheep at all, including looking at them, seemed to count as "passing." With standards that low, all of the 25 or so dogs passed except one.
When it was Frobolome's turn, he certainly noticed that there were sheep in the pen, but instead of seeing them as animals to be herded, or living creatures of any kind, he sort of saw them as obstacles to navigate in order to get to what was really interesting -- sheep poop. God damn, that stuff must have been delicious, because he just went to town, eating sheep poop left and right, whenever a sheep would be so kind as to get out of the way.
Note that this is the one job Corgis were bred for (herding, I mean, not eating sheep poop), and it did not even register with him that it was a thing that a dog might do.
So now he does nothing all day. He sits around on the couch, plays some PlayStation, barks at nothing once in a while, posts on Facebook, and then calls it a day.
Ladies and gentlemen: Frobolome, voice of a generation.
Christina worries about Frobolome's Instagram account becoming more popular than her own Twitter and Facebook accounts.
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