And at the Half That's Christians 1, Dinosaurs 4

My current favorite thing on the Internet (other than myself, obviously (and discounting anything Doctor Who related (Oh My God, I haven't looked for Series 9 rumors on the net yet today(OK, back from that now - nothing really new, but there was an interesting bit about Stephen Hawking)))) is a fringe group going by the name of Christians Against Dinosaurs.

One can find their Facebook presence here, and their website proper here.

I should add a note of warning that you can't really see much on their Facebook page without joining, which is fine, but I've also heard vague rumors that they have a bit of a Columbia House Record Club philosophy about letting people unjoin, so you should probably just be aware of that possibility going in.

Now, I know there are a lot of religious fringe groups out there with equally batshit beliefs (and indeed  - as both regular longtime readers will already know, I'm not above spending a happy hour or two trolling their Internet message boards.) What I really like about CAD (if I might use the acronym) is one simple thing-

-I genuinely have NO idea if they're kidding.

Every time you think you've found conclusive proof one way or the other you come across something else that brings everything into question again. 

I mean, for the love of god, one of their website banners just reads 'Stop Big Paleo', and that has simply got to be a joke, right? But then you click on Christian Mom's video immediately below it and all you can do is stare into her crazy eyes and think, 'damn, Christian Mom.  You genuinely believe this, don't you??'

And so on and so on.

Of course, over the last few days my understanding of the name has shifted and now instead of Christians against Dinosaurs, I kind of think of it as Christians versus Dinosaurs, which led to several happy hours imagining what Christian v. Dinosaur interscholastic sporting events might look like -

Tennis - Christians have the edge in agility, plus have opposible thumbs. Dinosaurs get frustrated and stomp on net, eat Christians

Golf - Much the same as Tennis

Bake-Off - Christians make exquisite 4 tier fondant spongecake tower with functional chocolate waterfall. Dinosaurs eat oven.  And Christians.

Quiz Bowl - Christians ring buzzer to answer first question. Dinosaurs get startled and trample all involved

Hot Dog Eating Contest -  At the finish, Christians have eaten 32 hot dogs. Dinosaurs have eaten 567,876 hot dogs and 6 Christians.

And after that they kind of fall into a pattern. (But if anyone out there wants to make an animated web series of this I promise to like the crap out of it.)



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After a little more digging, I've come across what I think is the reality of the situation.  And is so often the case, it is so much better than you'd expected it to be.

In a nutshell, the implication is that the good folks at CAD - having been so fed up with the general state of douchiness on the Internet in general - specifically hand crafted a cause to be SO ridiculous, SO mockable, and SO apparently sincere, that it brought out the hard line trolls on BOTH sides of the spectrum into the full light of day.  It was essentially designed as a clearinghouse of the worst of the worst of both religious fundamentalist commenters AND smug hipster douchebags who like to spend a lot of time making fun of other people's religious beliefs anonymously on the Internet. The end game (if one believes this theory) being that it would ultimately make it obvious to the casual observer that this... THIS is why we can't have nice things.

I'm a huge fan of people finding effective ways of communicating the message that the whole world would be a better place if we all made an effort to be less of a giant dick from time to time.  A message that stings just a bit, as if you read the first portion of the column, you'll see that I'm exactly who they're talking about.

Well played, Christians.  Well played, Dinosaurs.
Well played.

Tomorrow - All right... we'll talk about the freakin dress.