News You Can Bruise

One of the advantages of having a digital camera that fits in your pocket is that you can take a picture whenever your arms are not paralyzed. I kind of had this when I had the Hiptop (That reminds me: I got rid of the Hiptop because it never worked for me. I now use a cheap old reliable cell phone with no features beyond Tele-Talk^TM), but my time trials indicate that it takes about ten seconds for me to take my camera out of my pocket, turn it on, take a picture, turn the camera off, and put it back into my pocket. I don't think I could have taken a picture with the Hiptop in 10 seconds. Plus you can actually see details in the camera pictures.

All that was seemingly a big lead-up to the fact that I've had to start putting up "misc" directories to contain pictures that don't correspond to a "big event, better take the camera" thing. Here they are for February and March. These sets include hilarious moments like At least they didn't park in the handicapped space.

Bonus for Joe: this Ad campaign for New Zealand found near the Apple store which opens up new fields in tautological advertising. "Don't even come," it says. "We won't let you in."

Bonus bonus for everone: for some reason they're ripping up all the greenery around the building where I work. I assume they know what they're doing. Anyway, I call this picture set The Scouring of the Shire, and it should satisfy those of you who were hoping Return of the King would be even longer.

This is an Exclusive You Can Bruise! I asked Joe for his take on this Slate article, about the gala Return of the King opening in Wellington, New Zealand. Since I'm always proud to put up stuff on this site written by other people, here's his response:

The article is actually a pretty good description. The local paper has talked of nothing else since NZ lost the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup three weeks ago. For the first movie it renamed itself the Middle Earth Post but didn't go that far this time.

I do know more than a few people who worked on the films in some part, but the closest I get to actually knowing an actor would be that I used to work with someone who is in a band with the guy who played an elf in the Rivendell scene in the first movie (fans dubbed him Figwit).

The only exaggeration in the Slate article is the decription of Wellington as "a collection of high rises at the foot of green mountains" - mountains my arse. They're hills and it's quite possible to ride a bike up them.

I went down to the celebrations quite late. I missed the parade, but my gf Joanne saw it and thought it quite magical, especially the people dressed as elves and orcs. The makeup is apparently really good even in broad daylight.

It's sort of a shame to see the Rings stuff finished, it was nice to have a common sense of purpose with others in the city. Then again apparently work on King Kong will start soon...

Joe

Eating at "Fondue Fred" in Berkeley, with Sumana, Adam, and friends. The fondue is pretty good. Above Fondue Fred in this little shopping center is a little cafe that has hung up a New Zealand flag and serves Kiwi Pub Pies (today's special: curried vegetable). There are antique electric mixers all over the cafe; Joe, are there mixers in New Zealand pubs or is this a quirk of the cafe owner?

Finally, an XML standard for representing Joe Mahoney.

On Chinese TV last night there was a fairly funny show called "Jacky Go Go Go". Sandwiched between juvenile short skits about the eponymous Jacky being in the hospital was an extended game Jacky and some acquaintances played in which they were divided into two teams of two, and each team had to run around some Taiwanese metropolis (Taipei?), finding and eating various foodstuffs. Hilarity ensued, apparently. An interesting fact is that one member of one of the teams looked rather like Joe Mahoney (his hair was even dyed the same color). Also, the show had a cool videogame-like animation that was used to reintroduce the show when coming back from commercials.

Extrapolated sample dialogue: the Joe Mahoney-looking guy and his friend have stumbled into a Hooters bar (!), looking for fried potato skins or some such.

Joe Mahoney-looking guy: I think this is a topless bar.
Other guy: Oh, I see. [begins to take his shirt off].

I suspect it's a lot funnier when you don't know the language, because you think of the sort of joke you would set to the action on the screen, which is quite often funnier than the actual joke. This happened to me with having watched "Dude, Where's My Car?" in Russian; the things I thought were brilliant sight gags (like the fridge and cupboard full of pudding cups) were given dumb bad-comedy explanations in the dialogue.

I should link to Joe's page. Here it is. Joe is from New Zealand. This uniquely qualifies him to write about life in New Zealand.