Who watches the Watchmen?

I finally got Watchmen back from Jackii, so I can write a review on the best comic ever! (Well... you know... there's always Hellsing...)
But first: at the mall today, they had an old-fashioned metal lunchbox with Rorschach on the front. I thought it was kind of funny, so for whatever reason, I opened it--there was a thermos with him on it on the inside too! Awesome!

(Watchmen is a what-if deal if masked heroes from the '40's were real and fighting crime--it was briefly brought back in the mid-sixties, and the story is set in the eighties after the 'masked vigilantes' were outlawed--the story centers around those ex-heroes. Do I really need this here? Does anyone honestly not know about Watchmen?)

Anyways, let me say this. People love the V for Vendetta comic. (I bring this up because Alan Moore created them both.) Frankly, it left me a little cold. The movie, I could get behind, but the book... uh, why'd I buy that again? Cleaning out my room, it just apparently disappeared, and to be honest, I'm not heartbroken. But this... If someone stole my Watchmen comic I'd be pissed. This is a work of art. Everything exists for the story, for juxtaposition, nothing is just hanging there. Down to posters and tags on walls, what's playing on the TV (the clearest example is when [SPOILER!] Dreiberg and Laurie are having sex and the commercial of Veidt is playing in the background) what people are even doing, items in the room--it is all intertwined. To work everything so well and so finely is amazing, even if Alan Moore is a little... kooky. Honestly, while you read it try your best to pay attention to everything--and trust me, that's impossible. Fourteen times later, and you're still noticing new things. For one thing, I finally kind of understand that subplot with the missing author.

Anyways, I'm going to be the jerk who is like, "of course the book was better!" It really was. For one thing, there is not enough Rorschach. You get zero of his back story, which is some serious BS, because to be honest, he's my favorite. The Black Freighter is completely cut out. I don't think Hollis was murdered? And, of course, the squid is gone. But, to be fair, you'd have to be God Himself to make a movie level up at all to the book. God help 'em, the directors tried. Especially with trying to show how Jon views time. (Wonder if the Slaughterhouse-Five movie did it any better, or even attempted to?) I don't agree with--well, a lot of what was shuffled, but let's be honest, it would really be impossible, unless you enjoy movies that are even longer than Gone With the Wind. (Should that be in quotation marks or something?) And, as much as I love this, by hour seven I'd be ready to shoot myself. There's only so much you can take of anything, and the film seems too, for lack of a better word, gaudy, to be able to be coped with for hardly longer than the three it is already. I was ready to jump out by the last half hour. Vidro was getting annoyed because I kept on jiggling my legs and squirming around in my chair in efforts to stave off insanity. Okay, okay, don't add the squid or whatever, just film Rorschach's back story and give it to me. Oh, wait, do change the scene where he kills the guy who stole a little girl and fed her to his dogs. That scene was unnecessary to change.

Problems With Character Changes in Movie
Dreiberg--He was not fat enough. This is honestly the number one complaint among fans. Where was his pot belly? BS, guys.
Veidt--Instead of having Ken-doll good looks, he looked like an odd little Swedish man. You know who he reminds me of? That white-haired guy in the Venture Brothers, the one with the New York accent and wears the white shirt, and he's basically always the short guy with the eye patch? Yeaaah. Definitely. The phrase 'odd bird' comes to mind. Also, his outfit change really annoyed me. I don't know why, but I got PO'd like hell.
Rorschach--Not ugly enough. Everything else was fine, but he just wasn't ugly enough. And, as upset as the end with him made me when I read the book; no matter how hard I tried, I just didn't care in the movie.

Oh, and now that I think of it, the Hiroshima Lovers. Man, I was trying to be fair, but now I just can't stop...

Anyways, things in the book.

If I were to write everything worth mentioning, I'd basically be rewriting the book only without the part where it's good.
Well, the book opens with the murder of Edward Blake, aka The Comedian, ex-'hero'. Anyways. "'Jeez, y'know, that felt good. There don't seem to be many laughs around these days.' 'Well, what do you expect? The Comedian is dead.'" It's not particularly important, but there are a hundred and a million little lines like that that just stick--to me, at least. This isn't Journalism class. I don't have to be objective. : ) Be glad I'm only cutting it down to a few...

"'Somebody has to do it, don't you see? Somebody has to save the world...'" Ah, the line that unintentionally inspired Veidt to do what he did. Again, aside from that, I just like the line. Somebody does have to, but who knows if they exist. Who knows if it can be.

Oh, the scene where Eddie Blake breaks into Moloch's house drunk. You know how up there I said you still notice and realize new things every time you read it, no matter how many times you read it? I get this now. I don't think this was brought up in the movie either, though at this point the only things I remember are how weird Veidt looked and that scene where they shoot the hippie girl in the opening. Oh, and when they implied the Comedian killed JFK. But anyways, warning, book spoiler ahead: Maybe I'm stupid not to have realized this sooner, but Eddie discovered the 'squid'--that's why he got drunk. That's why he was killed. Like, I got that Veidt killed him because he swam onto his secret island or whatever, but it never occurred to me that Veidt killed Eddie because Eddie found out about the squid and what it was for.

"'Was offered Swedish love and French love... but not American love. American love; like Coke in green glass bottles... They don't make it anymore.'" From Rorschach's journal, the love offered is, of course, from prostitutes. There's something I find very poignant about this line from his journal. It's sad, and maybe it's true. But. The very last lines of his journal on that page, too: "'Nothing is hopeless. Not while there's life.'" Sometimes I wonder if Rorschach is really sociopath, which he is must likely to be written off as, or just someone with an iron grip on their emotions. Because sociopaths can imitate feelings, and when he's just Kovacks, he doesn't even try--he's as wooden as the maple tree in the front yard. Cold as ice. Well, not always--when his 'face' is taken away, he becomes enraged and desperate--and as Rorschach, he's obviously feeling hope, and it's hard to imagine someone being deficit of every single emotion... Then, at the end, he is the most upset of them all. And I guess it's obvious he feels he doesn't really exist without his 'face'... So maybe he can only really be human at times when he distances himself most from humanity. Uhm, does that make sense, really? I'm trying my best, here. Man. Now I have 'Shores of California' stuck in my head.

"'Blake understood. Treated it like a joke, but he understood. He saw the cracks in society, saw the little men in masks trying to hold it together... He saw the true face of the twentieth century and chose to become a reflection, a parody of it. No one else saw the joke. That's why he was lonely.'" "'He suits the climate here: The madness, the pointless butchery... As I come to understand Vietnam and what it implies about the human condition, I also realize that few humans will permit themselves such an understanding. Blake's different. He understands perfectly... and he doesn't care.'"

Ah, how Jon views time. I believe I alluded to this in my post about Slaughterhouse-Five. If not, it is exactly how the Tralfamadorians in that book view time. Everything is happening at the very same second forever and ever amen. Forever and ever is really just one second in eternity's great clock, really. Eternity is really that one second though, I guess, so all that proved really was that I suck at metaphors, huh? Uhm but yeah. The reason why that view so sticks with me is because of that British guy in Boston that first told that view of time to me--he said it was from the book Conversations With God. I've been meaning to read it since last October, but I always forget about it when I go to the library or B&N or where ever. So whenever books mention this, I always get excited. So far? Two. Two books have this theory. Haha.

"'I sat on the bed. I looked at the Rorschach blot. I tried to pretend it looked like a spreading tree, shadows pooled beneath it, but it didn't. It looked more like a dead cat I once found, the fat, glistening grubs writhing blindly, squirming over each other, frantically tunneling away from the light. But even that is avoiding the real horror. The horror is this: in the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness. We are alone. There is nothing else.'" The Rorschach test becomes a metaphor for death for Rorschach's psychologist. Unsettling, upsetting, alone, but even more so that Kovacs is correct, in this strange way. Sick?

And, actually, as I reread the included pages after that chapter, the short essay entitled 'My Parents', 'written' by Kovacs, I found an interesting point--which, by the way, may lead into a spoiler, so you have been warned--Rorschach likes President Truman, and praises him highly at the very beginning of the book. Kovacs's mother told him as a child (it is written here) that she threw his Father out because he loved Truman, and she did not. But he ends this essay talking about Truman, saying "He dropped the atom bomb on Japan and saved millions of lives because if he hadn't of, then there would have been a lot more war than there was and more people would have been killed. I think it was a good thing to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.'" Ah? And keep in mind the ending of the book--so upset and in such despair that he had Jon kill him. I think maybe it's an idea that you can think and say you follow, but deep in your heart you know if it happens you could never believe in it, or put your entire stock in it, or when it does happen you hate it and are disgusted by it even. You know? Maybe?

"'"End of the world" does the concept no justice. The world's present would end. Its future, immeasurably vaster, would also vanish. Even our past would be cancelled. Our struggle from the primal ooze, every childbirth, every personal sacrifice rendered meaningless, leading only to dust, tossed on the void-winds. Save for Richard Nixon, whose name adorns a plaque on the moon, no human vestige would remain. Ruins become sand, sand blows away... All our richness and color and beauty would be lost... as if had never been.'"If I could count the times this sentiment has been spoken of, going all the way back to Animorphs... Well, it is truth. I guess this really would be of the 'no truer words have ever been spoken' category. It could also be considered end of time, I guess, since time and free will appear to be entirely human inventions. Oh dear, I've gone and depressed Emma...

"I did it thirty-five minutes ago."

....

"I did it. I did it!"
This scene described and the scene when the squid 'lands' and the aftermath is what sold me. Mookie talked quite extensively about it in a panel of his I attended at my second Connecticon... I think it was something like "Making memorable heroes and villains"? But yes. As sick as it is, those scenes were what drew me.

"'Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.'" Poor Rorschach.

"'Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.'"

The end makes me nervous, as I believe it was intended to do. Whenever I read a comic I find myself adopting patterns of speech and thought, and I guess it's true again. Guess.

Anyways, this is a damned good book. Much better than the V for Vendetta comic. Better than most 'real' books. Five out of five, Alan Moore's a genius.

I'll be on my best behavior, taking shots for Mother Nature

Okay, so, Slaughterhouse Five: I reread it because it was on the reading list for my school. But honestly, what was Marky Mark thinking when he put this on here? You have certain questions to answer, and they're all something along the lines of "how did the character change by the end of the book? What is an important event that causes the turning point of the book?" et cetera. But you can't do that for Slaughterhouse Five because it jumps around like Invisible Monsters. Actually, none of these books on the list really fit well to those questions. Figures, the one year we get books that don't belong in the pail we get a crappy set to answer to and I can't even get the extra credit. (Seriously, I've read like half this list... and you know what, I bet it's just the books I did read that don't fit. My luck.) Man, why can't we read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay like the UConn class kids? That would be a fun book to do this, or really any other project, on.

Anyways, this book isn't nearly my favorite of Kurt's. It's a good introduction to him, I guess, and had I read it first I might like it more, but the first I read was Breakfast of Champions, and as you know by now, I consider that to be basically the cream of the crop. Well... after Galapagos. Anyways. It's right in the middle of the range, with Galapagos right in front and Hocus Pocus at the other hand. I guess you'd say it's mediocre, but that sounds too mean. Well, I guess it's the truth, though.... Ah, I don't know. Think what you want about them, I'm not God.

Well, first: this confused me when I read this book the first time, but this book is the "famous book about the war".

A major point in the book is not only that Billy is unstuck in time, it's the way Tralfamadorians view time: Everything is happening at once. The past, present, and future do not exist: time is not one precise moment after another it simply is. I guess it's kind of like believing in predestination, only everything you have done and will do (well, is being done) is preordained, down to the very last millisecond. If you have read Watchmen, think of how Doctor Manhattan views time. It's like that. I guess it's also basically saying 'sucks to free will'. Wait, this quote may help: "When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that same person is just fine in plenty of other moments." Which, with that mind, the argument could be that when someone thinks of a memory, they are for a moment viewing time as it really is, occurring all at once. Or something? I'll stop now. I could talk myself blue in the face about this, really. This is a theory I hold in high regard because when I first learned about it (not from this book or any other, a random British guy in Boston told me about it) my jaw almost disengaged and dropped at my feet. It was so novel it shocked me right into minor enlightenment, there. Anyways, I digress...

"Among the the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, present, and future." Yeah, so basically it's a big middle finger to the idea of free will... Okay, yeah, and later Billy talks to a T who talks about all these papers on planets he's studied and planets he's visited and such, and basically he says that "Only on Earth is there any talk of free will". And on one level, if free will is just an illusion, it's kind of a relief, I guess. No one can really be blamed for sins, and everyone goes to heaven? Well, not even that, because if this theory is true, one, it'd make a cool Twilight Zone, two, there would be no heaven and hell because no one would be dead, not really.

And, Kurt Vonnegut made his own observation on the New Testament, mainly on the story of Jesus. An alien studies the Bible but doesn't like this area of the New Testament. He "supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low. But the Gospels actually taught this: Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes." Yeah, I see this one. Pilate had him crucified and oops, he's burning in Hell. (Wait, actually, that doesn't make sense. Pilate was necessary for Jesus to be martyred and ascend to heaven... Pilate was the good guy? Wait, that makes Judas technically a good guy too! Hey!) Wait, wait, now I've lost my train of thought. Uh. Crap. But yeah, I guess Judas was kind of a hero or at the very least a good guy, cause he was the catalyst in Jesus's death and it was necessary for Jesus to die... man! Don't demonize Judas, guys. He was working in God's plan! Destiny, guys. I mean, don't be giving him out high fives and stuff, but he couldn't help it. No free will. God planned this one. (If I was Jesus I'd be really angry about that one.)

Huh. I guess there wasn't much to respond to. Which I guess is good, because my last two posts are longer than a giraffe's neck.

I'll keep you warm and won't ask you where you've been

Wow. 11:30 already? Yeah, I was planning on taking a ten minute nap at eight thirty. Uhh. Oops?

But, I finished Catch-22 yesterday, in any case. Sooo. Of course, I loved the book. I'm gonna be honest here--I'm totally in love with this book. There really is nothing wrong with it, so far as I'm concerned, except for the fact that everything is catch-22 and at the end, when the Chaplain is basically tortured (verbally) falsely. It's even more frustrating when he's get verbally tossed about than the court scene in To Kill a Mockingbird because of the fact that Atticus got his say out--he still lost, but he lost with his head held high. In this case though, there was no way around the madness and surreality. No matter what, you were going in circles, and I was going a little bit insane by that point. Another part in the book I go insane a little at is around page 160, where Yossarian asks the prostitute to marry him, and she can't because he is crazy, and he is crazy because he wants to marry her. Catch-22 exists where it shouldn't. It is everything--it rides everything (not gravity!). And, as a side note, before I start including passages and quotes I favor: A teacher of mine, my psych teacher actually, had been in the air force too when he was younger. I happened to have a quote from the book as my signature and e-mailed him and the next day we were talking about it and he mentioned that the book really is what being in the air force is like. I sort of nodded it off at the time, but thinking about it while rereading it--holy God. Can you imagine? I would go mad. Really, I'd probably end up killing myself or someone around me. It's absolutely maddening! Anyways...

I love Yossarian. He's got a contradiction for everything. He's no oaf, either, so he's not just being a big, dumb... contradictor? Well. I guess you'll see what I mean when we get to my favorite passage. And I hate Orr. I detest his circular nature and he does nothing but enrage me.

"He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt..." A description of Yossarian. I love that line, and I just want to say, I do think people live forever. Well, I have a theory that I'm not sure I'd like to subscribe to, in any case, because it basically discredits the afterlife and I'm only human, and so are my readers. I think. But by saying people live forever, they live their wholes lives--they live until they die. That really is forever for a human. History and time stretch out, but they're too large for us to comprehend... 'Forever' is defined by who's saying it. So in that case, Yossarian really wouldn't be able to fail.

"'Well, maybe it is true,' Clevinger Conceded unwillingly... 'Maybe a long life has to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?' 'I do,' Dunbar told him. 'Why?' Clevinger asked. 'What else is there?'" Exactly.

"'If you're going to be shot, whose side do you expect me to be on?' ex-PFC Wintergreen retorted." As much as we'd love to have our noble heroes and martyrs, I do believe they are the minority. I think more people would love to cling to life than stand up for an idea, and a lot of the people who do stand up for an idea are maybe just people stuck in the romanticized views of dying for your cause. I know that sounds cruel while we're in the midst of a war, but I think I just can't see things from an upstanding view because I'd be like Wintergreen, most likely. Saving my own skin would be number one. I'm not sure if I'd turn on my friends, but when your own side is pointing the guns at you? Who knows.

"He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it." : )

"Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three." Any Shakespeare fans? No?

"He was told that he should not kill, and he did not kill, until he got into the army. Then he was told to kill, and he killed. He turned the other cheek on every condition and always did unto others exactly as he would have others do unto him. When he gave to charity, his left hand never knew what his right hand was doing. He never once took the name of the Lord his God in vain, committed adultery, or coveted his neighbor's ass. In fact, he loved his neighbor and never even bore false witness against him. Major Major's elders disliked him because he was such a flagrant nonconformist." At first that last part didn't seem quite right, but really, it makes sense. Who really lives by the Bible in this time? What worries me is that it would be unrecognized in a time where religion was more important and more a part of everyday life. But the fact that Major Major should be so out of place and thought a nonconformist for taking the Bible's teachings to heart? There's something to be said for society there.

Well, to quote the bit I like on page 170 would be too obnoxious and time-consuming, but basically a group of fliers are talking about how they have things that really belong to other people--"someone else's three hundred thousand dollars", a "dose of the clap", etc. Basically saying that I didn't deserve X, this is what happened to me--and another fighter saying yes, that certainly sounds like my [what I should have, instead of health, etc] case of X or X items. It doesn't sound too great the way I'm describing it, but it's one of my favorite sections. It's page 170 if you pick up the Simon & Schuster Paperbacks edition (with the blue cover).

"It was miraculous. Each day he faced was another dangerous mission against mortality. And he had been surviving them for twenty-eight years."

Now, to back this next bit up: Yossarian tells a woman he's sleeping with that for every good thing she can name, he can probably name two unpleasant things. This is my absolute favorite bit in the whole book. "'Be thankful you're healthy.' 'Be bitter you're not going to stay that way.' 'Be glad you're even alive.' 'Be furious you're going to die.' 'Things could be much worse,' she cried. 'They could be one hell of a lot better,' he answered heatedly."

"'Why in the world did He ever create pain?' 'Pain?' Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife pounced upon the word victoriously. 'Pain is a useful symptom. Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers.' 'And who created the dangers?'" Yossarian goes on to bash God, but I think the point is gotten well enough here. The general consensus seems to be that God went quite insane (Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Chabon) and that's what made him think Earth and its contents would be a good idea. Kurt Vonnegut's take is... well, in Breakfast of Champions he describes snakes and then says "Sometimes I really wonder about the Creator of the Universe sometimes". And in Timequake while God is performing his seven-day feat, Satan starts thinking the man's gone mad--how far is this guy planning to go? As for Chabon, a character in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (I think it was Joe) says something like "I think God went insane just before He, you know. Created the universe." Anyways. I'm backing Kurt Vonnegut with this one. Sure, maybe the first humans failed some divine test, but He would have known, no? So why bother, when everything will play out exactly as you know it will? Poor Dr Manhattan. He can't even kill himself.
And aside from that, what could He have had in mind? A gladiatorial match between animals? I guess He wouldn't even make much of a shipping clerk, either. I roll mad deep with Vonnegut on this one.

Anyways, now that I've alienated the world... I guess I'll make this a two-parter. I'd like to get to bed a little early so 8:30, nine o'clock doesn't seem like too much of a stretch. There's randomly a chain of Twilight Zone episodes on from eight to eleven or so tomorrow, which is AWESOME.