52% intelligent. 9% modest. More monkey than bear.

Friday, January 21, 2005

Dreams aren't what they used to be....

I'm happy to be able to tell you that one of my friends appears to rapidly be becoming something of an internet celebrity. Statue John started "Stand By Your Statue" on January 9th this year, and as of last night has overtaken the number of hits I have received on this blog since about October last year. This is partly due to mentions on places like Yahoo and Metafilter, but is of course mainly down to the fact that it is a brilliant idea: when on holiday, take pictures of yourself and your friends standing next to statues. That's it. Simple, yet brilliant. Already featured on the site are the Statue of Liberty, Rodin's Thinker and a headless statue of Lenin in Parnu in Latvia.

If the fact that it's a great idea isn't enough to get you over there to have a look, you might be interested to learn that his most recent post features a certain SwissToni doing his most ferocious "tiger" in front of a statue in Copenhagen. Frankly, who could resist that?

I'm sure everyone has photos like this, and as it happens, Statue John is looking for submissions.... see blog for details.

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Whilst we're on the subject of friends.... I've mentioned him here before, but get yourself over to The Ultimate Olympian. He's aiming to compete in all of the 136 Olympic events he qualifies for before the start of the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing. He's just done some of the clay pigeon shooting events, and I think he now 'only' has 128 events to go, including some of the harder ones like the pole vault, the synchonised diving, the marathon, the madison.... He's not just doing this for his own amusement, he's doing it for an extremely worthy cause - the Sobell House Hospice Charity - and he needs your support.

He's just asked me if I will do the triathlon with him in August. That's a 1500m swim, 40km cycle and 10km run. Sounds like hard work to me, but I'm actually thinking I might do it.... anyone care to sponsor me as part of "Team Ultimate Olympian"?

/plug

5 Comments:

  • At 2:42 pm, Blogger Jenni said…

    I agree, "Stand By Your Statue" was a great idea for a blog. Simple, yet fun. I've been lurking over there but haven't yet commented. :) But a picture of you growling might be enough to lure me out of my silence!

     
  • At 2:51 pm, Blogger Jenni said…

    Has the Ultimate Olympian run the marathon yet? Because I'm planning on running it and wouldn't be opposed if everyone reading this wanted to raise money to send me over the Atlantic to help a certain Ultimate Olympian train... ;) Seriously though, my dad's a track coach. I'll see if he has any advice on learning to pole vault. Yikes!

     
  • At 5:10 pm, Blogger John McClure said…

    Who needs Yahoo or MeFi when you've got Swiss Toni sending you traffic? Yet again, thanks for the plug. I'm beginning to feel like I could talk you into this triathlon after all - it's not really all that far when you break it down. It's not even a thrid of the distance from Oxford to Nottingham. *cough*

    In addition to readers of this fine blog wanting to sponsor ST to do it, if you wanted to give it a go yourself, I'm fairly sure that Team Ultimate Olympian can accommodate you!

    Jenni - I'll be stunned if your dad's advice diverges far from the expression "seek professional help", but thanks for asking all the same!

     
  • At 7:34 pm, Blogger Statue John said…

    I too am most honoured to receive and accomodate the SwissToni traffic. Thank you kindly for the plug - thanks too for the many blogging tips oh blogmasterToni. Keep up the fine work....

     
  • At 11:52 am, Blogger Damo said…

    If you do it, I will most definitely sponsor you.

     

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