The sins of man are my condiments. Criminals are my napkin. She forgot pickles. Justice is dead.

March 20, 2009 1:50 PM

Rorschach’s Journal (On a Boring Night).
posted by homunculus (41 comments total)

Sunday - Hrm.
Monday - Hrm.
Tuesday - Hrm
posted by jquinby at 1:53 PM on March 20 [2 favorites]

I got bored about a third of the way down.

I have real blogs for boring lives.
posted by cjorgensen at 1:53 PM on March 20

Well, I lol'd.
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:55 PM on March 20

The caption at the end was worth the trip.
posted by Joe Beese at 1:56 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]

the part about dr. manhattan's penis was funny.
posted by fuzzypantalones at 2:05 PM on March 20

Cracked.com is the best thing on the internet.
posted by m0nm0n at 2:09 PM on March 20

reminds me of Werner Herzblog.
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:13 PM on March 20

Though I can't read the thing at cracked (because, according to my work computer, it is TASTELESS and OFFENSIVE), Werner Herzblog is fabulous.
posted by ocherdraco at 2:21 PM on March 20

I loved that. I loved the last caption especially.
posted by Nattie at 2:29 PM on March 20

Herzblog now FPP'd - we have Rorschach, Nietzsche & Herzog on the front page now.
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:31 PM on March 20 [2 favorites]

Humorous. But humor is just a dried spot of mustard on the bright red bow tie of truth.
posted by DaddyNewt at 2:32 PM on March 20

Cracked.com is the best thing on the internet.

Jesus fuck please tell me this is facetious.
posted by dersins at 2:33 PM on March 20

Premise better than execution. Did not get Rorschach's 'voice' right. Complex sentences. Too many words; clauses. Did not mention good men like President Eisenhower. Suspect communists responsible.

Hrm.
posted by theclaw at 2:33 PM on March 20 [11 favorites]

homunculus - don't look in your fridge anytime soon.
posted by Artw at 2:33 PM on March 20

So I do put my very long, very boring analysis of the movie and the trouble of adaptation and heedless, wanking speculation here or in the other thread?
posted by The Whelk at 2:35 PM on March 20

'Tis a dark day indeed.

And by that I mean 's wonderful
posted by nosila at 2:37 PM on March 20

Though I can't read the thing at cracked (because, according to my work computer, it is TASTELESS and OFFENSIVE), Werner Herzblog is fabulous.

Funny you should say that. I got my first "tasteless" category for a blocked website earlier this week and it happened to be Cracked.com that time as well.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 2:38 PM on March 20

Other thread?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:50 PM on March 20

Jesus fuck please tell me this is facetious.
Yes, I was being facetious. I detest Cracked like Cracked detests posting worthwhile content.
posted by m0nm0n at 3:00 PM on March 20

Hrm... I guess he couldn't find a sock.
posted by tdreyer at 3:27 PM on March 20

Where the shit is the Nietzsche post?
posted by Curry at 3:54 PM on March 20

Joe Beese's - about a forged diary which has a young nietzsche having sex with his sister.
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:03 PM on March 20

I love the Rorschach journals - hence my user profile. [Click it, you cowardly vermin]
posted by Ryvar at 4:13 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]

[Click it, you cowardly vermin]

Status: Single

So you are free to scrawl something over something, eh?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:28 PM on March 20

Yes, a big meh until the last caption-joke. That was great and totally in character, heh.
posted by Iosephus at 4:31 PM on March 20

Rorschach’s Posting Diary March 20th 2009
Sign in to Metafilter. Number of valid FPP’s disappoints. Consider making Metatalk post. Disregard idea – suggests attention whore screaming in dark night for validation of empty life.

Jessamyn deletes FPP about squid disaster in New York. Single YouTube link and obligatory Wikipedia reference considered weak. Also suggestion that Adrian Veidt behind conspiracy considered “tinfoil hat territory”. Hrrm. Jessamyn’s liberal sensibilities betray her. Possible Daily Show viewer. Must remember to investigate further.

Anonymous AskMeFi post asks for validation that reptilian overlords rule planet. The typical smooth talkers and left wing that make up Metafilter fail to answer question. Visit bars, squeeze people to get answers. Break 7 fingers before someone suggests David Eicke knows answers. Sports presenter has facts on New World Order? Absurd. Put Coldplay on bar jukebox for repeat play before leaving.

Visit other bar where scum discuss their heroin and child pornography. Leave quickly. Already discussed subject on BoingBoing earlier.

This blog screams like a message-board stuffed with lolcats. Is posting snark best I can do? Consider alternative career. Is jumping out of fridges Olympic sport?

Haughey is flabby failure. Sits in basement whinging about Facebook. Must remember to remove him from friends list. Moloch’s status updates also starting to irritate. Twitter best place for constant updates about visits by Comedian, Jesus, Cortex etc. Possibly a link between last two? Latex mask clouding logic. Also makes eating cake difficult.
posted by panboi at 4:32 PM on March 20 [11 favorites]

It's "hurm," people. "Hurm."
posted by Bookhouse at 4:36 PM on March 20

Ryvar's profile is way better than this post, but I still LOLed. Crazy cat lady jokes get me every time.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 4:36 PM on March 20

"Put Coldplay on bar jukebox for repeat play before leaving. "

That's cold.
posted by Artw at 5:06 PM on March 20

Ryvar's profile is way better than this post

You're right! Nicely done, Ryvar.
posted by homunculus at 5:07 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]

Can we favourite profiles?
posted by Artw at 5:25 PM on March 20

Hurm.

Metafilter users ripping off personal style. Probable lefty plot to discredit me. Suspect Ryvar is ringleader. Must investigate further.
posted by never used baby shoes at 5:56 PM on March 20

Status: Single

So you are free to scrawl something over something, eh?

Whoops. Fixed, thanks.
posted by Ryvar at 5:59 PM on March 20

Voice not right. Too many pronouns. Hrm.
posted by every_one_needs_a_hug_sometimes at 6:06 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]

LONG BORING ANALYSIS TO FOLLOW:

Okay, here are notes and impressions on Watchmen: The Movie. If I had more time I'd go over it with more specific examples, but I don't have the movie right in front of me so I'm going from memory. Spoilers abound.

It was very weird.

Weird like folk art weird. Like how the camera KEPT MOVING and the grafting of a looping/flashback riddled plot into the movie form. Weird like how everyone looked like plastic and the soundtrack kept blasting out seriously odd musical choices for constant slow-mo montages that almost gave me a contact high. Weird like how now apparently a 19-year old girl and a middle-aged man can punch through ribcage but don't smoke but do have slow-mo sex for ever and ever.

Weird like trying to translate unreliable narrator journal pages into narration.

I brought my BF, who has never read the book. He said there was no set-up for people like him. Things just happened according to the movie's own logic, which was none of his business.

"I just let it wash over me." he said.

So yes, very weird and not very satisfactory. For all the talk about being directly lifted from the book it kept removing crucial lines and scenes that would have explained the character's actions and relationships. There are logic problems like the "if she doesn't smoke why does she press the fire button?" But also problems with characterization and scene-setting. Take these lines from the book.

SALLY: Anyway, what about YOUR image. At least I don't sleep with an H Bomb.

LAURIE: Jon is NOT an H-bomb!

SALLY: Honey the only difference is that they didn't have to get the H-Bomb laid every once in a while.

That simple exchange does some heavy lifting. It further establishes Sally's character and her strained relationship with her more straight-laced daughter AND reminds us, the reader, of Laurie's relationship with Jon and why she's being kept around at Rockefeller (and why she feels trapped.) If Sally was also giving the interview that appears later in the book at the time, say she's with the journalist when her daughter just appears in her bathroom, it would have given a virgin viewer some introduction to her and to the world the movie is set.

The exchange also strengthens her bitterness at being kept there, which was established in the "Let me pick up the tab"-"Then the military can stand me a bowl of Spaghetti Africaine" exchange from before. It would have, if that dialogue wasn't cut to make room for more punching.


The movie's weirdness also comes from it's complete and total dourness. This is Serious Movie. Re-reading the book, I'm surprised at how much humor there is. People are making their frightened little jokes and screwing up all over the place. Remember the fire rescue? Isn't it supposed to be a near-debacle? Or when Laurie seduces Dan, they have a comic little joke-sharing (at Jon's expense) and end up on the couch with Laurie deciding she's totally going to bone this dude who is helping her. It's a very human scene, and quite close to how young girls (and guys) I've known have acted. In the movie she just comes up to him, intones a speech, and they get down. Like I said, weird.

But this leads to the question; How would you adapt Watchmen as a movie? Let's take "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep" vs "Blade Runner" for example. The movie throws away large chunks of the book (Deckard's home life, the weirdo religion, the obsessive cataloging of living animals, the complexity of his relationship with Rachel, the "other" Police Station) but maintained the feel of claustrophobia, of a doomed world, the alien nature of the Replicants mixed with their very real desire to know themselves, and the question of how *do* you tell a person from a perfect copy of them? It feels true to the spirt, if not the letter, of the novel. Most successful adaptions narrowly focus on a theme or two from a book, rewriting them to serve the established themes.

So What is the meat of Watchmen? What made you stand up and pay attention? What hooked you into the story?

For me, it was the idea of these sad former heroes, now working day jobs in a world that doesn't need them anymore. A world that's quickly falling apart, a world made worse because they interfered with it. Their personal triumphs are clumsy, awkward, funny, and small ...Small compared to the huge forces around them embodied by the Great Big Glowing One who made them all obsolete. The idea of a man in bright yellow underpants having to appear before Congress announcing that he is now never, nor has ever been, a member of the Communist Party.

So is Watchmen a murder mystery? A love story? An Alternate Universe story?

I'd almost like to throw away the murder mystery all together and focus instead on the Dan-Laurie-Jon love triangle. Eddie was, to paraphrase another Alan Moore book , just an unusually determined suicide. Maybe he confesses to Morloch everything he's done and throws himself out the window. Add a scene where Nixon asks Jon and Eddie to assassinate a few people. Jon refuses, stopping Communism was one thing but...... Eddie doesn't. Put the riots and the Keane Act more into the narrative, more into the present-day. Make *that* the end of the mask heroes. Laurie and Dan try to go back to heroics but can't, nobody wants them anymore, they just make things worse. They don't break out Rorschach, he has his moment in the jail and gets analysis, but he doesn't get out. Maybe they leave. Maybe they die in the actual Nuclear War ..cause that would be an awesome downer ending, show that the Superheroe doomed the world by making America arrogant and mean and paranoid. Maybe Ozy is the Last Man On Earth, save Jon, alone in his perfect, timeless base at the end of the world. O Superman.

What about the complete feeling of dread that surrounds the book? Everyone's relationships get fucked over and ruined, even the psychoanalyst's. Where is the obsessive longing for "simpler timers" shown in the "Nostgalia" ads over every surface? Where is the ever-increasing fear that OMG the world might actually end now? For reals? There isn't any context for anything because the obsessive need to shove everything in completely misses the point. When Justice is gone, there is always Force, when Force is gone, there is always Mom.


The movie didn't seem to understand the book's themes, nor did it understand it's weaknesses or what was translatable or not. It was completely and utterly tone-deaf. Why leave out all the humor? Why set-up emotional scenes with no previous scenes to explain them? Why glorify the violence it wanted to condemn? A puppet show. A demo reel. A thing without a heart.

P.S: I swear I think half Laurie's lines were cut cause the actress couldn't remember them. Man she is baaaaaaaad.

PP.S: Man, Zack Snyder really knows how to make male asses look good on screen.
posted by The Whelk at 11:14 AM on March 21 [3 favorites]

Actually, there is a show that gets Watchmen's attitude toward it's caped crusaders: The Venture Brothers.
posted by The Whelk at 11:34 AM on March 21 [2 favorites]

So, I went to see the film/movie as a gift to my sweetie-3.14159, knowing, full-well, its reputation, and housing a copy of "The Book" in our joint library.

I had not read it.

There were only 4 theatres which where showing this film. In all of New York. This was a portent.

I entered the theater with absolutely no pre-conceptions, except my sweetie-3.14159's exhortation that this was a "great book" and was on all kinds of lists of "great books".

The condescension to those who were "not one of us" was unparalleled in my oft-going movie life. That one would need to know the back-story in its most broad strokes is at best irritating and could have been taken care of with a single newspaper headline -- "World Tired of Super-Heroes".

Well, I didn't know that this was one of the premises. The film didn't tell me.

This alleged movie makes no sense as a stand alone. Full-stop. Unless and until you see the book and understand the premises, it is a piece of Hollywood garbage. Rightly, I found it at only 4 theatres in Manhattan.

I say "alleged movie". I use my words carefully. It was meant to entertain or make profit. It does neither. (Sure about the first, we'll see about the second).

The characters, I cared for not a whit. The plot was absurd. The included "back-stories" were (at best) ill-picked, and also the weakest -- who slaps her son and says: "I wish I'd had an abortion!" (I had thought myself unique in that particular dialog, but I, at least believe it to be fairly rare) In any case it was irrelevant to the barely follow-able plot, which according to my sweetie, was changed, at the end, into nonsense.

Now, let's get into the absurdities. No, perhaps that's not wise as it may give me carpal tunnel. Let's just say that it is a pastiche of incoherent scenes, washing over me in a sea -- blue -- of indifference, as I realise that the producers are giving me a great "FRAK YOU" unless you've read the book, and, furthermore, another "FRAK YOU" if you don't agree with their choices.

Well, same to you and yours.

I sat though it, and that's a miracle. I now believe in Kara Thrace. And I want my money back.

Honestly, I went into this believing that that author was a bit of a nut-job, eschewing all credits, and so on. Now he's a hero to me, though I haven't read a word that he wrote. He knew. My very sincere compliments to him. He is very wise.

Regrettably, I will now never read the book. (Too many bad memories).

Message is FU.

Grade: F minus. (No long, boring analysis, just a warning. DON'T! Do not encourage mediocrity.)

If only I could have fallen asleep. You know the old joke about the unkindest thing ever done to anyone -- waking them during the overture to "Cats"?

Well, I top that story -- I was directed to the **correct** theatre -- how unkind. Without a ticket. Honestly, what will these cinema chains do to fill the butt-seats?
posted by Great Swell at 6:01 PM on March 21

Wow that was really harsh, Great Swell. I have not seen the movie or read the book. However, if it was worse than Unbreakable, a beautifully shot, well acted, but stupefying and mind numbingly boring movie, I won't see it.

Nevertheless, satire should be enjoyed by both haters and lovers. Alas, I cannot pass judgment on this effort.
posted by Xoebe at 8:27 PM on March 21

That reminds me of the Grant Morrison interview I read at Wired earlier today. Much earlier. Exempli gratia:

We've deconstructed all our icons. We know politicians are lying assholes, we know soap stars are coke freaks, handsome actors are tranny weirdos and gorgeous supermodels are bulimic, neurotic wretches. We know our favorite comedians will turn out to be alcoholic perverts or suicidal depressives....

We know we've fucked up the atmosphere and doomed the lovely polar bears and we can't even summon up the energy to feel guilty anymore.... What's left to believe in? The only truly moral, truly goodhearted man left is a made-up comic book character! The only secular role models for a progressive, responsible, scientific-rational Enlightenment culture are … Kal-El of Krypton, aka Superman and his multicolored descendants.

Illusions die hard. Clarity isn't cheap or pleasant, but it's worth it.
posted by Twang at 11:50 PM on March 21

New Watchman Video Game
posted by homunculus at 10:21 PM on March 26

Rorschach reviews Watchmen
posted by Artw at 11:49 AM on April 3