News from the Isles

It's been a few weeks since I actually posted a blog, and as I told my friend Josh earlier today, it's time for me to get back to it and get something written.

Yesterday I went to the British Museum. My lord! That place is amazing! I've never seen so much f-ing history in my life! It's incredible to see the amount of artifacts that the British have stolen from other civilizations over the years. Here are some of the things that I saw. Be aware that the British Museum is one of the premier attractions in London so it's quite full of people. It was almost impossible to take a photo without someone being in it that I didn't know. None of the people in the photos are of anyone in particular....it's the artifact that I'm taking a picture of. And finally, many of the photos are sideways. That's because of the size of the object I was taking a photo of. I simply had to rotate my camera to fit the object in or I'd be standing back dozens of feet and there would be hundreds (not really exaggerating on that) of people in the photo. Click on any photo to see a larger version of it. That said.......

First up, was one of the greatest discoveries to date. The Rosetta Stone. Oh my god! It's HUGE! I think it's something like 1.2m in height. That's almost the hight of the average man, and it weighs nearly 10 - 15 times the average man, at a nice 1,600 pounds. The stone is written in 3 languages, and was probably made sometime after Alexander the Great conquered Egypt since it contains Greek as one of the languages. It is estimated that there were 14 stones of equal size with the exact same inscriptption spread throughout the land of Egypt. Unfortunately, this is the only one that remains.



Next is a small sphinx. It's in black marble and probably weighs about 200 pounds. It doens't look that great in the photo, but the detail on it is absolutely amazing.



We'll come back to Egypt later. Next I want to visit Greece. First stop, the Parthenon. Am I mistaken in thinking the Parthenon was destroyed centuries ago? No? Oh, that's because it's IN the British Museum! (Don't send me messages that this isn't the real Parthenon, I know it's not)



Just to the left of this magnificent structure is a room the full size of the Parthenon. Its walls are completely covered by the stone artworks that the Greeks had used to form the walls of the Parthenon. I half expected some homo-erotic art, but it seemed to be all about horses that looked like they were mounting eachother. Gay? Well, the Greeks were a bit light in the sandles.

Here is a beautiful copper sculpture of a naked man. You know, I used to feel a bit put out that nature had given me a small penis, but after looking at the statues that the Greeks produced, I realized I'm actually much bigger than I thought! I would have been a GOD to the ancient Greeks! LOL



At first I thought this was a woman standing with her arm gently laying on a lyre. It wasn't until I took the photo that I realized, she has a penis. Oops, my bad!



Here's a woman with the weight of the world on her shoulders.



Ok, let's hop back across the Mediterranean to the land of the pharaohs.

I wonder who was burried in this little ditty. His name must have been "Please Do Not Touch The Objects" judging by the plaque below his head.



I guess size mattered to the ancient Egyptians. Everything that's in the British Museum is HUGE!



Heck, even their bugs were HUGE! Can you imagine the fly swatter you'd need to kill this mother?



Then again, maybe it's the British that are consumed with size. Let's jet off to a far away isle named after a holiday. Yes, that's right folks, we're off to Easter Island! No, this is not a joke. The photo below is really a famous Rapa Nui from Easter Island. I think this does prove the British preoccupation with size.



The only problem I have with the Rapa Nui being on display is the fact he/she is on a pedestal. Let's think about this for a sec, a HUGE multi-ton piece of stone on a pedastal in a place that millions of people walk by each year. Danger of tipping over, maybe? Rapa Nui's revenge!

Oh, so now that we're in South America, I thought I'd show you that they had crotch rot even back when they didn't wear clothes! This poor guy has it bad too. When I saw it, my childish side couldn't help but rear it's head in the middle of the museum. I started to laugh and the Asian chap next to me looked at me rather incredulously. I guess it's because he didn't know my intent was to post the photo on the web.



Now this next photo is kind of creepy. It's called "Cradle to Grave." It's two 20m long pieces of nylon fabric side by side with medications in them. Each fabric follows the birth to the death of one person and all the medications he/she had to take throughout their life. It is supposed to show a representation of the more than 17000 pills the average person will take during their lifetime. Thank god big pharma will be there to make sure we all have those pills to take.



Ok, I think that about does it for now. I have more photos to share, but I don't want to make this blog too big. I'll add more in the next couple days.

Until next time remember, "A Scotsman is never so drunk to fall off the face of the earth as long as he can still hold on to a single blade of grass."