Shark Week, bitches! With a side of robots...

Well, my arm is almost healed. It still hurts a bit to hyper-extend, but besides that, it's much better.

I realized that this week is not only Shark Week, one of my favorite weeks a year, but also, tis' Robot Week.

That's right, as if Shark Week wasn't dorky enough, NI felt it was important to have hundreds of robot designers gather in Austin this week to have robot competitions. Now, these are the gladiatorial fights of Robot Wars. These are simple designs like a robotic hand with elastic ligaments. There are moments where I think I am really dorky, but then I see things like this and I remember I'm not quite the most dorky person in the planet.

Though, on Monday during dinner, David me and Travis and Emily all thoroughly discussed our issues with the LOTR movies and plot lines they skipped that we wanted back in (Tom Bombadil). So, I guess I have a healthy dose of dork.

Bombadil debate:
In most film and radio adaptations of the story, Bombadil is notable by his absence (an exception are the Mind's Eye recordings). Both Ralph Bakshi and Peter Jackson have stated that the reason the character was omitted from their films was because, in their view, he does little to advance the story, and would make their films unnecessarily long. Christopher Lee concurred, stating the scenes were left out to make time for showing Saruman's capture of Gandalf. Some of Bombadil's dialogue, as well as the scene in which the hobbits meet Old Man Willow, are transferred into scenes which Merry and Pippin share with Treebeard in Jackson's adaptation, included in the extended edition DVD.

During the Fan Credits' Audio Commentary on the extended edition DVD of The Fellowship of the Ring, Elijah Wood pays a small homage to Tom Bombadil, by giving a "shout out" to him. Wood then also takes note of his absence.