Manifestos

My manifesto talks about the literary canon, and how I think it's serving to turn English study into a joke by rendering a good 90% of the shit we come up with through analyzing text completely worthless to anyone outside of English academia. I've kind of felt this way for a long time but always figured I was just kind of a jerk. Now that I'm really thinking about it, I'm starting to feel like I might be right (and also a jerk). Right now, it's just a gut feeling, but I actually feel a drive to go out and do some non-class-related research on how English is taught and what it does for society because I don't think it's doing everything it can.

This is a big deal for me, because I haven't really taken school seriously since the 6th grade. There is no good reason for me to have gotten into this university, and there certainly isn't any good reason for me to have not been expelled after every semester here. It's nice to be writing something that I feel is actually somewhat original and not be immediately failed.

Case in point: Victorian Culture. Guess what strategy I'm using to write this paper? Close reading and analysis of the words on the page, in essay format.

Fucking.

Yawn.

Also, why do I love sad songs?

Chrono Trigger: Best Ever?

The answer is yes - Chrono Trigger is the best ever. I don't play a lot of video games anymore, and when I do, I prefer actiony sort of stuff, and not role-playing games. But as a kid, I couldn't get enough of SNES RPG's, and I probably spent more allowance renting Chrono Trigger over and over again than anything else I bought until I was sixteen.

A picture that simultaneously evokes
the best and worst aspects
of Chrono Trigger.

I've been playing this all weekend instead of writing my papers for Victorian culture. Victorian culture might be the worst culture ever.

X-Men Wiki

This thing is simultaneously kind of fun and kind of suck. On the one hand, I get to talk about how great Wolverine is. On the other, I have to talk about it while making sure I don't get my pants sued off by Marvel, or expelled from school. I don't know if I can handle this kind of pressure.

In other news, I ate Taco Bell for dinner, and I might not survive through the night.

You are my butterstick

I used to think Whose Line is it Anyway was stupid, but I've been watching a ton of clips these past couple nights, and I'm really into it.

Look at the... paneling. Sure does relate to comics.

"The dame was crazy. Most dames are."

Meet Rorschach.

First of all, if you haven't finished Watchmen yet, don't fucking Google search for Rorschach! Don't do it! His identity is a cool surprise and you will ruin the moment if you try to look ahead. In fact, don't do any searching at all until you finish Watchmen. Don't leave your apartment, don't talk to your roommates, don't answer your phone when your parents call you. Just read it.

Rorschach is cool because he is basically a prototypical film noir vigilante, and most of how he talks and acts reflects this. I don't know exactly how to define film noir, or where it came from, but it has this kind of gritty feel to it. It's usually really melodramatic, but it doesn't take itself too seriously so you can still enjoy it without saying to yourself, "NO ONE TALKS LIKE THAT!"

Other famous noir-y characters in popculture are

Harry Dresden (Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files)

Marv (Frank Miller's Sin City)

Tracer Bullet (Calvin and Hobbes)

A big part of film noir is the hard-boiled detective tradition, where the protagonist is a private eye who plays by his own rules. Often, a doe-eyed, large-breasted bombshell will come in with tears in her eyes, and ask the private eye to find out if her husband is cheating on her. Then the husband gets shot and the private eye is framed for the murder and so on and so forth through several nearly identical plotlines that are familiar to anyone who grew up watching television - especially Sunday-morning political debate shows.

John McLaughlin, a film noir paragon.

People are talking about how Watchmen is a criticism of the comics industry, or something. I'm sure it is, but I'm also sure I'm not very interested in that. Mostly I like seeing a vigilante breaking people's fingers to get information. Rorschach does that for me.

I don't know how to correctly pronounce "Rorschach." Right now I'm saying "Roar shack" but that can't be right.