Many things can joust, but Robots won the championship.

Unless you are one of two people (One being myself, the other being half my reader base) you may not know why this little spot is named "Robots Can Joust." After all, reader #2, as we both well know, Robots can do a great many things; they can clean, they can explode, they can create music; my grandfather wears a robot that hears things for him. (Depending on what you consider to be a robot, you may have just called me a liar. In that case, I point you to the "Snakes Can Run" post and to a future post which you do not yet know the title of.)

So why did I pay particular attention to Robots ability to Joust? Why attention to Robots at all? After all, though it may be possible, I've never seen a jousting robot, and however interesting robots may be, there are plenty of interesting things. Why didn't I name this "Bottlecaps can roll if you push them the right way?"

Though there is a specific story that led to the name we see now, allow me to start of the explanation with some reasoning I came up with long after the fact. Robots are the creation of humans. There are no bee-robots (That we know of), and robots can only be made thanks to the research and knowledge of many people. Jousting is impressive, flashy, and kind of pointless. Robots that joust represent the combination of our most impressive achievements as a race, and our very strange talent of absurdity.

The actual story is much simpler. Reader #1 and I will one day make a film, featuring Dragons, and Robots, and jousting battles between Robots and Dragons. But Robots and Dragons have Jousting battles just sounds so silly as a title, doesn't it?

Cool things exist

You know something cool? I bet you do. You know of something cool? I bet you know of hundreds of things that are cool. For example, this.



Check that out. It's a space shuttle. Not doing anything about space right now, just sitting there, being all shuttle-y. But that thing is cool. It got rockets strapped to its sides larger than one hundred of us! That is undeniably impressive! Of course, this isn't the only cool thing around. There's also really massive trees, dinosaurs (Seriously, giant monsters that we only know about because we keep finding bones that remind us how giant these giant monsters really are), skyscrapers, submarines and aircraft carriers.

Not all cool things are big, of course. There's kittens, flowers (anyone who claims not to like flowers isn't stylish enough to admit that flowers are pretty cool), waterguns, porcupines, eyes and baby animals. Shockingly, cool is cool, big or small.

There isn't really a point to this (Not that there ever is when I'm writing something). I just feel it's important to remember that there are cool things in the world. Some of them are very big. Some of them are pretty small, too. One of them is you.

Snakes Can Run

Hey, is your refrigerator running? Hopefully, because if it isn’t, everything in it could go off.

Have you gone running lately? I have, though not for as long as I should.

Notice something there? There’s only one word that shows in in both those question and replies; running. The context is different for both, but unless you thought I was making a horribly corny joke, you perfectly understood what I meant. If a machine is running, it’s working. Parts of it are moving, and the machine is doing something. If a person is running, they’re moving, propelling themselves forward (and if they want to show off, backwards). Yet if I tell you that snakes can run, you scoff. Why? Because it’s a ridiculous image, that’s why. "Look out, ma! That there snake be running at you!"

But … I don’t get it. Cheetah’s run. Emu’s run. Hell, though it looks kind of weird, Giraffes, Elephants, Sheep, Cows, all sorts of animals can run. For animals, it’s when they’re moving very fast (well, fast for that species) towards or away from something. So why is it that removing the legs makes this sentence wrong? I’m not sure, personally. A snake, like any other animal, will eventually need to move quickly. Yet what do we call it when a snake is moving? Slithering, most of the time. Yet that doesn’t convey urgency. There’s no desire for speed in the word slithering, there’s no empathise on haste. Technically speaking, a snake is slithering if it moves a metre in ten seconds or two. I don’t want someone yelling “Look out, that snake is slithering towards you” when it’s coming faster than my walking speed. Though, to be fair, I’m guessing I’d hear something more along the lines of “Holy Shit That Snake Is Moving Oh God Oh God Oh God RUN!” but that’s beside the point.

In my interpretation, running means something slightly different to the normal. It isn’t the act of using your legs to move forward quickly, it’s moving forward quickly. It’s rushing, it’s haste, it’s speed. Snakes can run. Fish can run. When necessary, even birds can run. After all, if a steamroller can run, I’m not exactly going to draw a line at fast, urgent movements from animals. Because in the end, it’s obvious. Snakes can run.

Start off with a challenge

I’m going to issue you a challenge. Do something cool. I don’t really mind what it is. If you can juggle, do that. If you can sing in a baritone well, go ahead, belt out a verse. Doesn’t really matter what, just do it. Done? Okay, good. (Or not, if you didn’t. In which case, you are being lazy and there is a paragraph at the end of this post just for you, lazy people.) So what did you do? There’s lots of things you could have done, but you only did one, right? Because that’s all I asked for. One cool thing, done by you. Who you are will have had an effect on what you do. You might be a fantastic ventriloquist, but you may think that’s really lame, so instead you did a pretty bad Eddie Murphy impression. (Don’t feel bad, my Effie Murphy impression has throat cancer.) This proves two things; one, that cool is a terrible descriptive term and you should never use it if you want a specific result, and more importantly, that everyone [i]can[/i] do something cool.

Lots of things are impressive. If you’re good on any particular instrument, people will find that impressive. Hell, a lot of the time, even if you can only hammer out the first three bars of Fur Elise on piano that can impressive and surprise. But there are more possible talents and tricks out in the world, and we each only know a very bare few of them. Yet to us, our talents aren’t all that impressive. If I was put on the spot like you were, what would I do? Probably sit down in front of my piano and thrash out the Tetris A theme, maybe Savato if I wanted to play something heavier. Perhaps I’d load up I Wanna Be The Guy and (after an hour or so, to be honest) beat the last boss again. Most likely, I’d just keep reading like most of you did to see where this was going.

So what is my point? Well, if to us our own talents are unimpressive, then that means to other people, what they do isn’t all that special either. It’s easy, we say. It’s fairly simple. After a little practice, it becomes subconscious. Second nature. Like riding a bike, expect I don’t fall over the handlebars and break a leg after not doing it for a few years. So what does it mean? Something awesome, in fact. If all the talents we find awesome are easy, what’s to stop us from doing them? Procrastination. Though we may not phrase it like that. “I don’t have the time.” “There are other, more important things to do.” “After I’m finished with this.” Well, bugger that attitude. Let’s do them! Let’s learn how to dance, find some juggling balls, and buy a cookbook. Let’s actually do this.

Now, I’m not going to try and push you into action and do nothing myself. That’s not fair. So here’s the deal. At the end of every week, from now on, I’ll post what I’ve been working on. I’m going to start teaching myself to speak Japanese. I know a little, so I’m going to make it a lot. Come on folks. You don’t need to learn another language, or even commit much time here. Just, start doing what it is you want to be able to do. It’s the only way you’ll ever learn.