HOLLYWOOD, Fla. – Joe Marrero is planning a little trip this summer, and it’s got his family kind of concerned. The Hollywood software engineer is among a team of optimistic young men who intend to trek through the unforgiving Congo on a most outlandish quest: discover — and possibly bring back — a living dinosaur. “Naturally, anybody’s family would be worried about them,” he said. “They don’t want to hear the details.” Africa experts say the family’s fears are well-founded. New York travel agency owner Valentine Sazhin has traversed the Congo. “There are many dangerous places,” he said. Marrero, 28, is the eldest of the six-man team that makes up the Newmac Expedition, named for its principals, leader Stephen McCullah and survival expert Sam Newton. They will brave the jungly Congo River to track a legendary sauropod said to live along its shore, the one pygmies call — cue the spooky music — Mokele mbembe. “I believe it’s a large unknown species of monitor lizard, kind of like the Komodo dragon in Indonesia,” Marrero said. “Because 80 percent of the country is not explored, creatures like this could exist.” Tales of Mokele mbembe, which means “the one who stops the flow of rivers,” have been bandied about for more than two centuries. Pygmies compare it to a long-necked, pot-bellied brontosaurus. At least 15 expeditions have slogged through the jungle trying to confirm its existence. They collected native accounts and speculated over vague footprints. Only two explorers claimed to have seen the creature, both under dubious circumstances.

Just when you think Africa can’t get any fucking worse, turns out they got dinosaurs living there too. Like as if the AIDS and the malaria and the militias and the armless blood diamond people running around weren’t enough of a deterrent, now it turns out they got gigantic pot-bellied pygmy-eating dino-monsters deep in the jungle. And these fuckin guys are gonna willingly go after it.

I have two main goals in life – 1) Don’t ever go to Africa 2) Don’t ever trifle with dinosaurs and/or monsters. These guys are breaking both of my golden rules at the same goddam time. Its not even like they’re risking their lives and traveling down the Congo in hopes of finding the City of Zinge. Not like there’s a pot of gold at the end of your shitty, dangerous, AIDS infested rainbow. You get to the end of the journey deep into the African jungle and now you gotta face a motherfuckin dinosaur. No diamonds. No treasure. Just Mokele Mbeme. A giant lizard the pygmies say is big enough to stop a fuckin river.

Have fun with that you big dumb rich white idiots. Seriously has there ever been a better example of #WhitePeopleProblems than: “Trying to raise enough capital to fund an expedition into the jungle to confirm the existence of dinosaurs in Africa?”