Name that Statuary

Any normal blogger in her right mind would post a series of pictures from her trip, right? Better yet, one who didn't have her thumb up her technologically-impaired hindquarters would hook up to Flickr and let you peruse in peace. But that's just not how the Fluff rolls, I'm afraid. It may very well be a picture a day, until I have nothing of any possible interest left to tell you about my little vacation.

So let's start with this, shall we? Guaranteed to make tourists do a double-take, this statue stands in front of one of the newest and most bizarre museums in our main vacation city. I'm sad that I don't have video of it, because it's really profane poetry in motion; the guys turn on their axis and so are peeing, constantly, in a half-circle orbit. Hee. If this were the U.S., they'd make little mini-replicas of this statue as a fountain you could have in your home. You could place it on a table between your Big Mouth Singing Bass and your Zen rock garden.

My favorite experience with the fountain was this: I was sitting outside the museum on a bench, waiting for the ever-intrepid, minutiae-collecting Mr. Fluff to finish his comprehensive perusal of the frickin' weird exhibits. No use waiting inside--hot, moist air is worse inside than outside. I was joined by a group of young German tourists (perhaps also waiting for compatriots with Mr. Fluff-like tendencies?). At one point, one of these young women got up and walked over to the fountain. She rinsed her feet, one by one, in the fountain. But here's the kicker--she didn't use the water in the base of the fountain--she stuck each one in the stream issuing from the statue's abstract penis. Given, it was 78,000 degrees celsius. And I do, in fact, understand that the statues were not actually producing urine. HOWEVER. It's quite an act of dissociation to separate the product from its representation. Would you have rinsed your feet in statuary piss? (This is of course above and beyond the fact that she probably got serious blisters from wet sandals. Ouch.)

So there it is--tourist pics and observations of cultural difference, all in one. Rejoice! And I will personally send a reader an astronomically devalued piece of European coinage if s/he can name the city and museum in which this statue stands.

Consider the gauntlet thrown.