fourth world

Fourth World - The Heavenly Creatures Website

I spent time on and off today reading this extensive website, which is full of information not only about the film but very specifically about the real-life events that inspired it. I've mentioned before that I always liked Anne Perry's Victorian novels and I was really surprised to learn that she'd been Juliet Hulme (Kate Winslet's character), something she isn't too interested in discussing these days. Today I had occasion to look up something specific - the rumor that the murder of Honora Parker was used in detail in one of Perry's novels. I have most of her books up into the early 1990s, & I have promised to send them to kevininatutu before I move (because they've spent the better part of ten years sitting around not being reread), and remembering that I needed to get them together to send. Thing is, unless it was in a very recent book, I couldn't recall any specific murder in any of the novels that bore much similarity to the actual one, and I think that "details were used" bit is just a bit of idle gossip, probably springing from, "Hey, she writes mystery novels, wouldn't it be freaky if...?" So I looked it up online and my research tended to confirm this idea.

This is a really thorough and well-researched website, devoted much more to the historical and true-crime aspects than simply to movie fandom. I have to say, I've only seen the movie once and have no particular desire to see it again, because as the girls' craziness escalates, they give me the creeps. The website itself - I just had to close it after reading the majority of it, because it was beginning to make me queasy. The crime scene photos didn't do it, reading Pauline's diary didn't do it, reading the actual details of the murder (which was much more violent and extreme than depicted in the film) - not one of these things on their own would have made me close the page window. But all of them together, taken as a whole picture... deeply icky. (Possibly the most interesting and original section of the site is the "Norasearch," but it appears that all threads were dropped just as the story began to develop.)

Strangely, I had dreams of a teen murderess last night - but in the dream, she hadn't actually killed anyone, all her projected victims had escaped. But she was STILL tried for murder and sentenced to hang! This took place in 1921 or 1922 and her name was Olive Martin. I suppose poor Olive, product of my imaginative subconscious, must also have been a factor in me thinking of Parker and Hulme today.

now that's entertainment!

I think I mentioned earlier this week that I sent your replies to the "Will someone please give my mom a realistic sample of urban rents around the country?" to the woman herself, who was snotty at first but eventually listened. She'd written out an ultra-snide reply, which I told her I didn't want to see, and then we had a few go-rounds and straightened out some of her misconceptions and things were actually fine. So imagine my surprise when the aforementioned snotty email arrived in my mailbox today! I fired off three cranky replies, then went outside to complain at her for sending it to me at all and warn her of pissy return email. She went, "I didn't send you that email! We talked about it, it's OK now!" and I was like, "Yeah, we talked about it, which is why I was really pissed off when I read it - I thought this stuff was all settled." So it turns out that she sent it by accident. & it turns out that I'm relieved, because we had that fight earlier this week and I was not interested in having it again.

Last night was interesting; I was up too late. At one point I saw a fruit fly buzzing around my monitor and tried, unsuccessfully, to trap or kill it. A few minutes later it flew RIGHT INTO MY EYE. My lid slammed shut reflexively and I assumed that the fly got away, but my eye was itching and watering for a good hour afterwards, and nothing seemed to help. (I made a joke to a friend that I was having "an Aeon Flux moment" - remember when she trapped the fly between her eyelashes in the opening montage?) I went to the bathroom, I rinsed my eye as thoroughly as possible by pulling back the lid and holding a cupped hand full of water to it while I blinked, I put in drops, I pulled back the lids and looked for foreign objects, etc. Finally, I was in bed reading and getting ready to go to sleep, when the itching and the sensation of having something in my eye was too much for me and I started rubbing it again... this time, with results. The tiny crumpled body of a fruit fly. Disc-shaped, by this point, and maybe 3mm across.

Augh! Dead bug in my eye! Dead bug in my eye!

I went back into the bathroom, rinsed with water - still itchy. Used my mother's saline drops - still itchy. Finally went to my purse and rooted out my own bottle of Visine Advanced Relief - and ahhh, it was, sweet soothing relief, finally allowing me to get some rest.

and what am I doing today? Uh, well, working on a knitted mouse for that charity mouse-a-thon I mentioned. I'm about 1/2 done with the first one, made in charcoal heather yarn. Photos forthcoming maybe.

(Suppose I'd better do some packing, too.)

(no subject)

So the catnip mousie I made for charity was promptly claimed by N-cat, and so I will go make some more in the next few days, as many as I can squeeze in with packing, so that some of them can also be sold to help needy kitties, rather than just made to help spoiled kitties around this house. ;)

(I don't actually have that much left to pack, even - it's mostly clothes and books.)

PS - tonight's topic: I saw Jessica Simpson on some late-night talkshow a few days ago, and I thought her talent was spectacularly minor. Is she or is she not the new Anna Nicole Smith?

PS2 - AUGH I do not have HBO anymore/rightnow so I cannot watch Carnivale! Augh! *whiny pout*