7/3/2006: Sand sculptures

[Undertoad]

Axlrosen points to the Boston.com gallery of images of Belgium's Sand Sculptures Festival. It says there that "A team of 40 carvers from around the world spent five weeks building a giant sculpture representing the world of Sheherazade and the giant book of The Thousand and One Nights."



Wikipedia explains Sheherazade, and I edit:

King Shahryar learned that his wife was betraying him. In anger, every day Shahryar would marry a new wife, a virgin; spend the night with her; and at dawn he would send her to be beheaded. He repeated this cycle over and over, and killed 3000 of them.

Against her father's protestations, Scheherazade volunteered to spend one night with the King.

Once in the King's chambers, Scheherazade asked if she might bid one last farewell to her beloved sister, who had secretly been prepared to ask Scheherazade to tell a story during the long night. The King lay awake and listened with awe to Scheherazade's first story and asked for another... but Scheherazade pointed out there wasn't time, as dawn was breaking, and regretfully so, as the next story was even more exciting.

And so the King kept Scheherazade alive as he eagerly anticipated each new story, until, one thousand and one adventurous nights, and three sons later, the King had not only been entertained but wisely educated in morality and kindness by Scheherazade... who became his Queen.

It seems like a good idea for Belgium to spend weeks and weeks and a lot of money to retell this fable... of how to calm an angry Persian leader and simultaneously instruct him in morality and kindness. Of course one hopes to avoid the deaths of 3000 innocents before that kind of peace-bringing communicator volunteers.



Meanwhile in Yarmouth (UK), officials blame hooliganism for vandals ruining part of their £1m sand sculpture project. The story is sad, but the sign there is 100% British, and the shot sums up the state of the state: highly cultured, marvelously polite, and only occasionally ruined by a small minority of violent drunks.

(Apologies, BTW for not posting an image this weekend. I was busy.)

[Ibby]

Man, I wish I had that much free time.

...Wait, all I do is sit around and play guitar...

...Okay, I wish I had that kind of motivation.

[xoxoxoBruce]

sigh....If only there was just one Persian King to calm....sigh

From the UK link;

Costly river sand, which can be fashioned into blocks for carving, was shipped into Yarmouth from Holland.

I wonder what's in that river sand that makes it stick together?

The world championships are in Canada

[MsSparkie]

Come on......you know you want to!

[axlrosen]

Rule number one of giant sand sculptures: Make damn sure you're happy with the top before you start working on the bottom.

[milkfish]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Meanwhile in Yarmouth (UK), officials blame hooliganism for vandals ruining part of their £1m sand sculpture project. The story is sad, but the sign there is 100% British, and the shot sums up the state of the state: highly cultured, marvelously polite, and only occasionally ruined by a small minority of violent drunks.

Judging from that picture, I hereby predict that the authorities will discover that those responsible are led by a certain "Arthur, King of the Britons."

[capnhowdy]

Originally Posted by axlrosen

Rule number one of giant sand sculptures: Make damn sure you're happy with the top before you start working on the bottom.

And take loads of pics ASAP.

[sandypossum]

I wonder what's in that river sand that makes it stick together?

The grains of the sand they use is sort of cube shaped. The sort you usually see on beaches has roundish grains. Then they wet it and pound it hard into dense piles before they start sculpting. I saw a festival like this in the Netherlands - it's so weird to see it close up. Even if it rains or is really windy it hardly makes a difference. If untouched, it takes months to fall apart.

[Ibby]

Isn't that, like, cheating? They should use like, real beach sand.

[Sundae]

I thought the point of Scheherazade's stories was they they always had cliffhanger endings, so that the King kept her alive to hear the resolution. Or am I mixing up real life and soap operas again?

Bizarre that I find out news from my own country via IOTD! We used to go on holiday to Great Yarmouth every year... The only good thing about the vandals is that they WILL be stupid enough to boast about it to their brain-dead mates. Hopefully they'll end up with community service clearing litter off the beaches....

[sandypossum]

That's what I thought too, Sundae. Maybe it was a soap opera thing and each evening's cliffhanger was resolved the next day and merged into a new story ad infinitum.

And hey, Ibram, if they used real beach sand, it just wouldn't happen!

[Happy Monkey]

Sometimes there were cliffhanger endings, and sometimes she would finish the story and then say "but that's nothing compared to the story of X!, but we don't have time for that story tonight."

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yeah, I also thought he kept her alive to hear the end the next night when she would finish one and start another. They must have taken breaks though, since they had three sons.

[sandypossum]

What's to say you can't tell a story and bonk at the same time? Women have always been into multi tasking.

[Sundae]

1001 Nights in the style of Big Brother (the TV show, NOT the book!)

Day 199 in the Palace of King Shahryar, and Scheherazade continues her story:

"So I was just about to tell you how me and my really fit mate were drunk one night, yeah? And we're in the Ladies with a couple of bottles of Bacardi Breezer and she sez did I want to see her new boob job, right?"