That is Priceless by Steve Melcher for January 02, 2023

“Trust me, you don’t want a skinny chick as the Goddess of War.”

/// In the Garden of Great Schönbrunn Hall,

the civilians are all strangely small.

Asked one soldier, “Who’s seen a

larger marble Athena?”

of his men, each one two meters tall.

Sergeant:

Herr Major, your problem’s eternal -/

The weight of this thing is infernal:/

It’s as heavy as Hades -

You’ll need a Mercedes../

You must wait until you make Colonel !///

You may also encounter a turn/

Which requires a skill you must learn./

A Colonel can’t drive it -/

You’ll still need a Private,/

For Colonels (and up) need chauffeur’n’..///

Perhaps there’s an easier course/

You command a battalion of horse:/

But a simpler solution/

Is the swift dissolution/

Of your marriage – in short – a divorce !

“Why do we put women on pedestals you ask. To look up their dress.”

The grenadier suggests they blow it up and each take a pocket full to assemble later.

The “Elgin Squad” out reconnoitering for European looters.

When “The Food of the Gods” got loose from the source

And rats each grew big as a carnivorous horse

Heraklephorbia (its chemical name)

After a forensics search was given the blame.

.

The men who discovered it, allowed it to spread

And even purposely put it in their children’s bread.

“It’s the wave of the future,” or so they thought.

But H.G. Wells wrote why they had not ought.

.

As society came to think that big is best

And Nietzsche wrote about the Overman quest

An Austrian stole “Boom Food” for his daughter

And steadily fed to her what he’d brought her.

.

She grew and grew and a soldier became

She was a secret weapon, choosing Athena as name.

Bismarck used her in his great Prussian war,

But then she disappeared and was seen no more.

.

A statue to her was raised in Vienna,

To her half-life size, verified by her long time duenna.

She still lives on, some say on the Grosslockner height

Lonely and camouflaged by long hair gone white.

" Yes, gentlemen, it’s true. When I was a lowly plebe at the military academy, on a dare, in the dark of night I did scale her and paint a mustache on her face. "

When we’re viewing sculptural sites/

We prefer more feminine sprites/

You could send a subpoena/

To armored Athena/

And she’d probably punch out your lights..///

She isn’t the kind you’d marry/

And beware of how long you tarry/

And take note of that weapon/

Athena is schleppin’/

She’s all about “open carry”!

Better be a Volvo semi-truck with a good trailer.

“I’m redesigning our uniforms to look like this.”

Just pull your Volvo over here and we’ll tip it over onto the roof.

Woman in pink: “Come along, daughter. Let the boys play with their toys.”

Sorry guys, I keep forgetting it is a Citroen…

OOOPS! I really meant a Greiner…

In the garden of the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna: 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carl_Goebel_-_Im_Garten_von_Schloss_Sch%C3%B6nbrunn_in_Wien.jpg 

(perhaps best viewed using Google Chrome, which can automatically translate most webpages if necessary) has info and links that point to more info about this roughly A3 paper size drawing.

Again, a larger strip image is shown by (Ctrl- or right-) clicking the image in Mr. Melcher’s MASTERPIECE #3054 (January 1, 2023) blog entry, accessible by the Check out the blog! box after the last comment, and using the dropdown menu (even larger if you trim what’s after .png from the URL). I have added a comment there pointing to info about this artist I used to point to here. First work by this artist used here.

Pallas’ bust IS rather pallid.

i know it’s heavy, but it’s not a blow-up doll and she will do you better since she is rigid.

The world’s first time travelers, the Prussian 15th Brigade, visit Sparta.

“Im Garten von Schloss Schonbrunn in Wien”