nick manho

late night horse statue up-date

you'll probably think i had all this planned, but anyway... i've been wondering all day how to follow up the horse photo that i posted this morning. i guess you all realised it was from the parthenon (in athens, for any dorks who are browsing), and it represents the high point in western culture and everything, and that obviously it knocks all those modern things i posted yesterday into a cocked hat, and stuff.

ok, well here's what i came up with, and i only thought of this a few minutes ago (the "random" process is long and painful):




a few years ago they decided to put this statue in one of the nicest piazzas in the city where i live. yeah, you saw right, it's a horse sort of sprawled out and showing off its wedding tackle. tasteful.

anyway, a guy who works for the local council got pissed off because the statue is in a street where some saint or other passes on her procession round the city every year, so he - without official authorisation - welded a sheet of metal over the offending equine regalia.

he got caught, and it got into the national papers. they took the sheet of metal away and you can still see the horse in all its glory today.

most people laughed at the guy: what a wanker, what a religious idiot, etc. i had a laugh at him myself to tell you the truth. but thinking about it, the guy was right. when you look at the statue from the parthenon and you look at the metal horse with its balls akimbo you realise just how low we've sunk over the intervening 2,500 years. we really have hit rock bottom.

what the guy should have done was to cut off the horse's balls, carry them round to the artist's house and throw them through his front window (maybe along with some real horseshit he'd picked up en route).

we have to teach these art guys. we want nice things, not horses' bollocks. get it?

for any australian visitors

this is what it would have looked like in wagga wagga: