Generation Y(2K)

I had more dental work done this morning because I have the wherewithal (and insurance).
My teeth were restructured. So, too, is this post.
I lost the sheet I originally wrote it out on.

They call them 'Millenials'.
They're called Millenials because, at the time of their birth, adults had a real preoccupation with putting silly names on things.
The title was cooked up by the Movember people (spit), or so I heard.
Given our current Earth timeline, the Millenials should end up being the group who will ultimately inherit the planet when it actually reaches its doom.
It's between the Millenials and their (as yet unborn) teenage-pregnancy-children, of which there will likely be many.
They call them Generation Y.
More like Generation Y2K.
That was the hoopla-laced event that they were born into.
What a fitting precursor.
An entire listless, wayward group of juveniles.
Born into an era that was earmarked by the promise of two things:
Warranted uncertainty, and inevitable cataclysm.
And so far, the era has delivered.
"Is swine flu going to kill your grandmother?
Maybe."
"Do you have enough bullets and ammo to survive the next amber alert?
Probably not."
"Are the ice caps melting?
We don't think so, but the polar bears seem to have nothing to stand on these days."
"Is Al Gore the next Nostradamus?
...Nah."
Being unsure of ourselves personally, economically, vitally - that's daily for us.
"Does my Twitter account effectively define me as a person?"
The answer, of course, is "No, it doesn't.
But, for these fledgleing adults, it's the next best thing.
Their constructed personalities have more substance than their actual personas, simply because they spend more time grooming the former.
I shouldn't have to tell you that that's fucked.
It's one thing to take a child, raise him in a cool household with a lot of pretty knickknacks and no love, send him off to a first-rate college with a third-rate attitude, have him graduate, work in junk bonds, get hooked on cocaine and eventually misplace his soul.
It's another thing entirely to suggest to that same child that perhaps he shouldn't bother with one in the first place.
Today's youth are raised on doom.
Take a group of pre-teens, sneak them into the cinema and have them watch a flick about the end of the world.
Repeat that again and again.
The end of humanity is such a trend, and no one's into it more than humans.
Sure, in my day we had Armageddon and Deep Impact.
But those were about interstellar geology as much as anything else.
That, and who can play the most convincing president (Bill Pullman)*.

These days, on the other hand, everything is apocalypse this and that.
The Road
The Day After Tomorrow
I Am Legend
28 Days Later
Children of Man
Oblivion
After Earth
This Is The End
Not to mention the zombies.
Everyone began talking 'bout zombies, and now no one will stop.
The fad makes no sense to me.
Namely, why now?
No one seems to ask that, and I think the question is great.
"Zombies are cool, bro!"
Zombies were cool during Evil Dead.
During Thriller. 
Why are they so popular now?
We're not talking Avatar. 
It's not like we had to wait for the technology to catch up.
There is no technology.
Some makeup and a ripped pair of jeans.
Boom. Zombie.
We're not filming Transformers, here.
Yet, it's now that we find survival guides for something that doesn't exist.
The more I think about it, the more I think it's not the "zombie."
It's the "apocalypse."
And when I'm with a group of 20-somethings and they're talking about what they'd do in a zombie apocalypse, I feel like screaming:
"You're all adults! What in the fuck are you talking about!?"
But you can't say that. I can't say that.
So, instead I have to wait and nod along, riding out the conversation until it steers towards some TV show.
You're taking it too far.
It's like discussing, over wine, how G.I. Joe and Barbie's kids would do in school.
Perhaps it's a drill; a refresher.
Sure, everyone knows full well that no zombies are going to be busting soil any time soon.
But, it never hurts to talk about the best places from which to steal lumber to board up your home (lumber mills).
Or how to occupy a grocery store and effectively defend it.
If you're bred to understand that the worst is all there is, isn't it just as well to prepare for it?
I say that we ditch the term 'Generation Y' in favour of 'Generation Z'.
'Z' for 'Zombie', and because, if all goes according to plan, this one will be the last.