The Deconstructionist: It’s a Dog’s Future
We Can Make Him Better Than He Was Before: Better, Stronger, Less Interested in the Buttholes of Strangers.
Long-time readers of this column know that I occasionally wax futuristic about the coming years, usually in a hopeful way, but occasionally imagining the zombie apocalypse we suspect is lurking behind every mildly interesting calendar date (1-1-08 is coming! That adds up to 10! Into the shelter everyone!).
This time, I’d like to talk about a human’s best friend, the humble dog. I’m partly inspired by the fact that I pay the bills by walking other people’s dogs, but also because one of my friends has just had his dog put on mood-altering medication. At least, he told the pharmacist it was for the dog, which by some strange coincidence, weighs almost exactly the same as him. But if you think about it, which I am apparently prepared to do, doggie-downers are really just the beginning. Consider all the things we love about our dogs, then look at what’s left, and let’s see what we can do about it:
1. The Plasma Leash: I enjoy taking dogs out for their daily stroll, but often they get their leashes tangled around poles, street signs, tress, and other things. The plasma-leash would solve this. Built around existing lightsaber & ghostbuster technology, the plasma-leash would be a flexible stream of super-heated plasma that would cut through anything that it encountered. The dog would simply be unable to wrap itself around anything other than other plasma-leashes (obviously discouraged, as the dogs could slice each other to cutlets, and also the experience the well-known downside to crossing the streams [1]). Now, the dog-walker would need to wear special pants when using the plasma-leash, perhaps built around ov-glove technology.
2. Something to Cover the Dog’s Butt: I’m less clear on how this problem is to be solved, but I do know there needs to be a better way to end a dog than a quarter-sized sphincter that’s always looking right at you whenever the dog raises its tail. We can probably get rid of the anal glands at the same time.
If the Jetsons are any guide, a solution for this is inevitable. Astro has no discernable rectum and probably doesn’t poop at all, since George walks him indoors on a treadmill.
3. Automatic Poop-Catcher: While we’re re-engineering the backend of the dog, how about some kind of bag-dispenser in the tail area? Something that catches the crap as it tumbles out, and maybe ties the bag? I’ll still have to take the bag and put it in a trash can, I know that. Little helicopters to do that are just silly.
4. Cat-And-Squirrel-Exploding-Scanner-Technology: This one is for the pets themselves. Face it, it’s too dangerous to let them off of their plasma leashes to chase cats and squirrels, so with scanner technology, the dogs can make the heads of these common pests explode from a distance.
5. Fur That Doesn’t Shed: is, in fact, a swiffer. The only downside I see to this is adding swiffer to the increasingly complicated and cute breed names. ‘Swifferdoodle’ and ‘Pikaswiff’ would be hard to take, even if the latter one is in fact a pokemon.
6. Dogs That Are Wireless Hubs: Not as far-fetched as you might imagine. Look at all the highly specialized breeds that humans have developed in just a few hundred years. Consider the Basset Hounds, with their long ears to sweep scent up from the ground, their wrinkled faces to hold that scent closer to their incredibly sensitive noses, and ever a white blaze on the tail to make the animal easier to locate in tall grass. We did all of that with selective breeding, so why not a dog that serves as a broadband carrier?
Here’s a few dog improvements science definitely should not be working on:
1. Doggie Language Translators: The Far Side long ago determined what all dogs are saying when they bark: ‘Hey! Hey! Hey!’ Otherwise, they are pretty much exclusively interested in food. And what if all talking dogs sound like the either Scooby Do or Astro (the rorror!) or still worse, like Michael J. Fox, Bruce Willis or any of the celebrity voices that are so often used in talking animal films? And we certainly don’t need a translator going the other way, as I’m pretty sure dogs understand us most of the time but simply don’t care that much.
2. Poop-Dissolvers, ala ‘Envy’: Like most people, I haven’t seen this Ben Stiller/Jack Black 2004 comedy where Jack Black invents a spray that teleports dog feces to another dimension. No one seems to know where it goes, so I would guess it’s filling up the Great and Secret Tomb Where Dread Cuthulu Sleeps. We already know he’s going to be pretty pissed when he does wake up, so why annoy him further by piling up the dog poo?
3. Dogs that walk themselves: Hey, trying to make a living, here!
The Deconstructionist with Gordon Weir will show you how to walk the dog,.
[1] Total protonic reversal.