Is anything in the British Museum actually British?

People -- ! We saw the Elgin Marbles! OK, so now they're called the Parthenon Marbles, but please . . . . we all know: "Finders -- keepers, losers -- Greek museums." I just read this article in Vanity Fair about how the Greeks are all, "dudes -- you stole our priceless heritage, and we want it back." And the Brits are all, "Sucks for you!" I paraphrase.

But whatever -- I got to see them and I'm so glad -- because I really do have a sneaking suspicion that the Greeks will win this fight eventually (the document signed by the big cheese of the Ottoman Empire holds less and less water as the years go by) -- and I don't have a realistic chance in hell of getting to Athens any time soon.

I mean, good grief -- they took an entire temple! Just boxed it up and took it home, because after all, the Greeks weren't using it any more. The logical flaw here, of course, is that I have never read anywhere that Lord Elgin worshiped the Olympian gods either. What the heck did he need a stinkin' temple for?!? Gosh, it's pretty, though!

I haven't decided yet whether I want to marry this woman or be this woman. Either way, my prospects don't look good.

In another part of the British Museum, we saw so many mummies that I'm a little over them. This is particularly ironic for those of you who know my youngest girl, and how obsessed she is with all things anciently Egyptian -- especially mummies!

My husband and I set out to methodically photograph the entire mummy room for our girl, since we both knew what it would mean to her. And we took just a whole lot of pictures. But -- oh my God, these people stole all the mummies, too! There were so many sarcophagi that it actually got a little mundane.

tangent: Meanwhile my poor girl asks to go to the Smithsonian once a year on her birthday so she can gaze lovingly at the one measly mummy housed in the Museum of Natural History. [Please, no comments about my nerdy children; I choose to think of them as adorably quirky . . . .] AND she has to suffer through the lamest "Gilgamesh" display ever to get to our poor sad mummy.

I always love to see displays of jars that held the organs of dead people, especially when they have been extracted through the nose (information provided, of course, by my youngest girl).

This painting was "rescued" from Pompeii. What was it rescued from? Italians, I guess. I love these faces -- they look so much like people I know.

Entirely carved of jade. The Boxer Rebellion guaranteed that this bad boy would become a British citizen.

I don't understand this at all, but I love it.

I could have looked at this for hours, but a) I don't get it, and b) Elgin Marbles!

To be honest, by the end of the day I was staggering with fatigue and museum-glut -- you know that feeling that you are just overwhelmed by too much information? Really, I almost cried when I saw that there was a "Medieval Britain" section of the museum. I studied this crap all through college and grad school; I love it. I mean, I really love it. And if I had been required to gaze upon another tapestry or piece of blown glass, I think I would have smashed a case and grabbed an iconic piece of Bronze Age bronze to poke my eyes out with.

But then I saw him! My new boyfriend -- the Sutton Hoo helmet! (Don't tell Barack Obama!) He's a hunk of manly Anglo-Saxon man, born and buried in England (shocking, I know). He's dreamy -- AND he looks like Darth Vader wearing Ray-Bans. I'm in love.