Sunday, May 17, 2009

Chapter 1: In Which a Title is Chosen and Explained



In the olden time, there was an animated television program called Voltron. For those of you unfamiliar with this cultural touchstone, the action involves young heroes fighting evildoers by piloting robotic lions. In particularly danerous circumstances, the lions could be combined into a single giant robot, not coincidentally named Voltron. 

Growing up in the aforementioned olden time, I watched Voltron almost every day before school. And being an obsrvant young lad, I noticed things about the Voltron team's war against evil. Their battles invariably followed a particular rhythm. The team would fight in their individual lions for a while, before confronting the day's major threat, at which point they would form Voltron (the sum apparently being more than the sum of the parts.) But even as Voltron, the big bad would put the heroes on the ropes. Not even their combined power could win the day...

...until the leader called out "Form Blazing Sword!" And he always called out "Form Blazing Sword!" Every episode. Every day. And with the giant energy blade, Voltron always turned the tide. 



I came to wonder why the team bothered with fighting without the blazing sword, since they always ended up having to use it anyway. They must have known that the blazing sword was essential to their success, but they put off forming it. So, in short, "Form Blazing Sword!" came to be a sort of shorthand for procrastination- putting off doing something that you know you'll have to do in the end.  

HINT: This blog isn't the blazing sword. It's all the ineffectual stuff I do before I go off to finally do the stuff I need to do.  


No comments:

Post a Comment