and this is where ordinary Londoners make foul sacrifices to Moloch

Well folk downblog are discussing this, so I might as well pitch in. There used to be a medieval torture whereby the victims intestines were cut and slowly wound out on to a bobbin in front of his eyes. If you took the results of that as a scale model, upended it and produced a giant version in tubular steel, then the Orbit is what you would have. 

 

 Needless to say, I like it. 

I think London needs a 115 metre tall representation of a pile of bleeding, pulpy intestines in a park overlooking the Thames, a sort of colossal agonised scream as the collective voice of the metropolis. It is apparently going to have a viewing platform, though I think “a place to sacrifice unwanted children to appease the wrath of theThunder God” might be more appropriate. At the very least, we should be careful that it doesn't end up used for other purposes which suggest themselves on looking at it.

And Orbit is a little twee. Perhaps you could rename it “what the financial sector did to the economy”.

Comments

[chjh]

It's only overlooking the Thames in the sense that you'll be able to see the Thames from the top of it. The river that runs through the Olympic site is the Lea.

[john b]

Did you set the language on the NZ archive link to Maori to make a point, or purely for amusement value?

[jamie]

I didn't set it to Maori at all - I didn't know there was a Maori setting - but I'm willing to take any credit for whatever amusement value ensues.

[Chris Williams]

Or Lee, as we sometimes used to also call it to confuse people.

The tangle looks very much like the result of Godzilla vs Mothra in Paris, where one has attempted to wrap the Eiffel Tower into the shape of a snare, in order to entrap the other.

[Charlie]

I really should move on, since I have my own pathetic projects to be worrying about. But I thought this photo of the luminaries posing with their creation was fairly special:

http://www.imagefrog.net/out.php/i74863_1.jpg

One of those pictures where you begin to see frightening assemblages of tortured flesh and crooked incisors, where before you saw faces. Also, check the studied dignified casual of Boris, with his fingertips resting in his pocket like that.

[Fellow Traveller]

Firth of Forth bridge on drugs.

[ejh]

Probably not an unusual experience, that.

[Tom]

"Also, check the studied dignified casual of Boris, with his fingertips resting in his pocket like that."

It's been attested to me that the hair-ruffling is performed instinctively before interviews now. All those who thought Blair was our Berlusconi were looking at the wrong egotist, I reckon.

[Alex]

Let him build it. Then it can rot like Watkin's Folly for years and years and years. "See that? That's Johnson's Dildo..."