I’m home at last, after about 48 hours of airports and airplanes and long drives. I haven’t slept at all except for these peculiar intermittent blackouts, I’m flat-out exhausted, I’ve got this +5 Flaming Rod of Lancing Agony in place of a spine, and the Trophy Wife™ (who is at work, so I haven’t even seen her yet) sends me an email with this picture, suggesting that it hints where I ought to go next.
I guess she didn’t mind my absence that much.
I’m betting a ‘pecker’ joke will be forthcoming.
Ki-ute creature!
Welcome back, PZ. I hope you can now get your much needed rest.
A peculiar bird is the Kiwi, who eats, roots, shoots and leaves.
He has a peculiar diet, too.
The kiwi, because god didn’t know how to get a mammal to New Zealand.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
This seems relevant. How to Prepare a Kiwi.
“I am an Apteryx, a wingless bird with shaggy feathers!” –BC
Glad you got home safe, PZ. Get yourself a good massage to help with that +5 Flaming Rod of Lancing Agony. Or at least a hot pad… I hope you feel better soon!
Squishable used to have a kiwi understudy, but it seems to be gone now. Pity.
Are you bringing the Trophy Wife™ to Denmark? Pretty sure the only thing that can kill you here is the food.
I thought that was going to be like the Aussie Emu recipe:
Clean emu and put in large pot. Cover with water and place rock on top to keep emu in bottom of pot. Add herbs & spices to taste. Boil for at least 12 hours then pour off water, discard emu and eat rock.
Well, Oz is the only continent other than Antartica I haven’t set foot on–but I can strongly reccommend Nu Zillund. It’s the only place we’ve travelled where my own trophy wife informs me that she’d emigrate in a flat second.
Some one is a DnD nerd…
I wonder what edition of D&D PZ prefers. The old boxed sets? AD&D? 3.x? 4e?
One day I want to fly from Perth to Sydney/Brisbane (or the other way) so that I can lay claim to have circumnavigated the globe. Not that the flight will be very interesting, seeing as most of it would over the GABA.
I’m old. I own the original beige pamphlets for D&D from 1975.
Ah, back when it was all about demon worshiping, suicide when your character died, and other such sundries that sent Jack Chick’s heart atwitter.
Going by the beard, I’d guess PZ played a Dwarf.
back in the day, Dwarf was a class. Go figure.
The rules were like a 32 page digest-size booklet.
and I know too much about this stuff.
/nerd
I find jet lag worse going from West to East. Take tomorrow off, and we’ll see you on Wednesday for your penis/vagina flower picture.
Oh, and I forgot: Welcome back to the good Ole US-of-A. We passed Health Care Reform while you were out. sorry about the mess. Hope the back gets to feeling better soon.
Trophy Wife is right; you should have come to New Zealand and you must come soon, but I fear for your back with another long flight. But I think you can count on New Zealand Pharyngulites and Pharynguloids to make it worth your while.
Also, I believe Air New Zealand will do a sleeper arrangement from November, where if two close friends buy three seats in coach (for the cost of 2.5 seats), the seats can fold into a narrow double bed.
So give us enough advance notice to raise some funds and I think we can guarantee you both a great trip.
Oh, and forget kiwis; they’re boring. This is what zoologists do in New Zealand.
As a New Zealander, I always found the Kiwi a wee bit depressing as our national animal. I mean, it’s flightless and being killed off by introduced species. If only people hadn’t killed of the Moa or the Haast Eagle, then we’d have a real national bird.
“What’s that you’ve got there America? A bald Eagle? How cute! We have a three and a half meter tall, 230kg bird. And another bird that hunts it.”
Apteryx is NOT boring!!!
Think you’re in pain? Think of the poor kiwi! [2 links]
New Zealand?
You want depressing kiwi? This is the most depressing kiwi of all time. Inspirational, but depressing.
YES, that is where you must go next PZ. End of May, GO THERE AT THE END OF MAY!
Do it! You KNOW you wanna.
I thought a kiwi was this.
I was wondering if it was a “bird in the hand” inference. Especially after seeing the prior blog post of the picture of PZ with 2 pretty birds off in the bush.
Kiwis? Do you mean like this one?
Then how come there are indigenous bats there?
Great.
Now I wanna go, too.
As a New Zealander, I always found the Kiwi a wee bit depressing as our national animal. I mean, it’s flightless and being killed off by introduced species.
buck up, we’re still learning about the little guys:
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20080501155937194
pfft, why would anyone want to go to New Zealand when you have Australia just across the Tasman? ;)
Actually, if all goes according to plan I should be heading to New Zealand in October. Flights across the Tasman are dead cheap right now and are set to get cheaper.
Kiwi!
According to the Bible, bats are birds so Glen’s statement still stand.
Flights across the Tasman are dead cheap right now and are set to get cheaper.
better hurry while there is still some summer left over here!
And extinct Kuri — feral polynesian dogs.
@Sili
There is something horribly sad about that video.
We’d love to see you down here PZ.
As for a national bird for NZ, I’d like it to be the Kea. Supposedly the smartest non-primate in the world.
Come see the Kiwi, only in New Zealand. Come to new Zealand we have Kiwis! And email me before hand, Dawkins didn’t :(
Welcome back, PZ. We’re glad to have you back on familiar ground.
Now, as far as going to NZ or other distant ports of call, why don’t you take the boat? Just think of reclining in the most comfortable position for the entire voyage! Why you can get up, lay back down, acquire or discard pillows and covers at will, sip and sup as you are wont and there is no need for a seat belt or a pat-down search!
I’ve got a back that has hurt continuously for thirty years so I can identify. One becomes used to the idea that “pain-free” is only an advertising slogan. What I look forward to are days when the pain is not actually incapacitating rather than whether it does or does not hurt. I’m not sure but I think my poorly designed and marginally functional spine has had a lot to do with my character development. Seeing as you’re also quite a character, I’m sure the old vertebra cry with a fervent obsessiveness in that part of you just behind your belly.
I trust that you will be resting now, and recuperating while you lay the evil plans of your next blasphemous heresy. Or is it your next heretical blasphemy? It’s all so confusing these days.
Yes, Kea for national bird of New Zealand. Smart as hell, don’t take crap from anything, and will strip your car if left unattended.
Yeah, and seals and dolphins.
Just to show that I can be a pedantic bore, too, if I choose to be.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Ah, kiwis. They have the shortest beaks in the entire world, out of any bird.
Yes, kiwis are notoriously deficient in the Durante sense because bird beaks are measured from the nostril to the tip. But the measure of a beak is more than spatial relationships of common anatomical features.
I used to believe such drivel, until I saw a kiwi. Just goes to show how easy it is to fool the puny human brain. Like how I can draw two lines on a piece of paper that you agree are of equal length. With the addition of but a smidgen of pencil lead you will agree that they are not.
Kind of like this experiment (wonderful to show to little kids and to dyed-in-the-wool believers). Here’s how it works:
Take three drinking glasses of similar size.
Fill them thusly: One with hot water, one with cold, and one tepid, a mixture of the two.
Have the
mark patient suspectinquirer put the index finger of one hand into the hot glass and the same finger on the other hand into the cold glass.Wait twenty seconds.
Have the long suffering
specimeninquirer then simultaneously put both previously immersed fingers into the glass of tepid water.Immediately ask the poor soul to tell you the temperature of the water in the third glass.
That’s the thing about being wrong; it’s not only so easy but it seems to come naturally sometimes, spookily naturally, to thrust with a phrase.
“Oh it’s so easy
Soweezy . . .” (Linda Ronstadt, my how closely I used to listen.)
Kiwi are fascinating birds…but isn’t this more of an attraction for PZ http://squid.tepapa.govt.nz/
Fun fact: 15 million years ago there were not only crocodiles but also terrestrial mammals in NZ. Or so it seems based on a jaw fragment. I’ll look for the paper later.
Scary.
But impressive finger claws!
Oh yes, come to NZ – but skip the North Island! Otago will give you a warm welcome!