Gesellschaftskritik? Maybe a little bit.

The Worm dog – New trend from China arrives in North America

Vancouver, BC – We’ve all seen them: tiny, short legged dogs wearing expensive parkas, silky scarfs, and fancy haircuts. Often enough they peek out of purses or strollers and shoot you an ironic glance that lets you reconsider certain life choices. Why the heck am I not being pushed or carried around by my loved ones? What has once started as an irritating fashion has now become the favorite pet in the greater Vancouver area, according to a survey conducted by BC Stats. While the ordinary Vancourite still shops in local pet stores or visits regional dog breeders, the real trend has now arrived from China: The Worm dog. 

Hannah W. is the co-owner of the first Worm dog shop on Vancouver’s Robson Street. Hannah has a degree in Fashionable Domesticated Animal Design and has been working with breeders from Hong Kong for several years now. “We were just looking for something a little more convenient than an Australian Silky Terrier with its long hair or a Miniature Pinscher that barks more than other dogs its size. People nowadays don’t have time to walk their dogs, let alone to take them to the park. They want a loyal companion with little needs.” It took over 3 years for the research team from Hong Kong to come up with the perfect breed. “When they first contacted me and told me that they were planning to cross a Bootlace worm with a Wiener dog, I thought they were kidding”, says Alison A., BC’s leading expert in dog breeding, “but when I saw first results I was impressed. From an evolutionary point of view city dogs no longer need legs. Owners often prefer to carry the dog in their purses or push them in strollers.”

Hannah W. said she remained skeptical at first, but soon realized the business potential. “Last summer I traveled to Belgium where the Worm dog had found its first passionate owners in the spring of 2016. When I saw how happy dogs and owners moved through the heart of Brussels I was convinced.” She flew straight to Hong Kong to seal the deal. The shop on Robson Street opened only 3 weeks after her visit to Belgium. “People couldn’t be more content”, she enthusiastically tells us. “Most landlords already changed their tenant agreements towards allowing the Worm dog as a pet. They are unable to scratch floors or walls and make little or no barking sounds, since they have become nearly mute in the cross breeding.” 

Strolling through Vancouver these days you will find that you can spot more and more Worm dogs each day. Pet and owner appear to be equally happy and difficulties traditional dog holders have faced in the past seem to diminish in the worm dog’s case. Air China is even considering allowing the worm dog as a carry on. “If you think about it, it is not much different from a neck role,” comments Alison A. on the upcoming regulation change. So should you go and get yourself a Worm dog as soon as possible? For now not everyone might be able to afford to spend $6300 CAD on a pet, but as the trend keeps going and with demand still rising, the worm dog might soon be found in your local pet store.

 

Tamquamish - It’s all like ‘like’

Monterey, CA –  The International Research Foundation for English Language & Education (IRFELE) located in Monterey, California, confirmed the addition of a new sublanguage to the category of English communication linguistics. The new language is called Tamquamish and is primary spoken along North America’s West Coast. Tamquamish is derived from American English with similar vocabulary and grammatical structure. The main distinction between Tamquamish and English is the replacement of every other word with the English conjunction word like, derived from the Low German word lieken ‎(“to be like; resemble”). Other meanings of like come from Old English līcian ‎(“to please; be sufficient”), from Proto-Germanic *līkijaną ‎(“to please”), from Proto-Indo-European *līg-, *leyg- ‎(“image; likeness; similarity”), from Saterland Frisian liekje ‎(“to be similar, resemble”), Dutch lijken ‎(“to seem”), German gleichen ‎(“to resemble”), Swedish lika ‎(“to like; put up with; align with”), Norwegian like ‎(“to like”), and the Icelandic líka ‎(“to like”). All of these forms remain in the Tamquamish language, replacing unimportant words like similar, as, resembling, such as, or reminiscent to.
 
Professor Dr. Como, head director of IRFELE’s modern language division, explained the decision of promoting Tamquamish to a new language with the following statement: “The Oxford Dictionary of the English language contains 171,476 currently used words. Many non-native speaker struggle with this large vocabulary that exist in traditional English. Younger generations have long dismissed over 98% of existing words and the word like is used in many contexts like when referring to a similarity or like when expressing positive feelings towards something. Tamquamish is the outcome of lingo already used across the country. Older and especially British people have a hard time to let go of English as we know it, but if you listen closely Tamquamish is the outcome of a language already spoken by a large part of the population.” 

Dr. Como’s research division not only studies the excessive use of words like like, but also how headsets and headphones have changed the view of talking to one’s self. “If we go back one or two generations”, he explains in a telephone interview, “talking out loud while sitting, standing, or walking alone, one was considered to be crazy. We now see a complete shift in public perception, as people do it all the time. It’s like women wearing pants or people being on their phone during dinner. The first one was once considered scandalous, the latter one impolite and both are completely accepted nowadays. Just like that, society has changed.”
 
It is true, walking through a modern American mall, you will see many people that appear to be talking to themselves whether they are having a conversation through their headphones or are dictating text messages, one can only guess. If you happen to earth drop on the occasional face to face conversation between two people it usually goes like: “So I was like ‘What did you do that for?’ and then she was like ‘I don’t know!’, like she really didn’t know. And I was just like ‘Whatever.’ Like I would ever understand her.” 

It’s like the little 4 letter word has crept into every single sentence of the spoken English language. “And we don’t even have to spell it out any longer”, Dr. Como concludes, “Facebook has come up with a symbol for us to replace the word like completely by using the thumbs-up icon. Texting in Tamquamish will be super efficient.” Whether you like it or not, like has found its way into modern jargon. It’s like the old clichéd phrase – What’s not to like?

Hope for victims suffering from contemporary diseases

Toronto, ON – A brand new Centre for Contemporary Diseases and Illnesses (CCDI) opened yesterday in Kitchener, Ontario, just outside of Toronto. The federal government decided to build this state of the art hospital in response to a series of odd new disease that have popped up all over the country in recent months, mainly affecting teenagers and young adults. 

Simon B. was on a trip to New York City when he suddenly lost all sense of orientation. “I was taking selfies at Time Square just like any other tourist”, he later reported to the media, “and when I looked up from my phone, I didn’t know where I was at all. I started to panic, but when I looked back at the pictures on my phone I regained orientation. Looking at the screen made me feel safe. I managed to find my way back to the hotel by taking pictures every 10 meters or so.” Luckily Simon managed to meet up with his friends who traveled with him and got him back home safely. Simon is not the only reported case of what experts now call Aletheiagnosia (Greek: "aletheia" = "the state of being evident", "agnosia" = "not knowing"). “The illness manifests in many different forms”, explains Prof. Dr. Robert Tran-Spicer, “The symptoms range from loss of orientation in a new environment to reality blindness and general sensory overload.” Dr. Tran-Spicer is the head of the newly built CCDI, where currently 156 patients are treated. “Many young people nowadays are a lot more familiar with the visual world on their phones, tablets, or laptops. When they step out of the virtual reality into the real world their sensory and perceptual systems can’t cope with the sensory input around us leading to a complete sense of helplessness.” 

Critics argue that the problem is rooted in the “smart phone addiction” of the younger generation and should be addressed by stricter parenting and education programs. They feel that the money that went into developing the CCDI could be better spent elsewhere. “There are hundreds of kids that don’t even have access to a phone or a computer and yet we spent government money on building a clinic to cure those that use their social status and abundance carelessly,” says Kaity Miller, a Toronto social worker. CCDI objectors might soon be quieted, as the government is cutting financial support. Now that the clinic is ready for operation, the management is asked to find industry funding. According to CCDI's finance division, the management is already talking to several companies that have an interest in developing products that will help CCDI’s patients. 

One of these companies might be CloudVision, a company offering cloud storage for smart phone pictures. Currently their services include an intuitive picture storing platform with customized folder structures that include selfies, pet pictures, food pictures, vacation photos etc. While the just storage plan is free, easy to share plans start at $5.99 CAD a months. The company advertises using semi-philosophical slogans such as ‘Did it even happen if it’s not captured on camera?’ or ‘Share and link your life, appreciation is just a click away’.
 
“Our platform already offers help to patients with Aletheiagnosia”, says Helena Li, one of CloudVision’s PR and marketing board members. “The close family and friends circle offers an option for relatives and friends to follow the patients’ whereabouts and see the world through their eyes. The resulting support and understanding helps many patients on their way to recovery. But we want to move away from offering virtual goods only.” The company is launching their first hardware product on November 24, 2017. The eyePhone is a newly developed smart phone that matches captured pictures to a large online data base. Once the user is spatially picture matched, the phone will calculate the shortest route to the entered destination, wherever it is. This could improve the quality of life of Aletheiagnosia patients, many of which do no longer feel save to leave the house by themselves. CloudVision has also filed a patent for filtered contact lenses and will flood the market with Mono-, Fade-, Chrome-, Transfer-, Process-, and Instant-lenses as soon as they are ready for production. These lenses are designed to help young people deal with sensory overload by making the world look a lot more like the pictures they post on social media. Additionally, glasses that are able to switch between a square, standard, and panoramic field of view are another product the company hopes to have on the market by 2017.

Still, vision related problems are not the only illnesses that doctors at CCDI have to treat. Several teenagers have been admitted with so called locked thumb syndrome. This disease is just another smart phone casualty. Most patients are reported to have ‘liked’ several thousand pictures on Facebook or Instagram within about 30 minutes, resulting in a complete cramp of one of the nine thumb muscles, the flexor pollicis brevis. “We think the critical number of likes is about 5250 in a time under 30 minutes”, speculates Dr. Tran-Spicer, “but it’s still too early to tell.” Some of the patients were unable to move their thumbs for several weeks and only extensive physiotherapy and locally administered muscle relaxants could break the tension. “The body just can’t keep up”, concludes Dr. Tran-Spicer, “Evolution takes effect over several generations, but modern technology develops too quickly for our bodies to adapt. We will have more and more illnesses related to modern life in the years to come.” So should we be alarmed?  Dr. Tran-Spicer says not yet. “Our bodies will adapt to the new demands dictated by technology eventually and our minds will figure out how to deal with the concept of reality versus virtuality.”