Form Blazing Sword!

The Twleve Days of Mythos

2011-12-19T17:15:00.000-08:00

On the First Day of Mythos my True Love Gave to Me, A God Sleeping Under the Sea

On the Second Day of Mythos my True Love Gave to Me, two kings in yellow, and a God Sleeping Under the Sea

On the Third Day of Mythos my True Love Gave to Me, three shoggoths, two kings in yellow, and a God Sleeping Under the Sea

On the Fourth Day of Mythos my True Love Gave to Me, four black goats, three shoggoths, two kings in yellow, and a God Sleeping Under the Sea

On the Fifth Day of Mythos my True Love Gave to Me, five for-got-ten tomes, four black goats, three shoggoths, two kings in yellow, and a God Sleeping Under the Sea

On the Sixth Day of Mythos my True Love Gave to Me, six mi-go going, five for-got-ten tomes, four black goats, three shoggoths, two kings in yellow, and a God Sleeping Under the Sea

On the Seventh Day of Mythos my True Love Gave to Me, seven cities sunken, six mi-go going, five for-got-ten tomes, four black goats, three shoggoths, two kings in yellow, and a God Sleeping Under the Sea

On the Eighth Day of Mythos my True Love Gave to Me, eight cultists praying, seven cities sunken, six mi-go going, five for-got-ten tomes, four black goats, three shoggoths, two kings in yellow, and a God Sleeping Under the Sea

On the Ninth Day of Mythos my True Love Gave to Me, nine voids a-howling, eight cultists praying, seven cities sunken, six mi-go going, five for-got-ten tomes, four black goats, three shoggoths, two kings in yellow, and a God Sleeping Under the Sea

On the Tenth Day of Mythos my True Love Gave to Me, ten Deep Ones deeping, nine voids a-howling, eight cultists praying, seven cities sunken, six mi-go going, five for-got-ten tomes, four black goats, three shoggoths, two kings in yellow, and a God Sleeping Under the Sea

On the Eleventh Day of Mythos my True Love Gave to Me, eleven hybrids hiding, ten Deep Ones deeping, nine voids a-howling, eight cultists praying, seven cities sunken, six mi-go going, five for-got-ten tomes, four black goats, three shoggoths, two kings in yellow, and a God Sleeping Under the Sea

On the Twelfth Day of Mythos my True Love Gave to Me, twelve dreams a-dreaming, eleven hybrids hiding, ten Deep Ones deeping, nine voids a-howling, eight cultists praying, seven cities sunken, six mi-go going, five for-got-ten tomes, four black goats, three shoggoths, two kings in yellow, and a God Sleeping Under the Sea!

Happy Holidays, Everyone!

Let Me Show You What the Jesuits Taught Me: Jared Lee Loughner as Gordon Pratt

2011-01-12T07:27:00.000-08:00

Jared Loughner has proved somewhat impervious to political analysis, but that hasn't stopped all sides of the blogosphere from weighing in on his possible partisan motives. Right-wingers point to the presence of the Communist Manifesto among his favorite books as evidence that he's a liberal. In some odious homage to ahistorical nonsense, they also cite the presence of Mein Kampf as additional evidence, but somehow manage to overlook the presence of Ayn Rand's We the Living.

Saner observers point out that Loughner's rants on secret mind-control grammar are more associated with the outer fringes of the Right Wing, and that his obsessive bimetallism is an article of faith to actual elected Republicans on the state and national level. They also note that the gunman targeted a Democrat who voted for the Affordable Care Act, a fact which the wingers only take to mean that even Democrats are murderously enraged over Obamacare.

A third faction argues that Loughner's possible mental illness depoliticizes his murder spree entirely. But this is simple evasion. The mentally ill have politics, just as the physically ill do. Loughner was politically obsessed, even if his commitments were somewhat opaque to others. He went to a political event, and targeted political figures.

That said, the combination of communism, Nazism, Randism, and existentialism, along with goldbuggery and other obsessions makes me think that looking at a list of favorite books isn't going to tell us much about him. Such a motley assortment of mutually exclusive philosophies seems more like padding than it does an actual foundation for political commitment. Most of all, it reminds me of this:

Bait and Switch: NYT edition:

2010-12-26T14:58:00.001-08:00

It's true that any actor in a Broadway show has a tremendous opportunity, and that might be worth taking a risk. Even if that show is less a play than a "Ponzi Scheme with Costumes." And even if the risks are less "bombing with the critics" than "never walking again."

Still, I'm not sure this front-page link from the 12/26 New York Times entirely reflects the tone of the story it leads you to:

Sometimes I think they do this just to spite me.

Mailing the Knife

2010-12-06T06:57:00.000-08:00

In high school, perhaps some of you wrote letters to your future selves. Maybe you told futureyou not to forget about the importance of rocking out or keeping it real. Or maybe you wondered if you ever met someone you could love as much as (choke) the one who broke your heart (sob sob sob). It’s a cheesy exercise, but it has its charms, as well as its cringing embarrassments at what a melodramatic little crapsocket you were.

I was reminded of that exercise this morning when I read about the tax deal Obama is negotiating with the Republicans. Democrats got outplayed at every turn on this issue, and now the wealthiest will get budget-busting special tax breaks over and above the cut everyone else gets.

It would be bad enough if that were all. But the worst of it is that the Republicans' ostensible concession-- a 2 year extension, rather than a permanent one. So come election time 2012, we can now count on another round of this exact same demagoguery. It's like putting those words in a time capsule for our future selves to enjoy. Except the letter isn't to ourselves. It's to the GOP. And it's not a letter. It's a knife. And not even one of those decorative knives engraved with words on it. Just a plain old stabber.

I'm not averse to compromise, or even to our side taking a few wounds at the knife fight. But do we have to give them the knife?

Obviously, Too Much Time on My Hands

2010-12-03T18:33:00.000-08:00

Sentence of the Week: 7/24/2010

2010-07-24T07:56:00.000-07:00

"After all, life, for all its agonies of despair and loss and guilt,
is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing, full of
liking and of love, at times a poem and a high adventure, at times
noble and at times very gay; and whatever (if anything) is to come
after it, we shall not have this life again. " --Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond,1956

Marvel Keeps Using That Word. I Do Not Think it Means What Quesada Thinks it Means

2010-04-17T13:52:00.000-07:00

Marvel likes its sub-lines, like 1602 and now Noir. The last year has filled out the line with Daredevil, Luke Cage, Punisher, Wolverine, and two series each for Spider-Man and the X-Men. This week brought us an Iron Man for the Noir-iverse, and it has fine art, a fast-paced story, and loads of Easter Eggs for the longtime Marvel fan. But if this first issue is many things, this Iron Man is emphatically not noir. It is pulp. The pain of it is that one could easily produce a noirish Iron Man story, if not for one problem: Tony Stark.

Though Film Noir is a notoriously slippery genre, with fairly elastic boundaries, there are a few defining features. Among the most important is the nature of the protagonist. He is generally not a man of action or great achievement. If he is distinguished, then his glory days are long passed. Think of Mitchum in Out of the Past, Kirk Douglass in Ace in the Hole, or Joseph Cotten in the Third Man.

Having this kind of protagonist at the core has serious implications for the plot as well. The noir hero never initiates the plot. He is dragged into it by a femme fatale, or by a larger scheme (as in Third Man) Occasionally, he is resentful in his reduced circumstances and stumbles upon an opportunity to seize his main chance (as in Ace in the Hole). But he is almost never in control of circumstances. (A Google search for "film noir" and "in over his head" returns more than 200,000 hits). So the noir character is a regular guy, caught up in a much larger game. And generally, that larger game is the corruption of the world. From a gumshoe caught up in a new age of apocalyptic warfare to a cynical Angeleno bearing witness to the ugly rise of the modern American city, film noir suggests that one person can't ever win. The best they can hope for is to wring out a little measure of dignity in an increasingly dehumanized world.

In this context, how can we look at this Tony Stark as a noir hero? He is supremely confident, always in control. He fights Nazis in lost cities, searches for Atlantis, and has a "Men's Adventure" amanuensis following his every move. He isn't Mike Hammer, he's Doc Savage. Now, there's nothing wrong with being Doc Savage. This guy, this guy, and this guy all have more than a touch of the Man of Bronze in their makeup. But none of them are noir. They're pulp heroes. They're larger than life, not living their lives; not mensch but ubermensch. But, then again, how do you take a character defined as swinging playboy and millionaire superstar and put him in a noir story?

Easy. You don't make him the viewpoint character. Tony Stark isn't a noir hero. His exalted position in society makes it almost impossible. We never meet the noir hero when he is a lord of all he surveys, and the genre generally takes a pretty ambivalent view towards the socially powerful. They are signs of the rot and corruption that the noir hero struggles against in vain, architects of the fallen world. But if we don't see inside Stark's head, we can put him in that ambiguous role. A millionaire with a secret agenda-- that's noir. The Noir line has used such viewpoint characters before, as in the original X Men Noir, which used the Golden Age Angel to investigate the more outre X-Men cast.

So imagine this: It's 1948. A washed-up boxer is looking for work. A beautiful redhead hires him for a job-playing chauffeur and bodyguard for her boss, one of the richest men in town. There's an immediate spark between the boxer and the secretary. And the boss is sweet on her too! But the boss is strangely frail. He spends hours each day in that iron lung contraption. They say he got sick working on that bomb that ended the war. The guilty nightmares that haunt him drive him to seek forgiveness, though most nights he goes looking for it at the bottom of the bottle. It would be so easy to take everything. And if the money isn't enough; well, there's another redhead who will pay handsomely for Stark's research notes...

It may not read better or sell better than Iron Man Pulp, but it would be the start of a story that would actually be Iron Man Noir.

Careers in Science!

2010-04-01T09:57:00.001-07:00

Sentence of the Week, 2/28/10--3/6/10

2010-03-01T14:14:00.000-08:00

“If the present beautiful weather continues I shall be compelled to go and be happy in the country but at present I prefer being miserable in London.” –Erasmus Darwin

Sentence of the Week, 2/14-2/21

2010-02-16T12:08:00.000-08:00

"It’s already been explained that in a complex world of jet-apes and time travel death is the least of your worries, so let’s not go there."

Amy, Mindless Ones, 2/15/2010

Sentence of the Week, 2/7-2/13

2010-02-12T13:00:00.000-08:00

"The head-lice shampoo developed at Purdue was marketed by Nature’s Sunshine."

--Claudia Golden, "Tales out of School," The New York Times Book Review

Ben McGrath is a Bad Journalist

2010-02-02T11:13:00.000-08:00

Journalists serve a specific function in society—to help maintain an informed populace, so that they might better participate in government. The earliest American political journalists were unabashed partisans, but that kind of open advocacy has fallen out of favor, confined to the op-ed page and replaced by the rarely attained ideal of objectivity. There are two basic philosophies as to how journalists can achieve that ideal. The first model calls on the journalist to gather information, and to adjudicate conflicting claims in order to uncover an underlying truth. Those who are more skeptical, or simply cagier, about absolute truth claims pursue their goal through a second model, in which the reporter simply gathers and transmits those conflicting claims, leaving it to the reader to decide whose claims best reflect reality.

Both philosophies are defensible, and no journalist is an absolute exemplar of one or the other. But one can learn a lot by observing when he or she follows each philosophy. When does our intrepid reporter make declarative statements, using the authorial voice? When is the truth value of differing claims left ambiguous? Let’s take a look at Ben McGrath’s profile of the Tea Party movement in the Feb. 1, 2010 issue of The New Yorker.The main thrust of the article is that the Tea Party phenomenon runs broad and deep, cutting across a broad cross-section of American society. McGrath uses both authoritative and ambiguous voices to advance this argument.

McGrath tells the reader that Democrats “mistook” the meaning of Doug Hoffman’s defeat in the NY-23 special election and “made the mistake” of criticizing Scott Brown. Indeed, Schumer’s criticisms “invited talk” of a challenge in November(48). When McGrath ratifies Democratic claims, it follows on the lines of David Axelrod, who “admitted” that they underestimated the strength of Brown’s support in the Bay State (48). McGrath is also more than happy to use the authorial voice to describe the existence of republicans in New York City as “tremors in the social bedrock, if not the earth’s crust,” and to explain that the Teabag volunteers were “not crazed sign-carriers, but quietly dedicated engineers, and winemakers and singers.” (48)

By contrast, when Democrats point out the extensive support undergirding Tea Parties from major establishment organizations like Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks, McGrath can only sympathetically observe that the outfit has an annual budget of “only seven million dollars a year.” He notes “a blog post linking” Armey’s outfit to a strategy memo, but also that the memo was written by a volunteer. So, what’s the truth? McGrath gives us no way of knowing. Perhaps thinks the question irrelevant , as suggested by his earlier remark that the Armey men would “be cause for greater skepticism” if those TP folks weren’t already on the job. How important was Armey specifically, or other lobbying interests in general? Again, McGrath gives us no way to know.(47)

When the TPers themselves level their charges, of communism, Islamism, and subversion, they never “dismiss” countervailing evidence, or “mistake” anything. Their declarations sit without comment. Their sincerity is unimpeachable, and the veracity of their statements unquestioned. When one TPer declares that environmental causes are now the refuge of “weirdos” who want “all buildings, all industry, all fossil fuel would stop,” McGrath never intervenes, as he consistently does when discussing the critics of Tea Party Nation (44). Similarly, the origin of life on Earth is evidentially all a matter of perspective, just like the nature of “Barack Obama’s past associations with figures like Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn.” (45)

Perhaps the clearest example of this contrast comes in the one passage of the article in which McGrath acknowledges that facts actually matter. McGrath begins his account of the 9.12 rally in Washington by telling us politics comes down to numbers, before offering attendance figures that range from ABC’s “lowball” 60,000 to a 2,000,000 driven by the “natural excitement surrounding 9.12.” (42) This is not incidental information. McGrath, as author and adjudicator, tells us that Tea Parties matter and that they represent large numbers of people. This would seem to make the ACTUAL NUMBERS significant. He even quotes one TPer declaring that “there are more of us than there are of them.” (42) Another pair of TPers marvel at how clean they left the Mall, despite a gathering rivaling the size of Obama’s inauguration, ascribing it to “the caliber of the people involved.”(46) Again, the actual facts would be relevant here. But McGrath gives us no basis on which we can decide what the actual numbers are, only the tell that the ABC number is a “lowball,” leading the reader to assume that the higher estimate is closer to the truth. But what is the true number? And why won’t McGrath intervene here, as he does so frequently in the article? For that matter, in what sense is the political enthusiasm of the TPers a “natural excitement?”

Ben McGrath is an experienced writer. He knows when he is using ambiguity and authority. And he consistently uses them to ratify the self-serving image of the TPers. He may not be much of a journalist, but he has a hell of a future as a publicist for Tea Party Nation.

Chapter 5: Top Ten's Extended Family

2009-06-22T19:35:00.000-07:00

In my last installment, I discussed Alan Moore's Top Ten. I praised Moore for the range of his interests, and for his ability to cleverly use superheroic tropes to illustrate broader tropes of heroic literature. The twelve isues of the central series winningly provides a foil for the costumed vigilante of the comic book in the uniformed crimefighter of the cop drama. Today, I'll be talking about some of the progeny of Top Ten: the prequel miniseries The Forty-Niners, the sequel miniseries Smax, and the other sequel, and black sheep of the family, Beyond the Farthest Precinct. There is now also a miniseries, Top Ten: Season Two, which reunites Ha and Cannon, but I have not yet read it.

Of course, the role of superheroes in the larger constellation of pop heroics has always been an abiding theme of Moore's work. In Promethea he uses superheroics to explore myth and religion. In League of Extraorinary Gentlemen he draws the pulp heroes of a past century as the superheores of the era. And so the presence of that theme in Top Ten is no surprise. Equally unsurprising is the way that it weaves through the satellite materials of Top Ten.

The first of these, and by far my favorite, is The Forty Niners, which traces the creation of the setting-city of Neopolis, ad the first team of superpowered police to patrol its wards. Where the first series brought in shades of Hill Street Blues or Homicide: Life on the Street, the prequel deals in the themes and images of the immigrant story. From the vampires who stand in as Eastern European enclave to the politcally supsect Germans who may be continuing the Nazi war effort, The Forty-Niners is about the hard work of assimilation and the pain of passing in a dominant culture. Gene Ha's art in this book is truly staggering. As fine and expressive as it was in the main series, he truly reaches a new level of excellence here.

I do not own a copy of Smax, and so I am working solely from memory on this fluffy tale in which Moore takes his superheroes into a world of swords n' sorccery fantasy. It turns out that hulking blue detective Jeff Smax hails from just such a world, and the series follows his quest to take care of family business, in the company of his partner, Toybox. Along the way, he finds time to introduce us to some fantasy cultures whose habits will be truly alien to most readers. While the story is successful on its own terms, it has neither the artistic excellence nor the powerful character moments of The Forty-Niners.

Finally, we have Beyond the Farthest Precinct. Neither Alan Moore nor his artisitc collaborabtors Gene Ha and Xander Cannon participated in this project, and it shows on every level. It was written by the cyberpunk author Paul di Filippo and illustrated by stalwart Jerry Ordway. While many enjoy Ordway's style, the crevassed faces and bulging eyes of his characters have never appealed to me. But Ordway's art is not the problem here. The script by Di Filippo, introduces tedious and ill-conceived new characters, and ill-uses Moore's creations. Characters who were formerly complex aqnd multilayred are flattened out into the "cool" cops and the "uncool" cops. Where Moore evinced a deep sympathy and recognition even for the characters he wrote as bigots and reactionaries, Di Filippo is not subtle enough to show anything more than the surface layers of the force. The story attempts to pay off on hints and ideas from the original series, but most of these follow-ups are utterly banal. And beyond its failings as a story, it seems to lack the larger concerns animating Moore's work in this universe. Of all of the Top Ten books, this is the only one I have found utterly unrewarding.

Chapter 4: In Which Alan Moore Writes A Damn Good Comic -- Top Ten

2009-06-07T17:59:00.000-07:00

Perhaps I'm a little late to get in on the Alan Moore craze. You know, the one that started when the trailer for Watchmen came out (Watch-mania! Catch it!), and ended about three hot minutes after people caught their first glimpse of a nuclear blue ham-javelin. But I'm still going to take this time to talk about one of my favorite Alan Moore comics, Top Ten.

The formula is pure high-concept: superhero comic meets cop show (or SCxCS=T10). Moore isn't the first writer to think of superhero teams as police forces, but Moore plays with the conventions of each genre to fascinating effect. That the first twelve issues are called "Season One" offers some clue as to what Moore is up to. The superhero and the TV cop "fight crime," in their ways, but the cop show and the superhero comic achieve that end in very different ways. Moore puts them in conversation to illustrate how the genres differ, and how they shape and inform one another.

Top Ten is the story of Neopolis, a city founded after a World War II shaped by the superheroes. But really, it's a city where all the characters went-- from superheroes to the pulps, to the sunday funnies, to folklore and mythology, they all ended up in Neopolis. So the precinct includes fantasy sword-swingers, anime robots, Blackhawk-style aviators, and caped crusaders. As in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Moore sees comics as an extension of a larger world of popular literature.

"Season One" follows several interlocking plots, including a drug investigation, a serial killer targetting prostitutes, and the murder of a god. The plotting is not as dense as Watchmen, but the story still has its share of satisfying twists and engaging subplots. But the brilliance of the writing is less in the story than in Moore's wonderful characterization. His creations here are among his most inspiring: Irma Geddon, the survivalist in a nuclear battlesuit, to King Peacock, the Yazidi supercop who "talks to Satan." Moore constantly unsettles expectations, but all their contradictions make the cops of the Tenth Precinct seem more real, rather than less.

Just as Moore plays with genre in the writing, Gene Ha draws from a vast history of comics, TV, and movies to populate Neopolis. The series rewards re-reading, and Ha's countless visual jokes and references add another layer to the metafictional fun. (Jess Nevins terriffic annotations are fairly comprehensive.) To see Charlie Brown dressed as Doctor Doom, trying to visit Santa, is to see all three characters in a wholly different light.

In the next post, I'll talk about some of the spin-off material, in its highs and lows. The short version is that the participation of Alan Moore is fairly key to the success of the series, or T10 - AM = :(

Chapter 3: In Which Children are Enlisted into the National Security Apparatus

2009-05-19T06:14:00.000-07:00

I read this story from the NYT last week, but it has haunted me through the weekend, enough that I am moved to write about it now. An affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America, known as the "Explorer Scouts," run a careers program, where children (boys and girls) get to explore different occupations, advised by people who work in those fields.

It all sounds fairly innocuous, and even praiseworthy, until we meet the kids learning about careers in law enforcement. What might such a program include? A primer in constitutional rights? Maybe a discussion of how police officers establish a bond of trust with the communities they serve? Perhaps a reminder that force should be the last resort?

Yeah, right.

Meet the next generation of cops.

The program is an education in "the fun stuff." Training with real and simulated (airsoft) firearms, drills in small-group tactics for firefights, and how to identify threats. They then use these methods in competitions simulating hostage situations, drug raids, and the like. But don't worry, the kids are learning important skills that they can transfer directly to their daily life. Like what to do when someone won't stop talking:

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

I can't wait to see the first time one of thse young Explorers busts that out on the playground. If the program is run the way it is described, I wouldn't be surprised if one did. Rather than focus on the public service that law enforcement provides to, well, the public, the program seems to emphasize the power of a law enforcement officer over another indvidual. I'm old enough to have played cops and robbers as a kid, but I never had the benefit of an actual cop telling me that the game was an accurate portrayal of police work. Shouting orders, brandishing cuffs, putting faces on the ground and knees in the back. Never taking statements, resolving disputes, or filling out reams of paperwork (that a real career in law enforcement includes), the program indulges a power fantasy. Become a cop and dominate another human being.

And a lot of that domination was going on in the program itself, according to researchers

(warning, PDF) from the University of Nebraska:

*A San Bernardino, California sheriff’s deputywas sentenced to 120 days in jail in April, 2003
for the statutory rape of a 16-year-old Explorer scout

*A Clackamas County, Oregon sheriff’s department lieutenant was demoted in July,
2002 for having asexual relationshipwith an 18-year-old Explorer Scout.

*In June, 2003 an Anaheim, California officer charged with oral copulation with a 17-year old
Explorer fled to his native England. California authorities are seekingto have him extradited.

*A Philadelphia, Pennsylvania police officer with the department mounted patrol unit
was sentenced to prison in 2003 for over 100 sexual acts with a 13-year old girl enrolled in his
riding club.

There have been more than a dozen cases of sexual abuse in the program within the last 10 years. What are the kids learning about the rule of law now?

Chapter 2: In Which Ultron the Robot Puts the Lotion on the Skin

2009-05-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

Just about every volume and variant of Avengers features some kind of showdown with the evil robot Ultron. But with very few exceptions, the encounters fall a bit flat. While they do provide ample opportunity for Hank Pym to be wracked with excruciatingly emo remorse over creating Ultron, they never get at the delightful Silence of the Lambs core of the relationship. That's right. Send the kids to the other room -- I'm talkin' Ultron-sex tonight.

The short version is that Hank Pym created a robot, and imbued it ith artificial intelligence using his own brain patterns. The robot turned evil (as robots will do), and periodically tries to kill everyone. Most especially, he is obsessed with either impressing or killing Pym, who is both his figurative father and a version of himself. That much is enough for a villain , but not for the five-alarm oedipal nightmare that we're going for here.

Ultron has often been portrayed as fixated on creating a family. He made a "son," The Vision, with whom he intended to infiltrate the Avengers, but Vision defied Ultron to become a hero, rejecting the father in favor of the grandfather. Ultron also created two "wives" with mind-patterns based on female Avengers, one of whom was Pym's wife, the Wasp. The son created a version of mom. And he surrounds himself with other "Ultrons," identical to himself. Does this seem like a little way beyond normal villany? One would think so, but most writers have characterized this as a lonesome drive for family. I think it might be something else.

Most recently, Ultron has been seen commanding a robot army in space, but before that, he even assumed the form of Pym's wife. The son dressed up as mom to get dad's attention. Ultron made his own "mom suit." It's like an inverted oedipus, who wants to supplant the mother in the father's attentions. At the same time, Ultron is not just a "son" to Pym, his psyche is also an imperfect duplicate. Ultron wants to seduce himself. This thwarted and impacted psychosexual fixation - not just a bland and innocuous desire for "family," makes Ultron terrifying and alien. So why not bring out that subtext? Ultron will destroy the world to seduce himself. Stop making Pym feel guilty about Ultron. Start putting him in a pit with a basket of lotion.

Chapter 1: In Which a Title is Chosen and Explained

2009-05-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

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.