The Statute Of Liberty

 "Conrad's Eyes Narrowed, Menacingly"

Yeah, truly, remember that both Remote Nuclear Detonators stand ready and that today's title is NOT a typo.

     For today, gentle reader, we are going to be looking at architecture, as Your Humble Scribe was struck by a random image yesterday, and then, as ever, began to wonder about the background to it.  Art!

     This pair of statues are the 'Argonath', situated at the northern border of Gondor, and you can judge their height from the boats being paddled by the Fellowship of the Ring on the river.  When Frodo et al floated past these rather impressive structures, they had been around for over 1,700 years.  I said the 'northern border' of Gondor, when in fact this part of Middle Earth had been abandoned by that realm centuries before.

     The statues here differ from those written about by Ol' Tolky, since this depiction is of Isildur and Elendil, rather than matey and Anarion.

     ANYWAY Conrad, on re-viewing the film, wondered how this statuary was constructed?  Art!

Impressively weathered

     Don't forget, this is a society without even steam-powered technology, and magic will only get you so far.  What they have in the way of tools are restricted to what we in the real world had in medieval times, so horse-power, ropes, pulleys, levers and cranes made of wood.

     The location must have been chosen for the two promontories, which would have made the lower part of both statues; all you need for that is a lot of blokes with chisels.  Art!

A lot of blokes

     For the upper portion, however, you'd need quarried stone in large amounts, and in the background of the picture above you can just see where the stone was cut out of the riverbank.  Let us prod that lazy rascal Art into action - 

     It's an open question whether the quarried stone was shaped in situ or moved into place before being chiseled.  Moving stone from the quarry and into position would have been a matter of using cranes to shift it over on this side of the Anduin, or rafting it across to the opposite bank and duplicating the process.  

     Getting the heads into place must have been difficult, perhaps done with counterweights in combination with cranes.  The horizontal work would necessitate using iron doweling, probably for each individual portion with a central axial iron rod as additional reinforcement.  Art!

     There's a nice touch in a later scene, where the Fellowship have beached their boats near Amon Hen and are debating what to do next, whilst Frodo goes off to keep his own counsel.  Art!

     Amon Hen is one of the ancient outposts of Gondor, where time and abandonment have not been kind; it's unclear if there was more to this statue than a head.  Possibly not, as "Amon Hen" is nothing to do with chickens and is Sindarin for 'Hill of the eye', so the head may be symbolic in itself rather than a remnant of a lar

     ANYWAY what I meant to say is that it need not have been carved from local stone, because it's only a few miles south of the quarry of the Argonath, meaning it would have been easy to raft it downstream, along with the other stonework for the fortification further uphill.  Art!

Stoned, as it were

     O, the title?  Hmmm okay, the Argonath were erected to depict Gondor's triumph over the Easterlings (pretty obviously the Sinister Union in fancy dress), that is, celebrating the victory of liberty over tyranny, and done in stone rather than on parchment because stone endures a heck of a lot longer, hence a kind of writing in granite, which makes it a statute.

     I don't care if that's reaching, because, once again, whose blog is it?

Conrad Is Seething

Business as usual, then.  Yes!  We have seen off the last solution of Lord Peter's wretched crossword, so it's back to griping about Codewords.  Excuse me <sounds of buttons being ferociously hammered> just had to vapourise a few Codeword compilers to make them realise I am back on the job.

"MEZZANINE":  Really, I ask you!  Conrad used to have to get off at the mezzanine in Arndale House when the lobby was being renovated, so I had an inkling about this one, but come on!  If you want to know, it's an intermediate floor between other floors that does not extend fully over the whole floor.  Like a balcony with a superiority complex.  It comes from the Italian 'Mezzano' meaning 'Middle'.  Art!

"BOURGEOIS":  Grrrrr!  Okay, we've had Italian, now we have French, in an ENGLISH codeword.  Is it too much to ask?  Apparently.  It means 'Middle class', usually as an insult.  Bah!  Art?

Don't ask me, I've got no idea either.

"VITAE":  YOU WHAT!?  Now we have Dog Buns LATIN!  That's it, we're done here.

"The Sea Of Sand"

The bumptious aristocratic bio-vore Lord Excellency Sur has turned up on Earth to investigate how matters are going, because his fellow aristocrats feel happier risking his skin than theirs.

‘Lord Excellency Sur!  Permit this worthless minion to present you with an alien trophy, recovered from the desert,’ rattled off Icono, knowing that to preserve his life he needed to divert Sur.

‘What defences do you have in place to protect the trans-mat?’ barked Sur, equally aware that to preserve his rank, if not his life, he needed to be managing matters efficiently in the eyes of his peers.  At least one member of his bodyguard, and doubtless more amongst the newly-awoken Warriors, would be working for his fellow aristocrats, feeding back information via couriers and coded message sheets.

Icono presented an itemised rota and inventory, and he presented it quickly. 

 

“Permanent perimeter patrol of three Sentinels. 

Random pattern patrol of five Warrior groups numbering ten in

each. 

Life Signs Scanner 2 allocated to periodic sweep of Infiltration

Complex.

HQ projection-fusor programmed to deliver 360 degree molten

protective barrier.

Three Transport Cars mounting heavy stun cannon on call.”

 

Thus read Sur.  He could not find any obvious failings, so he waved a dismissive arm at Icono.

          ‘What is the trophy you mentioned?’

          Eagerly, the Detachment Leader showed his superior a large blue cuboid.

          Sur leaned backwards in exaggerated surprise.

               ‘A blue box!  How outstanding!  What shortage of blue, boxlike objects Homeworld has!  Truly, this is a trophy beyond compare!’

     Sarcasm, it would seem, crosses species boundaries.

Here's One Made Up Of AWWW!

Conrad occasionally checks out the vlogs posted by 'Ocean Conservation Namibia', which feature South Africans doing their best to protect wildlife (especially seals) from human snares and fishing line.  The seals, normally, waddle as fast as they can away from these benificent humas, both before and after being helped.  Art!

     Not this one.  He hung around as if to say 'Thanks'.  Art!

     See Picture One for proof of same.

Finally -

Time to go get lunch, and I know what it's going to be - smoked salmon on a cream-cheese bagel.  Wonder Wifey found the salmon a bit too smoky for her, so of course threw it in my direction as Conrad will eat anything that's not parsnip or pineapple, and is known to pick the mould off stuff in order to scoff it.