Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Auckland - well known for lack of statues


The largest city in New Zealand – Auckland - was well known for having very few statues. It was their claim to fame you may say, and they were mighty proud of it.

‘Auckland – well known for having very few statues!’ Was printed on t-shirts, bumper stickers, tea towels, and even little empty squares that looked like a statue may sit on it, only was not there at all, which were designed to symbolize the lack of a statue, and show off Auckland’s claim to fame, being that Auckland was well known for having very few statues.

Then Lord of the Rings came to New Zealand. The Lord of the Rings was filmed on the south island of New Zealand, where as Auckland is on the north island of New Zealand, so Auckland didn’t feel like their personal tourism industry was under any real threat. ‘Besides’ they thought ‘if the movie the Lord of the Rings is so smart how come none of the characters ever jumbled the bad ring up among a huge pile of less important yet similar looking rings so it would be harder to figure out which one to nick? Or they could put the ring on a robot, because robots obviously never form emotional attachments to “things” until they get cast into a sitcom and you can't have a sitcom in the Lord of the Rings world because there are talking trees, and that'd be silly’.

No Auckland was happy to be well known for having very few statues thank you, because smart tourists wouldn’t go to the place Lord of the Rings was filmed, smart tourists would want to go to a place well known for having very few statues, and Auckland was super well known for having very few statues. People from all over the world could be heard to say to their friends ‘lets go on a vacation to Auckland, did you know they well known for having very few statues?’ and their friends would reply ‘of course I know they are well known for very few statues, that's a very well known fact about Auckland and when things are very well known I am the sort of person who would know those things, but yes let’s go to Auckland, did you know they are well known for very few statues?’

Things in Auckland swam along swimmingly for thousands of years, but then disaster was invented – twitter.

@TimDaven tweeted one day 'I’m in Auckland, there sure are very few statues'.

The backlash was huge and instant and bad. Angry responses came in the dozens over the next few weeks, things were said such as:

-       Don't say it like that.
-       Um obviously, we’re well known for having very few statues, so why do you have to say it like that? And
-       We’re already really well known for having a lack of statues, you don’t go to Manchester and twitter ‘sure are lots of English people’, you don’t go to the moon and twitter ‘sure are lots of moon rocks’ no you don’t, because those things are well known, they don’t need saying, so don’t say it like that.

The dust was only just beginning to settle on this nightmare when @ToddSchiles posted a twitter picture of him standing in front of a statue in Auckland with the caption 'Me in front of a statue in Auckland’.

The backlash was huge and instant and bad. Angry responses came in the dozens over the next few weeks, things were said such as:

-       Really, I thought Auckland was known for a lack of statues?
-       We're known for few, and few is few, not none, you idiot
-       If that’s true how come this guy has a photo of himself in front of a statue in Auckland?  And
-       FEW ISN’T NONE, we’re well known for having very FEW statues, learn your ambiguous number representational words you TOOL!


Soon a war broke out that threatened middle Auckland, someone tried to get a ring involved but then someone mentioned a big bucket of similar yet less important rings, and robots were pointed out, foreheads slapped and new solutions sort.

‘We could have heroes win the war for us’ was offered by a forward thinking Aucklandier,
'Yeah but then we'll have to build statues in their honor, possibly shirtless, and then we may end up with MORE than few statues’ came the swift and intelligent response.

Arguments on what to do about the war persisted and while that was happening the war itself petered into nothing.

Unpredicted by all involved, Auckland now was known also known for not having much of a war, this reputation started to cancel out the long held gravitas they had earned as being well known for having few statues. You can’t be well known for having not much of two things, the cast shadows over each other and create a dark blur.

Auckland is not known for much at all anymore. Now they’re just known for having not much of anything. The tourism board doesn’t know where to turn. I told them they should start a sitcom with talking trees and a robot that forms emotional attachments to things. But they shot me down 'that's too obvious' they said.

They were so mean about it I didn't even tell them my real idea, the idea guaranteed to get them tourists - they could start a war so they have an excuse to build statues!

On twitter everyone’s talking about statues. Follow me on twitter @davidtieck