Random Catch-up Post

Sorry I haven't posted in a while...first it was getting ready for the cruise, then it was the cruise itself, and now it's recovering from the cruise. I still have this weird thing where I feel strange because my house isn't rocking back and forth (honestly), which I'm looking forward to not feeling anymore.

First things first. The cruise was AWESOME. I haven't eaten so much amazing food in a long time. It was a lot of fun to be pampered for a week and feel like I was living in the lap of luxury. Two quick pictures...the one on the right is the water off the coast of Grand Cayman, where we went snorkeling. I actually saw a puffed up pufferfish, which was pretty incredible.

The one to the left is a picture from the Mayan ruins of Tulum near Cozumel, Mexico. The walls around the city were 12 feet thick, made completely without mortar. Through the wall, you can see the main temple, which was positioned so that the left side lined up with the sun on the summer solstice and the right side lined up with the sun on the winter solstice. It's amazing how much knowledge the Mayans had, and then lost without any apparent explanation.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip :)

But then...I come back and find out that the Packers have signed Randy Moss and that Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica is (allegedly) dead! I'm completely disappointed in the Packers...they have more class than this. How can they as a team go from Reggie White to Randy Moss in less than a decade? In a word, boo. The Starbuck plot twist intrigues me, though. To be honest, I haven't watched BSG other than the first season on DVD that my brother had me watch over Christmas. And while I was intrigued, I never got into watching it in its original airings. I would read the Television Without Pity recaps and think that there was no WAY I could ever understand what was going on anymore. But Starbuck's purported death has made me reconsider. After initially disliking her character, I've decided that she's the person on the show I would most like to be...which is probably why they can't actually kill her off. She's too appealing to the show's audience, and killing her off could be a death knell for the show. I really hope they don't make her a Cylon, but instead, bring her back in good-old-fashioned Alias style.

Finally, a heads-up about a fun thing I found...As many of you know, it's time for the NCAA Final Four, and apparently, Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir have taken the bracket system and applied it to decisions that you make about important things in your life. In their book The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything, they use the bracket system to help you decide what is the best movie, the most memorable moment, and the best American beer, among other things. Slate has an article about this, with a fun interactive game that let's you work your way through some of these bracket options. My most memorable moment was the 9/11 attacks, and my best film death was Darth Vader's killing of Obi-Wan Kenobi. My one complaint about this system, however, is that it's not personal enough. For me, there is no way that Sonny Corleone's tollbooth death and Obi-Wan Kenobi's death should be paired up in the first round. IMHO, those both belong in the final four. Letting people generally rank the top 16 options--perhaps as tier 1, 2, or 3--would allow for a more accurate seeding system, and therefore, a championship match-up that truly reflects the conflict you feel when choosing a favorite film death.

Regardless, it's a fun site to play around with, and certainly an interesting way of thinking about how to answer the question "What's your favorite movie?"