Complex Numbers

What a Pisser

Lots of cities have a recognizable symbol, an icon which represents the city's, and sometimes the country's, character. Paris has that Tower. Sydney has the Opera House. Washington has the Phallus- errr, I mean Monument. Hell, even my city has one, the Rotunda at UVA.

Brussels, ancient economic powerhouse, capital city of the European Union, world culinary treasure... Brussels has the Manneken Pis.  

Like the Mona Lisa (reportedly), the statue/fountain's size can be shockingly disappointing to first-time visitors. As that link notes, it's a bit over half a meter in height, and it's set in a relatively large fountain so it seems even smaller.

Please feel free to make your own jokes and insinuations about that last paragraph. I'm too tired to bother.

The first connection one might make is to those pissing-Calvin stickers rednecks used to put on the back window of their trucks. Usually, if it was a Ford, it'd be pissing on the Chevy logo; or vice-versa. This is different, though I suppose that if it were mischievously pissing on anything, it'd be France. No, the Manneken Pis is more heroic than delinquent.

Anyway, you can read more about that that at the Wiki link above, so I'm not sure why I'm bothering with the background here.

According to my guide, they used to replace the water in the fountain with beer during their beer festivals, which, like the Manneken Pis itself, is a very Belgian kind of thing. I suppose the only more Belgian thing to do would be to replace it with liquid chocolate, but I'd imagine that'd be even harder to clean up, later.

When I was there, the statue was dressed up as a little graduate, because Brussels is having a graduation ceremony this week. Why Brussels schools graduate people in October, or exactly which schools are involved (high school or college or whatever), I never did find out and can't be arsed to look up. But this is the condition in which I found it.