"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.

Heretic Pride

I'm tired of looking at Blankets. Are you guys as psyched for Watchmen as I am? I love Watchmen. It's a story about real-life superheroes, which are really just guys who make sort of cool gadgets or are OK at fighting. But after 20 years, they're just old and fat.

Also, there's a naked blue guy who metaphorically represents "the bomb" and exists outside of time and space, and for some reason he's hanging out with the American government. I guess that doesn't make a lot of sense, but he looks neat, and can generate his own clothes. I wish I could generate my own clothes.

The host at a fancy restaurant would be like, "I'm sorry sir, but we require you to wear a jacket, allow me to clothe you in one of our own house jack-" and then he'd freeze, slack-jawed, because I'd suddenly be wearing a perfectly reconstructed Hugo Boss tuxedo, and then I'd say, "Sorry, sir, but I prefer to dress myself." Then everyone in the restaurant begins laughing, except for the host, who is hanging his head in shame as he turns in his name tag.

The Mountain Goats made a new video. They're a lyric-driven band who I like a lot. This song isn't bad, but the lyrics seem a little more generic than a lot of their other stuff. Either way, the video is neat.