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On problem solving in the Foobiverse.
Aug. 14th, 2016 01:27 amThe problem with the Trash Bag John arc is that it reminds me of where we'll be in a year and a half: watching Elly yell at Farley because they unintentionally trained him to eat garbage. This is because their irritating refusal to keep track of where the poor dim animal is leads to the undesirable behavior of his rooting through the garbage looking for something yummy. This allows us to use the situation as sort of a template to explain why it is that the Pattersons are not good at problem solving. As always, the situation can be broken down into discreet steps.
First off, we have the undesirable behaviour I just mentioned. It's an infernal nuisance to have to pick up garbage that some animal has just spread all over the place so I can understand their frustration. What I also understand is that they set themselves up to fail by refusing to be especially vigilant owing to an unhappy tendency to assume that if they aren't thinking about him, he isn't doing anything.
Next, we have Elly's solution to the problem which, as almost always, is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the issue and a refusal to admit error. We start things off with her baffling assumption that Farley knows that she wants the garbage kept in bags and is just doing that to be mean to her, follow with her inability to understand that standing around holding a can of Alpo while screaming at him makes him think that dog food is screaming at him in a can and end with her belief that accepting that Farley can never understand what she's saying is a defeat.
We follow that with someone proposing a solution that can actually work and its graceless acceptance by people who see doing the sensible thing as giving up. This leads to Elly growling about kids wanting what other people have and eventually, her standing around bellowing NO!! while holding an ice scraper like a sceptre of futile rage when she cannot have her cake and eat it too.
Finally, we deal with the fact that there's another problem to contend with: idiot parents who, through their tendency to scream and holler, have raised passive children who don't understand that garbage doesn't walk itself to the bin. No sooner do they get the bin made than the kids turn it into a fort and we're back where we started. Nothing ever goes anywhere because the problem is not the dog, the problem is the idiot owners.
First off, we have the undesirable behaviour I just mentioned. It's an infernal nuisance to have to pick up garbage that some animal has just spread all over the place so I can understand their frustration. What I also understand is that they set themselves up to fail by refusing to be especially vigilant owing to an unhappy tendency to assume that if they aren't thinking about him, he isn't doing anything.
Next, we have Elly's solution to the problem which, as almost always, is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the issue and a refusal to admit error. We start things off with her baffling assumption that Farley knows that she wants the garbage kept in bags and is just doing that to be mean to her, follow with her inability to understand that standing around holding a can of Alpo while screaming at him makes him think that dog food is screaming at him in a can and end with her belief that accepting that Farley can never understand what she's saying is a defeat.
We follow that with someone proposing a solution that can actually work and its graceless acceptance by people who see doing the sensible thing as giving up. This leads to Elly growling about kids wanting what other people have and eventually, her standing around bellowing NO!! while holding an ice scraper like a sceptre of futile rage when she cannot have her cake and eat it too.
Finally, we deal with the fact that there's another problem to contend with: idiot parents who, through their tendency to scream and holler, have raised passive children who don't understand that garbage doesn't walk itself to the bin. No sooner do they get the bin made than the kids turn it into a fort and we're back where we started. Nothing ever goes anywhere because the problem is not the dog, the problem is the idiot owners.
