Today's award goes to the designer of a new garden bed at the Presbyterian Ladies’ College in Sydney, Australia. A tip o' the hat to Australian reader Andrew for sending me the link.
A private girls’ school has been forced to redesign a garden bed it accidentally built in the shape of a penis.
. . .
Headmaster of the $39,000-a-year school, Paul Burgis, said he was unaware the garden had a distinct phallic outline during the design phase, but a former student had alerted him after drone footage captured a full aerial vista.
. . .
“As part of recording the updates we sent a drone up to take pictures. At a certain angle from up high, the garden with its room for chairs took on a phallic shape which was unintended and unexpected.
“As a result, the architects made some alterations which were completed within 72 hours of the drone pictures.”
. . .
“The immediate response was laughter: ‘you’ve got to be kidding me’. Photos have been circulating among the school as memes, saying ‘oh good morning’ and various kinds of jokes.”
There's more at the link.
Sounds like a flawed Pink Floyd lyric. "We don't need no ed-dick-ation . . ."?
Of course, the Presbyterian Church does have something of a reputation to live down. The Theological College at Edinburgh University, the heart of the Church of Scotland, has been renowned for many years for the graffiti left by (presumably) its students on the men's bathroom walls. A couple of well-known examples collected by Nigel Rees (suitably censored for these family-friendly pages) include:
Written beneath the light switch: "A light to enlighten the genitals"
Q: "Why do people write '**** The Pope' on toilet walls?"
A: "Because it's too much trouble to write '**** the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland'!"
It seems the Presbyterian Church in Australia is keeping up the old tradition . . .
Peter
8 comments:
So of course their phallic garden had a bush. :-)
Sometimes a garden is just a garden. ;-)
I'm astounded that the Presbyterians would care. I would have expected them to have done it on purpose. Maybe Australian Presbyterians aren't like the corrupted ones in North America?
Or...somebody wanted some payback...
It strikes me as somewhat odd that with today's rampant sexulization of everything (and I point particularly to the mass gay movement that seems to percolate through every aspect of life, and "gay" anything cannot be separated from "sex" because without "sex" at its core there cannot be anything "gay" or "straight") that a singular component of human anatomy draws so much ire as to require total exclusion.
I wonder if the garden had been constructed to resemble human female labia it would have drawn any notice at all, or perhaps even some degree of praise?
And, would not a round garden draw one's thought to resemblance of a human anus?
A pentagonal garden would have been criticized for its warlike resemblance to the Pentgon; a square or rectangular one to the confinement of a prison cell; a triangular garden to unnatural restriction of limited thinking; there is no shape against which there cannot be claims of offense.
The answer, obviously, is that gardens by their very nature are oppressive and limiting and should be banned forthwith.
Next, we'll deal with the planar oppressiveness of expanses of concrete, asphalt or gravel.
*snicker*
A few years ago, after a book event just outside the State Capital building in Austin, my daughter and I decided to take a tour of the State Capital - an enormous pink granite pile with a dome taller than that of the US Capital. (This was a few years ago, before the homeless encampments gave us serious cause for concern)
We wandered up one of the main staircases to the second floor, admiring the terrazzo floors, laid out in interesting patterns. (All this was done in the 1920s by craftsmen brought from Italy.) And on the first landing, there was a design of classical columns ... which looked unmistakably like a row of phalluses. My daughter and I, being both military veterans, spotted it right away and giggled. (The same design was carried out on the higher floors, although amended so the resemblance wasn't so marked.) My daughter took a picture of it on her phone, and have showed it to friends since then.
I think that someone must have noticed as soon as that landing was completed, but it was too expensive to rip out the terrazzo, so they just edited the design for the higher floors and landings.
If you ever have a chance to visit the Texas State Capitol, look for the Landing of D*cks!
Personally, I think it looks like a key hole, maybe my mind isn't dirty enough?
Well, at least its been circumcised . . .
You'd have be pretty juvenile to be bothered by that garden bed - especially since you need to fly a RPA over it to even see the damn thing.
It's either the private school kids of today have things too good, (where were you DJI when I was a kid!), or maybe its intended to inoculate the young ladies minds against the "alphabet" lifestyle? LOL !
Either way, sexualisation of kids has no place in our culture - most especially at school.
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