but can't you see a guy and his wife, each a beer in hand, looking at the sabre-tooth, and saying, "god damn, look at those tusks! a little bit like an elephant, huh?"

    and she'd say, "honey, let's go home and make love!"

    and he'd say, "your ass!  not until I go down to the basement and see that 1917 Spad.  they say Eddie Rickenbacker flew it himself.  got seventeen hun.  besides, I hear they got the Pink Floyd down there."

but the Revolutionaries are going to burn the museum.  they figure burning answers everything.  they'd burn their grandmother if she couldn't run fast enough.  and then they are going to look around for water or for somebody who can do an appendectomy or somebody who can keep the truly insane from cutting their throats as they sleep.  and they are going to find out how many rats live in a city, not human rats but rat-rats.  and they are going to find that the rats are the last things that drown, burn, starve; that they are the first things that can find food and water because they have been doing so for centuries without help.  the rats are the true revolutionaries; the rats are the true underground, but they don't want your ass except to nibble on and they are not interested in OOOOOOOOMMM.

I'm not saying give up.  I'm for the true human spirit wherever it is, wherever it has been hiding, whatever it is.  but beware of the cowboys who make it sound so good and leave you out on a plateau with 4 hard-core cops and eight or nine national guard boys and only your bellybutton as a last prayer.  the boys screaming for your sacrifice in the public parks are usually the furthest away when the shooting begins.  they want to live to write their memoirs.