A couple weeks ago, Jason, Kat and I made it out to Chicago for a quick weekend to burn some free Southwest flights that were about to expire on us. We managed to pack a good time into the weekend, but I’d have to say the highlight for me was the Museum of Science and Industry. Fuck the Field Museum and their shitty dinosaurs, the Science and Industry Museum in Chicago is home to the U-505, which is the first sub captured by the US during World War II. Now that may not sound too impressive to you, but it housed an Enigma machine onboard and was the key to the Allies decoding the German cryptography for years, eventually ending the war. I just wish would have had more time to look at it, the museum was closing just as we got to it.

The second best part though was the Body Worlds exhibit. There are a number of these exhibits traveling the country right now, if you’ve never seen the inside of the human body it is definitely something worth checking out. Some parts were awesome – like the body with six fingers and six toes and the knee replacement, but after a while it all started to run together.

One rather odd part was how they decided which hair they would leave on and where they would leave it off. One of the last exhibits involved a female ice skater, completely stretched out with her crotch right in your face. This is the one they decided to leave all the pubic hair on, of course. Creepy.

If you go see the exhibit, I have one suggestion, skip the majority of it and go straight to the guestbook at the end. I didn’t have enough time to go through them all, but that alone was worth the price of admission. I took pictures of a few of the remarks, but there were many more absolute gems. I particularly liked the eloquent political statements:

“It was cool to see how I started out. Not.”

“After seeing the babies, I think all of those who abort there children should be shot.”

These statements were, of course, in response to the pregnancy bodies, which is sure to get people worked up. The exhibit includes women at multiple stages of pregnancy. It’s a real peek into the minds of the general public. The first note I’m sure was left by a child. But I would guess that the second one was left by a woman, likely in her 30s. Her comment bothers me on so many levels, probably the worst of which is that I believe people who can’t tell the difference between “their” and “there” should be shot.