Enough to give you the willies

Okay, I apologise for the really bad pun in the title. You'll have to read the rest of this blog entry to work out why it's so bad, but trust me, it's horrible.

Prometheus: bringer of fire, benefactor of mankind, poor sap doomed by the gods...

The legend of Prometheus, so it goes, was that he was a Titan - which is kind of like a cousin to the gods, but not a god - who decided to take pity on poor, miserable, snivelling little mankind and give them the gift of fire. Until Prometheus came along food was always raw, night was always dark and winter was always cold.

With fire came science, art and all kinds of figurative sparks. Mankind stopped huddling in the dark trying to keep warm, and instead made vast leaps and bounds towards civilisation.

However, Zeus (king of the gods and all round jerk - I'm sorry, but that whole Leta and the Swan thing will have me forever despising the ol' Zeus) was not happy. He didn't particularly want mankind to have fire. He was quite happy to have them huddling in the dark. So he punished Prometheus for his audacity.

I half recall that, prior to the punishment, there was a bit of defiance on Prometheus' part. Something along the lines of:

Zeus: "Mankind shall never have fire if I have anything to do with it!"
Prometheus: "I'll give mankind fire if I want to! What are you going to do about it?"

It probably needs to be mentioned occasionally that annoying the gods never ends well. In fact, if there is one piece of advice I can feel confident in giving to every living being, regardless of race, creed or position in the space-time continuum, it is this: don't annoy the gods.

To punish Prometheus for having the gall to defy him, Zeus had him chained to a cliff on a remote island. Every morning a vulture would come along, rip open his guts and eat his liver. Every night the liver would grow back and the guts would heal up so it could all happen again. I believe this was not a pleasant experience, and Prometheus was doomed to suffer it for all eternity.

So, remember, kids, don't annoy the gods.

Now, where I work, we have a statue of Prometheus not far from the reference desk. He's large, he's made of brass, he has a pained expression on his face, he appears to be chained to the wall... and he's naked.

Quite obviously naked, in fact - especially in profile. He's not one of those old-fashioned, classical male nudes with their modest accoutrements*. No, he's one of the new, modern male nudes who are a little more obvious.

Now, the interesting thing about this (as Prometheus' sculptor would tell you) is that most people these days don't know how to look at a male nude. A female nude is fine - we see those all the time in "art" - but a male nude... Well, that's a naked guy standing in the room, right? That sort of thing just isn't on. Especially not in Australia.

The first few times you see our Prometheus, it's a bit of a shock. Then you get used to him. Eventually, you stop registering the big brass naked guy chained to the wall.

Well, until someone decides to "decorate" him. Tonight, I had the dubious privilege of removing a paper frog from Prometheus' appendage. Sadly, it was attached with chewing gum, so I had to spend a little bit longer trying to get rid of that, too.

Just part of a day's work, really. So far I've taught a colleague how to use blogger, consulted the special collections librarian regarding the picture collection, given a training session to a post-grad student, answered questions at the reference desk, made arrangements for the new training room, worked on my Master's project and cleaned chewing gum of a statue's willy.

And what did you do today?


*Bonus points go to whoever can correctly explain how the word "accoutrements" is being used ironically in this sentence.