All day Sunday after the devival, we slept in our hotel room. We awoke briefly to watch "OH BROTHER WHERE ART THOU" on TV before going back into hibernation.

But on Monday we set out on a pilgrimage to the New York Museum of Natural History. I have visited this place approximately every 10 years of my life, but it had been more than 10 years this time. And Princess Wei had never been there at all.

It's improved!

We found our way there quickly not by maps, which confuse a SubGenius, nor by the directions given by subway employees, which were all wrong, but by the grace of a Russian lady who spotted confused tourists and helped. I could barely understand anything that old gal said, but what Wei translated pointed us straight and true to the bizarre Museum/Central Park subway exit. I would erect a statue to that old Russian gal if I could. A nude statue. She was great. Weird but knowlegable, friendly old Russian ladies in New York is what America is all about.

Once inside the museum we met Sifu and Ramona 13, Rev. Jimbo, Rev. Pickles and the colorful Heretic. It was a typical museum visit. We spent the first two hours slowly, leisurely strolling along, reading the details about every display, and then we spent the last 2 hours sprinting from display to display, frantically taking pictures. Princess Wei suggested that the rule henceforth should be, "START AT THE TOP FLOOR AND WORK YOUR WAY DOWNWARDS."

The museum -- one of the greatest in the world -- has been greatly updated since I was last there. It was heavenly. I am a general Natural History nut, always have been, and this place is my Mecca, an orgy of the coolest shit imaginable. (I have dibs on the whole museum, incidentally, for X-Day. It will be on MY saucer after the End of the World.)

The SKULLS -- my god, just the skulls alone! The hand-axes! The stuffed rhinos and Mountain Gorillas! The NEANDERTAL PORN! The HOMO ERECTUS PORN! The BUG PORN! The SQUID and OCTOPUS PORN! By Gobbs, they even have MICROLIFE PORN now -- huge oversized models of ostracods, copepods, even Water bears! ((PANT PANT PANT))

Princess Wei has an unerring instinct for locating human porn in museums, and she led us to the Amazonian section, which has the most nekkid human porn per section than anywhere else in the museum. (It also has some cool drug porn!)

The Museum has more Neolithic porn -- Venus of Willendorf etc. -- on display than I even knew existed. And the Tantric Meditation statues and tapestries in the Tibetan section -- WHOOOO DOGGIES!

The climax was, of course, the dinosaur and giant extinct mammal skeletons. As I'd heard, they have re-posed the famous dinosaur skeletons to match modern understanding. The famous NYC Tyrannosaurus is no longer standing awkwardly upright like Godzilla but now sprints like a chicken with a long tail. The Brontosaurus Head is displayed alongside the corrected Apatosaurus, with models and explanations about how Prof. Marsh fooled the rubes for a hundred years with a Camarasaurus noggin.

I even got a shot of the Big Boss posing next to the Pachycephalosarus skulls! What a ball I had.

I was SCANDALIZED to see Dimetrodon and Edaphosaurus both are now classified as MAMMALS, or at least as mammal-like reptiles. Now THAT blew my mind. I have really fallen behind.

I also had not been previously aware of the high ranking that Homo Ergaster has achieved regarding human origins. The museum considers him the direct ancestor. If only I could just drop religion and go back to being a full-time scientist like I was when I was an 8-year-old.

 NEXT: ESCAPE FROM NY