Here's video from The Guardian ("Turkmenistan leader unveils giant gold statue of local dog"):
Here's weirder video:
I like that there's a homophone for "alibi." And we've been talking about bad public monuments lately, so I must say a golden dog is not so bad. Maybe we'd do better here in the West with dog statues instead of the usual human beings and, alternatively, abstractions. But the antagonism toward public art is so great in the United States these days that a dog statue would probably be regarded as a monument to white supremacy and torn down by some high-minded citizens.
ADDED: For more about Ashgabat, here's a 2018 article in The Guardian, "Inside Ashgabat, the flashy but empty 'city of the dead'/Film-maker and ‘dark tourist’ David Farrier visited Turkmenistan’s newly built capital, designed to cope with anything – as long as it’s preplanned":
The capital city of Turkmenistan, is blisteringly dry and hot, dumped in the middle of the desert. It also holds the record for the highest density of buildings made from white marble, which bounce the sun right back in your face, blinding you....
Somehow Turkmenistan had negotiated to host the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, an official Olympic event for which it constructed a $5bn (£3.8bn) village. Huge stadiums, a monorail system, indoor and outdoors sports arenas and giant sprawling highways were surrounded by brand-new hotels, apartments and malls.
Also: "Turkmenistan has the world’s fourth-largest natural gas reserves, more than the United States...."
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37 comments:
There is a certain privilege to having a dog as a pet and not for lunch.
In Edinburgh, there's Greyfriars Bobby
In Tokyo there's Hachiko the faithful Akita
I reacted a bit when he held the dog by the neck skin. But LBJ held his beagle by the ears, so I guess it's OK.
The statue of the alabai is 19 ft tall, and if you count the marble plinth, the whole thing is 70 feet tall. I think that makes it quite different from the dog statues tcrosse is linking. Another one like that is the Balto statue in Central Park in NYC. The Ashgabat statue is a colossus.
"Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat."
- Either John Lehman or Don Regan, depending on which source you believe
The headline made me think that someone had a stroke while typing it. Or a cartoon depiction of the sound of gargling.
Statue of dog >>>>> Statue of politician
George H.W. Bush's service dog, Sully was immortalized just two days ago.
https://people.com/pets/george-h-w-bush-former-service-dog-sully-gets-statue/
How about a 110-foot Pegasus at a horse track in Florida?
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-110foot-pegasus-living-it-up-in-south-florida
This has a Canadian angle. Frank Stronach made his fortune in Canada, basically in auto parts. For years he has spent a lot of time in his native Austria, where he is even more of a big shot, local boy made good and all. Like many rich people, he could not avoid the allure of the ponies as a sign that he had made it.
I bet ol'Joe could pronounce the name of that dog.
Maybe we'd do better here in the West with dog statues instead of the usual human beings and, alternatively, abstractions.
How can we be sure the dog isn't racist?
Better still, how can we be sure the dog is sufficiently anti-racist?
Better still, how can we be sure the dog is sufficiently anti-racist?
I mean, Lincoln himself can't pass that test nowadays.
Hmmm ...
You put the word "homophone" under a picture of a man in a gold cloak carrying a little dog ...
What are you trying to say?
How about the production values in that second video?! Mad skillz!
Guess that Sacha Baron Cohen should have poked fun at Turkmenistan instead of Kazakhstan.At least it appears that there is more to poke fun at in Turkmenistan than there is in Kazakhstan. On the other hand, I suspect that had Sacha Baron Cohen poked fun at Turkmenistan, its Dear Leader might well have sent a squad after Cohen to either assault or kill him. Which is one reason why Sacha Baron Cohen pokes fun at Republicans and rednecks- he knows they won't harm him.
"But the antagonism toward public art is so great in the United States these days that a dog statue would probably be regarded as a monument to white supremacy and torn down by some high-minded citizens."
I hope you are being ironic. The worthless scum who have been tearing down statues are not motivated by aesthetic considerations. To boil the matter down to its essentials, they are rather like the Europeans who settled in North America, centuries ago. They find themselves in a vast, rich and beautiful land, with only one drawback; the current inhabitants.
Mama dogs carry their pups around by the scruff of course.
LBJ is asshole.
I'd like the Big Gold Dog better if he had a back leg hiked.
Narr
Have you ever heard Brahms's Alibi?
In the US, dog statues would be torn down by CLM*
*Cat Lives Matter
"How about a 110-foot Pegasus at a horse track in Florida?
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-110foot-pegasus-living-it-up-in-south-florida
"
Yes, I'd just noticed that as I was reading the Wikipedia list of the world's tallest statues, here. The standard is at least 30 meters (the presumed height of the Colossus of Rhodes) — counting the statue only, not the base.
Only 2 things in the United States are on the list, the first being the Statue of Liberty (which ranks 99th in the world). The other is that awful pegasus thing.
There are a few non-human animals on the list, but it's mostly people, especially, especially Buddha.
What's up with Buddhism and colossal sculpture?
"the Statue of Liberty (which ranks 99th in the world). The other is that awful pegasus thing."
Sorry. The SOL is 48th in the world. The awful pegasus thing is 99th.
I thought Ashgabat was from a Harry Potter book — but that would make the dog transphobic-adjacent, so the statue would have to come down.
You know, Gurbanguly is a really cool name.
Narr
My middle initial is G . . .
That Pegasus looks like something they got from Saddam Hussein.
But the Stronachs' taste has always been questionable.
Like when Belinda was going out with Bill Clinton.
*
"Gerbanguly" sounds like one of the 800 Irish words for "drunken brawl."
The minute you erected a statue of a German Shepherd there'd be hell to pay.
How does one become a 'despot' as opposed to a dictator, or a strongman, or an autocrat, or a tyrant?
Is there a test? Sounds like a good gig.
Are Saddam Hussein's arms holding scimitars to make an arch (made entirely of captured Iranian war materiel) on the list? Or were they destroyed ca. 17 years ago? I'm guessing the latter, but they were awfully big.
PM,
You can get around that by renaming the German Shepherd an Alsatian. That's how the Brits handled it around the Great War. It had the added benefit of sticking it to the Germans re: Alsace-Lorraine.
Joe Smith,
Good question. Qaddafi, for example, was always called a "strongman." I have no clue why, unless it's to indicate that we weren't necessarily against him all the time, which is obligatory for the others. Hitler, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Jong Un were/are "dictators." Stalin was a "Soviet leader," and Mao was a "Communist leader" (these are nicer words than "dictator," apparently). Xi is just "Chinese leader," no "Communist," because China has stuff we want or need. Putin is "Russian President" for much the same reason. No one has called anyone a "tyrant" since John Wilkes Booth. "Autocrat" has rather gone out of fashion, though I have seen it applied to the leaders of Belarus and, yes, some of the -stans. Or to (reasonably) democratically elected rulers we mostly dislike, like Modi in India and Bolsonaro in Brazil and Orban in Hungary. (To be a proper autocrat, it really helps if you are "far-right," which apparently means that you don't like illegal immigration and possibly think gay sex is sort of hinky.)
"Oligarch" is another one; judging by the etymology, it just means that there's more than one per nation. In practice, it means that you have a lot of minions sweeping the local currency into the shed in your private dacha (it's usually a dacha).
I'd want my handle to be proto-Magyar barbarian.
The name's Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow. Spelled just like it sounds.
Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow
Now that's a fucking name! Way out classes Ann, Rick, Joe, Donald, and, dare I say, stevew. I've always said that if I were to change my name it would be to Didier, and pronounced as the French do. But this, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, is what I will go for now.
"How does one become a 'despot' "
I was once on committee to select Despot. The candidates did not have enough passion for the job.
Unlike the song I'm sure you pronounce the breed Ah La Bahee.
"Gerbanguly" sounds like one of the 800 Irish words for "drunken brawl."
Very astute.
Now you can call me Gurbie, or you can call me Bangie, or you can call me Guly, but you doesn't has to call me Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow.
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