Let's start with what might be the only completely serious note in this entire little piece: I don't worship the Christian Devil and would question the sanity of anybody who would. However, having been trapped in the Midwest for almost my entire life, I do feel that I've earned the right to mock the living Hell out of the people who see their Dark One hiding under every rock and in the lyrics of every rock song, just by having suffered through their diatribes for as long as I have. Really, these people just never stop.

By this, I do not mean religious people in general. Believing in something (and somebody) is just fine. Haranguing some kid because he dressed up as Batman and went out looking for candy is not just fine. It's really twisted. Abusing professors of Biology for their promotion of "the evils of Darwinism", fighting to get books banned or even burned, the religious right in America, at times, seems so determined to give a bad name to both religion and conservatism that it can't fail to succeed in doing both. So much, so, that a satire of that movement practically seems to write itself - and it almost does.

What I did (and will continue to do) is set up a few Google alerts and then run the feeds through IFTTT to Twitter. The search terms, I'll stay a little vague about (because I don't want some troll to use them to submit genuinely inappropriate material while I'm not looking) and I will be changing them periodically. Suffice it to say that they tend to be things like "The Devil is our friend", "G-d is a big meanie" and other things that I certainly don't believe, myself. I don't even believe in the Devil, much less worship him. But they are pure gold for setting off people who take themselves and the nonsense they've been espousing far too seriously, and more importantly, for letting them show one and all just how absurd they really are.

We do have a homegrown movement, here in the US, that if given a chance would turn into something not so very different from the Taliban. Anybody who has had a chance to deal with the fanatical true believers on their home turf, when they thought that outside eyes would not be prying, knows that. But, at least for now (and probably for some while longer) I live in a country in which I can share their foolishness and join others in laughing at it without fear of landing a starring role in a beheading video, which is probably one of the reasons why America hasn't been evolving in the direction of becoming a giant version of Afghanistan (with nuclear weapons). Every country has its crazies, the difference is to be found in how it chooses to respond to those crazies. In America, we've tended to do so in what I would consider to be the healthiest of ways - with laughter.

In this case, I'm doing exactly that, with the help of a few web services. Like I said, this satire does practically write itself. If you'd like, you can go to the Twitter for this page, which (like this page) carries the name "The Devil." When I do post manually, I'm going to try to stay in character, so play along. You'll find a link back to this site and your ring on my profile there, and yes, I will have the sense to block the crazies should they choose to reply. Unless they're so funny that I don't want to, or I can't respond to them because I'm too busy doing something important that day, like washing my neighbor's dog.

When you wish to return to your ring, just click on the homepage link on the Twitter and you'll go right back. This page is part of the Cafe Satan site. If you entered this site through another page, then you should go to the local ring return page for this site, which can be found here. If you'd like to go visit my page on Twitter, it's still there and it's waiting for you. Don't worry, going there won't endanger your soul at all. Would I lie to you?