Dinosaurs are the answer to everything

Oooh, this time I get to start with a controversial tangent! Yay!

So, today I read this, found it alternatively interesting and tiresome, and generally got more afraid to leave university and have to find a 'real job'. Yay.

I say tiresome because I've found myself growing steadily more irritated when I come across articles like this, and am constantly striving to figure out why. Whenever I try to enter into this kind of discussion, I always seem to find myself agreeing with the other speaker, regardless of their position, yet constantly feeling annoyed and unsatisfied. I think I may have actually figured out why that is. I think (as hilariously contradictory as it is, knowing me), it's because of the frequency, repetition, and limited scope of the objections raised.

Now, allow me to complain a bit about complaining.

The thing is, I absolutely sympathize with all of the complaints raised by Matt Bors (circa virtually everyone else in my frickin' age group) about the difficult socio-economic climate, job markets and so forth. I do. It's tough, and very scary, and I feel immensely fortunate that it's not a situation I have to deal with at this immediate point in my life. So, please don't feel that this is going to turn into some kind of Randian rant (Rantian?), because that could not be farther from my intent. Although, if that was where this blog was going, it would probably somehow reference one of my favourite Simpsons sight-gags of all time:

That said, I do often find myself lapsing into similar generalized bitching about my generation, saying that we're over-entitled, lazy, apathetic, and whiney. I'm not proud of this fact. I'd rather be cheerful and productive than pointlessly circle-jerk in mopiness (contrary to my usual angle of approach). And that, I think, is why I get annoyed reading articles like Bors'.

The thing is, I don't ultimately disagree with any of Bors' points. What I do disagree with is him positing all of them as if all of what he writes is revelatory or news. Although Bors' article is purportedly in response to the supposed multitude of articles damning "the millennials" (I'd never even heard that term before. I thought we were supposed to be "Generation Y" or whatever anyway...), I feel like I've come across a trillion times more articles defending us and all of the hardships we have to deal with than those damning us. And that frustrates me, feeling like everyone is constantly complaining about how hard a time we have, and recycling the same points as evidence. That, to me, starts to feel redundant, pointless, and counterproductive rather than helpful. I wish, I suppose, that it was easier to complain creatively.

I fully understand the objective of finding solidarity through consensus, but, to me, the frequency that I've heard such arguments suggests that the consensus is well understood (matter of opinion? probably, but let's roll with this nonetheless). As such, finding countless comments of people equally sharing their difficulties of finding work and struggling with college debt as if it's a point that further needed to be proven draws frustration from me rather than sympathy. To me, having established such a community, I'd prefer if I saw more evidence of people working together to develop proactive dialogues about how to help navigate (or, better yet, improve) the cultural climate that everyone is struggling with so much right now.

Or at least less complaining. I realize things suck a lot for a lot of people, but I feel like that kind of stagnant negativity is what helps establish the negative stereotypes about our generation in the first place. The jadedness-turned-apathy is so easy to feed off of in a bad way. Again, I'm innocent of none of this, but I still wish it was easier to think of more proactive ways of vocalizing discontent. Like making more flip-books of fire-spitting sharks wearing jetpacks fighting dinosaurs.

Since I can't draw that well, this will have to tide you over in the meantime. Let it perk up your unemployed spirits!

The fact that so many "look at how hard a time the Millennials are having!" articles adopt the same tone of woeful self-righteousness at prior generations further just makes me feel like this:

But then again, I feel the same way about this blog a lot, so I digress.

In more fun news today, Kelly also tipped me off to this, which made me gurgle like a happy hippo: 

Step 1. Go to http://www.vogue.co.uk/ (trust me, it's worth it)
Step 2. Type in the Konami code of up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A (courtesy of some amazing hacker)
Step 3. Enjoy what happens.
Tip: Keep pressing A to make more appear.
Read more at ONTD: http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/?skip=10#ixzz2YaXTs5eO

So, in conclusion, dinosaurs are the answer to everything. 

Which, in turn, leads to my fun fact of the day. I was determined to learn something cool about Velociraptors, after making so many of them pop up wearing fancy hats on the Vogue website (fun fact: if you button mash 'A', you can make a shit-ton of them continuously appear, which, naturally, led to me humming the most feared song in Disney history). 

I thought it would be a touch difficult, considering my dinosaur obsession has led to me being well-versed in most of the most common "did you know?"s of velociraptors (yes I knew they were as tall as chickens, and that the massive ones in my favourite movie were based more on deinonychus instead, yes I knew they had feathers, yes I knew they actually didn't hunt in packs). Nonetheless, I came across something pretty cool, which I'm considering fact of the day:

#7: Velociraptors became popular (at least in the rungs of paleontology) because of a particularly intact fossil of a raptor attacking a protoceratops. 

  

Here it is. It's called "Fighting Dinosaurs", and is one of the most famous fossils ever, largely because of how dramatic and intact it is. Paleontologists theorize that this was the case because of both being immediately covered and killed instantly by a sudden sandstorm. So that's kind of cool.

This article even has a breakdown of how the fight would have turned out, had it gotten the chance to run its course. I love that people do stuff like this. And whoever said science couldn't be fun?

So there you have it. Now I'm all worried about the deluges of backlash about even hinting at bashing "Millennials" that I might get if anyone actually read this. The only solution - never voice any opinions about anything.

Or, to return to The Simpsons,

Kristy's also been singing "Spider-Pig" lately, so I'll throw that up for good measure too. 

   

Apparently I consistently laugh at pigs, as my eruptions of laughter at the Monsters University "pigskin"suggest.

So there you have it. If not dinosaurs, pigs are the answer to everything. 

Or moose. Moose are inherently funny too.

I have a pair of moose boxers.

Once I saw about seventeen moose in a single forest clearing around a mini-lake type thing. No foolin'! I think it was in Nova Scotia or somewhere around there. I can't recall for certain - I was quite young. I remember the moose, though.

Monty Python also enjoy moose (especially in Swedish). 

Aaaaaaaaannnddd I'm done.