A Crazed Trouble in Paradise

Reporting from the front lines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, our buddy Les Neuhaus gives a glimpse of life among the government troops: smoking pot, drinking booze, wearing women's clothing, and occasionally hacking the genitals off of rebel troops. The battle between Laurent Nkunda's Rebel for Christ led National Congress for the Defence of the People and the Government's Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo is essentially a reprisal of the Tall Ones vs the Short Ones War that decimated Rwanda. Talk about grim confusion in the boondocks. And that's before you add to an already surreal battlefield pentecostal christians and their pet dinosaurs. Tall guys vs short guys is an age old quarel but only in the remote regions of the Dark Continent is this trouble the King of Paradise.

ID Skeleton Key
Watutsi = Tall
Hutu = Short

You can read Les's On the Front Lines in DR Congo at AJE

Jesus is Lard

Once upon a time I helped produce a venture for The Vice Guide to Travel that sent artist David Choe to the Congo in search of a dinosaur known as Mokele-mbembe. Choe is fearless and a believer in the possibility that a live dinosaur can be found. And soon I came to believe as well. The Congo is mad. It's perhaps the one last place in the world isolated enough and also free of dramatic climate change over the eons to have a habitat conducive to the survival of undetected dinosaurs. What can I say? I am a sucker for pipe dreams.

Such a tale is fascinating in the hands of Redmond O'Hanlon. In dizzying contrast to O'Hanlon's objective explorations however, are the most ardent hunters of dinosaurs, the most enthusiastic believers in living dragons: Creationists. We learned along the road that legions of Christian missionaries/crytopzoologists are prowling the ends of the earth to prove dinosaurs and humans existed side by side. Their quest is a crusade to debunk evolutionary theory. According to them, Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem might not have been astride a mule after all but rather a lowly T-Rex. Way to burst my bubble.