Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Purley Gates

Monumentally unattractive
  (+4)
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Bestriding the A23 like a cardiganed Collossus of Roads, Purley Gates stands as an everlasting monument to greed, avarice, and sloppy coding. Dressed in garments covered entirely with millions of synthetic plastic- effect false pearls, and painstakingly constructed of lovingly hand-gilded dog turds, Purley Gates will be an unmistakeable landmark to all those poor deluded idiots making their way up through Croydon towards the 2012 Olympics, another grandiose monument to the fact that it is foolish to underestimate the power of very stupid people in large numbers, particularly when those people have been elected to public office.

Visitors may chose to take the opportunity to climb up the internal stairways to the head of the statue, and upon reaching the top level look out through the eyes which contain two open windows. There are many other windows around the head, but opening more than two at any one time usually causes the whole edifice to crash spectacularly.

All the way up the stairs are signs informing visitors that when they get to look closely at the face of Purley Gates, they will see it has many new features, but in fact on arrival these claims turn out to be specious and the windows are exactly the same as previous versions, only uglier, slower, and less well made.

The feet of the stature stand on the specially constructed Gates Foundation, which consists entirely of huge advertising hoardings abjuring the readers to "Please don't hate Bill, he is doing his best".

The postioning of the statue's upper limbs may be puzzling to some observers; the fact that the right hand is down the front waistband of the trousers simply depicts Bill doing what he does best, while the left hand being pressed against the small of the statue's back denotes that he can't find his backside even with both hands.

8th of 7, Apr 24 2012

[link]






       Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel...
normzone, Apr 24 2012
  

       I think I'm missing 9 out of the 10 references here. Is this meant to be an anti-Gates or anti-Olympics gesture? Or is there a place called Purley which is worse even than Swindon?
MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 24 2012
  

       All of the above.
8th of 7, Apr 24 2012
  

       How do you gild dog turds?
erenjay, Apr 24 2012
  

       You haven't been here long enough, or you'd know not to ask questions like that. Now somebody's gonna 'bake it.
Alterother, Apr 24 2012
  

       freeze them first. Don't they teach kids anything in schools these days ?
FlyingToaster, Apr 24 2012
  

       Methinks freezing is a bad idea, when the turds un-freeze, they will contract slightly, causing the gold leaf to buckle, or even worse, cause the turd to rattle around inside the gold shell
erenjay, Apr 24 2012
  

       depends on how much gold you want to use: another method, cheaper but requiring more of an initial investment, is to spray the turd with a fixative, flash heat the outside to set/ceramicize it, then apply as thin a gilding layer as feasible.
FlyingToaster, Apr 24 2012
  

       That could work, but if the layer of gold is too thin, you won't get to see business men sneaking out at night to try and scrape gold off the statue, as it won't be worth the risk anymore.
erenjay, Apr 24 2012
  

       If you just climb the beanstalk you'll find that the giants' dogs' turds are already gold. They just left that out of the story.   

       Highly trained Golden Retrievers?
AusCan531, Apr 25 2012
  

       I appropriately missed 10 out of 9 references.
rcarty, Apr 25 2012
  

       You did better than me; I didn't even read past the first sentence. Scrolled down, verified that it was indeed a Borg rant, skipped right to the annos.   

       [erenjay], I take it back. You've definitely got the hang of things here.
Alterother, Apr 25 2012
  

       I think Mr. O'Seven is referring to the fact that even though the entire Olympics could be coordinated between a bunch of $200 terminals and a Commodore PET as a server (seriously)*, they're going to spend probably 10's of millions to give M$ a Windows8 commercial.   

       * - except streaming video which is the tv networks' problem and has nothing to do with stuff like care and feeding of athletes, scores/standings, accounting, payroll, and all the other bog-standard stuff that (might just barely) be more economical to do digitally, and that only if there's no bullshit involved.   

       Actually heck with the Commodore: I saw an ad in the local buy'n'sell: somebody's selling an AS400 for $30.
FlyingToaster, Apr 25 2012
  

       sp. "grandiose"
pertinax, Apr 25 2012
  

       Won't the spectators be too busy eating their bread to notice?
4whom, Apr 25 2012
  

       I met a traveller from an antique LandRover
UnaBubba, Apr 25 2012
  

       //is there a place called Purley which is worse even than Swindon?//   

       Indeed there is (value judgements aside) - we could erect the Gates effigy atop one of the Ikea "towers", leaving room perhaps for a bespectacled Jobs atop the other.   

       On a more personal note, does the local knowledge presented here suggest the Borg might be a Croydonite?
zen_tom, Apr 25 2012
  

       //we could erect the Gates effigy atop one of the Ikea "towers"//
Couldn't we pretend the Ikea towers were pikes, and simply set the heads on top?
AbsintheWithoutLeave, Apr 25 2012
  

       //does the local knowledge presented here suggest the Borg might be a Croydonite?//
Perhaps it is in their purlieu.
Could explain the riots last summer.
AbsintheWithoutLeave, Apr 25 2012
  

       "Croydonite" -a seedy, overpriced version of Kryptonite ?   

       We know about the A23 because it's a useful VRP on the approach to Biggin Hill…
8th of 7, Apr 25 2012
  

       So, you're actually a homing pigeon whose cote is somewhere near Biggin Hill? That explains a lot...
UnaBubba, Apr 25 2012
  

       It works, but only as a black hole. Or perhaps their reply button is on the fritz.   

       <smirk>
Alterother, Apr 25 2012
  

       Resistance is universal.
UnaBubba, Apr 25 2012
  

       Also, sp. "Colossus", with one 'l'.   

       Alas, we will never know what his retort would have been.
pertinax, Oct 23 2022
  
      
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