Why dinosaurs make me depressed

After my little mini post last night, I realized the issue was deserving of a more in-depth analysis, and wanted to follow up on it. Also, I wanted to draw a sweet picture of me riding a T-Rex:

Yeah, you better run, jerks!

Okay, good. Moving on. So obviously I don't hate dinosaurs. Being that this is a blog ostensibly about hating things, I just wanted to clear that up. I love dinosaurs. I have since I learned of their existence. I love them pretty much more than anything (except you, Girlfriend). What I hate is the fact that they're all dead. It depresses me pretty much on a daily basis.

Jurassic Park was released when I was eight years old. As part of the advertising blitz before the film came out, Newsweek magazine ran a front-page article with a picture of the film's T-Rex and a headline to the effect of "Making dinosaurs come alive!"

I couldn't find the actual cover, but here's another equally scary lizard face. Blech.

Being very sheltered and a little slow,  sort of like a fundamentalist Christian, I interpreted the headline in the most literal way possible. Dinosaurs were alive! Holy fuck! Hooray science!

This would be the happiest moment of my life. It would be fleeting.

I ran to tell my father, assuming he would be just as excited as I was to hear this monumental news. My father immediately saw my error, and, rather than letting me have just a few more minutes of undiluted happiness, quickly and mercilessly destroyed it.

It wasn't his fault, of course. My father is a very rational, logical person. Being a man of medicine, he explained to me in the same clinical tone I suspect he uses to explain to his patient's families that their loved one won't be recovering from the past seventy years of being an obese chain-smoker, that the article was referring to the special effects the filmmakers employed to create realistic dinosaurs. He informed me that dinosaurs will never, ever exist in real life.

My father meant no harm, he was merely trying to explain to his slightly dull son a simple fact. He had no way of knowing that in that one conversation, he had destroyed all hope of his son ever achieving lasting happiness. Ever. Because if dinosaurs can never be real, then what, really, is even the point?

It was a little like the day you find out Santa isn't real, except way, way worse, because Santa's just some old guy in a stupid sled. He isn't a giant badass bird-lizard that can outrun fucking Jeeps and eat the shit out of Jeff Goldblum's legs. Plus, Santa was never actually real, whereas dinosaurs were totally real once. You just have to look at their fossils.

And that's the worst part. The goddamn fossils. Going to a natural history museum and looking at a skeleton the size of a fucking house is pretty cool, until you remember that that skeleton was once surrounded by flesh and skin and WALKING AROUND MONTANA like it owned the goddamn place. So you sit there, a small child, trying to imagine these glorious beasts roaring and crushing things, but imagination just can't replace the real deal. It's a little like seeing a McDonalds burger in an ad, then going and getting an actual McDonalds burger. It will never be anything but disappointment. At least with fossils there's less diarrhea involved.

Sigh........................

I'm sure I wasn't the only child to have elaborate fantasies involving riding a velociraptor to school and having it eat the fuck out of all the little shitheads who wronged you. Especially Bradley. Seriously. Fuck Bradley. He would've been the first to go. Because my last name isn't Poophurst, that's why.

Now some may ask "Why are you so focused on riding dinosaurs? What makes you think they would be trainable?" Duh. Obviously they were trainable. Have you seen Jurassic Park III? Fuckers were talking to each other! Also, they had 250 million years of evolution. 250 million! We've barely had 1 million. Hell, they probably had societies, little dinosaur cliques and everything.

"Ohmigod, did you see what Julie was wearing? Stegasaurus are so lame."

Okay, so I'm not actually suggesting I'd want dinosaurs wandering around in the same vein as say, raccoons or deer. ("Honey, there's a dilophosaurus rummaging through the trash again! Get the broom! Not that one, the good broom!") But would it be too much to ask for them to still be alive in the Galapagos Islands or something? I mean, with global warming, the climate has never been better for them.

Also, if we can genetically modify chickens to be enormous, grotesque balls of grease for our consumption, can't we genetically modify some ostriches to look like velociraptors? If Obama is truly committed to getting kids back into learning science, then I suggest a reinvigorated push for dinosaur cloning. It would be great for America. Our kids would actually be excited about science again, and we could use the highly trained velociraptor packs to hunt down the terrorists in Afghanistan. Because if there's one thing Jurassic Park taught us, it's that nothing bad ever comes from meddling in dinosaur cloning.

Seriously, though. Dinosaurs. Coolest fucking things ever.

Photos from here, here and here,