'I don't kill people... I thought you might like to know since you asked me some time ago. My father hasn't killed anyone for quite a while. I would like to kill someone sometime because I think it is an experience that is necessary to life.'

There's just something worth getting to know about someone who could write a paragraph like that, isn't there? The speaker is a young female character in the fantasy kingdom of Borovnia (or possibly Volumnia; it's not clear from the context in which the passage is quoted) created by best friends Pauline Rieper and Juliet Hulme, about whom nearly everything you could need to know can be found through the website linked above. Pauline and Juliet got that 'experience that is necessary to life' on June 22, 1954 when, in a desperate and hysterical state at the thought of being separated, they collaborated in the violent murder of Pauline's mother Honora. Case that shocked a nation, a society's loss of innocence, etcetera. This was the subject matter for Peter Jackson's absolutely excellent 1994 film Heavenly Creatures. Marking a complete departure from his previous oeuvre of horror/comedy (he called the genre 'splatstick'), HC was the film that convinced the relevant people in the industry that Jackson was capable of doing justice to The Lord of the Rings in movie form, and made them want to work with him. As a living recreation of both the real world of early 50s Christchurch, New Zealand and the feverish dreamworld shared by the girls, it is bang on; as a 'based on a true story' piece, what Jackson called 'a murder story about love,' it is emotionally ravaging and utterly engaging yet never once feels ghoulish or exploitative.

One of Pauline and Juliet's key beliefs, and one which led them into a lot of trouble, was that 'We have an extra part of our brain which can appreciate the 4th World [where Borovnia and Volumnia were imagined to be].' Who else here has felt a bit that way, as if they had an 'extra part' that made them able to experience things that the mundane world didn't understand or value, and/but that simultaneously unfitted them for much of mundane life? Pauline and Juliet thought that 'Only about 10 people have it' (intriguingly, they never seem to name or speculate as to the other eight) but I would attribute this underestimation to the lack of kindred spirits in their immediate surroundings. The Fourth World is the Rainbow Connection, the Emerald City, the Labyrinth, Angria, Gondal, Middle-Earth, Narnia, Neverland... heavens to Betsy, if you go on a Labyrinth web binge and an HC one the next day, you wonder if there's a little press somewhere in the collective unconscious stamping out Jareths and Diellos and the like. Who's your baddy?

One of my primary responses to Heavenly Creatures has always been 'there but for the grace of God go I.' There's a particular bittersweet potency to the thought of how easily I can imagine Pauline and Juliet as modern schoolgirls, still their essential selves but less confined, less misunderstood, less likely to go stark raving mad, grab a brick and start thumping. On the Fourth World Wide Web, you might find their Mario Lanza shrine or their 'Saints' RPG. They're people I would have liked to be friends with. They're people I nearly was, and a little part of me still is.

Testing, testing: my Nekomusume.net people will know what this is about. Everyone else, click if you're interested, but you don't need to bother your pretty heads.

Take my Quiz on QuizYourFriends.com!

Just got back from the daddy-daughter viewing of T3: the Rise of the Machines. Thoughts:
- Somewhere in the Fictional Character Afterlife, Sarah Connor is overturning furniture and bellowing 'The FUCK!?' (Joyce and Tara from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are trying to get her calmed down.)
- Soooooooooo many things about T-X were completely unnecessary and unjustifiable except by 'to appeal to the teenage male demographic.' Tell me, why did she steal/copy the Bev Hills lady's necklace as well as her jacket and pants? Cyborgs like to accessorise when covering their conspicuous nakedness, do they? What was up with the Shakira hair? Why did she even bother to vamp the traffic cop with her inflate-o-boobs? I suppose you could equally ask, what is T-101's obsession with sunglasses. In the original movie, didn't he start wearing a pair to disguise the damage to his left (from memory) eye, which left the red glowy bit inside exposed? That's practical. That's a robot-type decision. Now, he just seems to like them. And please, let's remember this is not the same character. Each T-101 we have seen has been a different individual, starting from scratch in terms of cultural experience. He can't be 'developing' traits like sunglasses-fancying. Unless you buy the idea that machines can have souls (opinion, Mr Data?) in which case it would be really nifty if there was this one T-101 spirit getting reincarnated back into this situation, ever driven to put right what once went wrong... and wear bitchin' shades.
- Was amused to note while watching the end credits (sometimes if you stay for the end credits you get to be amused) that Mr Schwarzenegger's stunt double also played the stripper from whom T-101 steals the traditional, nay compulsory black leather biker outfit. Well, yeah, they could fit each other's clothes! But how many contrived scenarios are they gonna come up with to keep getting a T-101 into the same outfit? The element of self-parody in the clothes-acquisition sequence... well, I've always liked Arnold Schwarzenegger's willingness to send himself up, but it did nothing for the character's credibility at that point in the movie. 'Ha ha, he's wearing GAY SUNGLASSES.' Which he destroys! Because he feels a manly contempt for homosexual fashion culture? Because they're just not him? Because they don't screen UV?
- It unnerves me that the heroine of the first two movies was a Sarah... I am a Sarah... and the heroine of this one was a Kate... my sister is a Kate.
- 'You remind me of my mother' is not something I wanna hear out of a guy I've been told I'm destined to marry. That's almost Anakin-and-Padmé level creepy.
- Equally, 'We'll meet again'!? Yes, when the younger, future me assassinates you! Is saying really morbid crap like that at the most demoralising possible time now part of his programming?
- How misogynistic and illogical was T-X's death scene? First, we see her completely break with the emotionless machine mode, her face contorting with demoniac fury as she struggles to follow Kate and John. Then, T-101 shoves an explosive device, which is part of his body, into her MOUTH and we see her eyes dilate and bulge in horror in the seconds before she dies. I would have felt happier if it were somehow possible for Kate to slay her. It would have been truer to the memory of Sarah. In the foregoing Terminator movies, Sarah was the warrior. John was the numinous object to be protected. Really, he was the princess. If Kate can fire a machine gun and fly a plane, I reckon she can kill a Terminator. Sarah managed to knock off one while she was still just a waitress with no weapons training.
- As I understand it, the T-101 in T2: Judgment Day was pinched from the factory, before activation, and reprogrammed by the John Connor cadre, then switched on. We're told that the T-101 we see in T3 has assassinated John Connor and then been reprogrammed by his widow. Tell me, how'd she manage that? How do you subdue a Terminator? Once they've iced their primary target, do they just sit down and light a cigarette and go all passive? 'You want to reprogram me? Okay. I have no plans for later.'
- The damaged T-101's bloodshot left eye was a very nice visual riff on the red LED everyone was waiting to see.
- It just isn't logical that when John meets this T-101 he expects him to remember 'Hasta la vista, baby' etcetera. He was told then that that T-101 looked identical to the one his mother had earlier encountered but was a different individual. He saw 'his' T-101 melted down, incontrovertibly. The reality of the Terminator robots has dominated his life since the age of 13; he has done lots of thinking about it. He just wouldn't have thought that it could be the same guy. Give the kid some credit.
- Until she shoots the cat owner in the vet clinic, T-X's method has been to confirm ID verbally, then terminate. Suddenly she shoots first and asks questions later, purely so that Kate can have a warning that a dangerous person has turned up. This is very bad writing.
- If there's a T4, what are they going to think of to call the next baddie robot? T-Q? T-Omega? T-(Prince symbol)?
- I do find it preposterously endearing how, even when they haven't got their human skins on, T-101 robots all have a full set of white, human-looking teeth, with the Schwarzenegger gap.
- Think they'll ever address where Skynet actually came from, since they're now having it be virus software? Did this AI spontaneously evolve? What the hell from? (glares round the computer room) I know none of you guys are smart enough for something like that.
- Whenever T-X was doing something that just plain didn't make sense, I imagined T-1000 standing watching, hands on LAPD-blue hips, shaking his head sadly and then raising one finger in that magnificent 'tick-tick-tick' wag of admonishment. C'mon, I loved T-1000. He was a good model. No flash but lots of grunt. He gave the older T-101 a run for his money in a way that T-X just didn't seem to do. She wasn't a plausible threat because they made her too pretty and petite (I've had a similar problem with Buffy the Vampire Slayer getting thinner and thinner). Now, if T-X had looked like Vasquez from Aliens... that I could've gotten on board with. But I suppose that would have been too James Cameron.

Still, hey, it was my dad's treat and I got a frozen Coke, so I call it an evening well spent.

Tomorrow I shall be anxiously expecting a call from the library people to tell me whether I've got their job. But I must also sally forth and buy new bras. The ones I got when I first arrived back in the country... well, I can only suppose that my judgement was affected by jet-lag, because they are just not containing my bosom in the manner to which I have become accustomed. Indeed a distinct 'East/West' tendency has been observed. The cups are not close enough together in the middle. An odd design flaw but there it is.

Today I did the supermarket shop for the family and watched City by the Sea with my mum and sister. The DVD was rented at the same time as the colossally piss-me-offy Sweet Home Alabama (I am still thinking of things that were stupid about that dynamite cat story, as Nekomusume.net forummers know) but fortunately turned out to be far, far better. Tears welled up. The blighted New Jersey-scapes were rather more shocking to my mother and sister than to me, the hardened Sopranos fan, but the whole thing was deeply affecting and very well done. At the end we all wiped our noses and said 'I can't think why that didn't get any of the big awards.'

Hmm, what else. I have been listening to Garbage. I haven't thought much of their recent output ('Cherry Lips'=blah) but 2.0 is still one of my favourite albums, though I always worry about what it says about me when I identify with a Garbage song. Like identifying with Lucy Snowe in Villette by Charlotte Brontë. I prefer to think it shows I have a wide-ranging sense of empathy. And at least I don't go about telling people I am a bonfire and a vampire, or that I'm only happy when it rains.

I don't need an education,
I learnt all I need from you.
They've got me on some medication,
My point of balance was askew.
It keeps my temperature from rising,
My blood is pumping trough my veins.

My horoscope for this week says,
An interesting week lies ahead, for a number of reasons. Your chance to talk about yourself, share information, make presentations, or take up a subject you want to know more about is here - in a big way. Venus, the Sun, and Jupiter in Leo mean that you are at the center of a potential information explosion. If you are involved in the media in any way, then your opportunities will be maximized. The same goes if you want to get involved in this field in the first place. Make the most of this, as it won't last for too much longer. There is also a Full Moon in the sign of Aquarius, and this occurs in the section of your chart associated with legal matters, travel, higher education, and the urge to expand your horizons in all ways. If you do have a legal matter pending, there is a strong likelihood that it will draw to a conclusion this week, and it also will work out in your favor. Partnerships of all kinds could also take a more intense and committed route, whether they are business, romantic, or otherwise. Venus trines Pluto, and this means that relationship matters and the development of cooperation and harmony will be vital. Mercury squares Pluto - so watch your words - be nice, and all will be well.

Does that sound new-jobby? Or just sort of bewildering? At times when I'm told to 'watch my words' it tends to be better to keep silent. When a situation is emotionally charged I never do have the right thing to say. People are always taking what I say when I'm upset as the truth or what I really mean, which for me is not the case at all. They think if you once said you feel a certain way that must be true from then on, but for me it's more fluid than that - I operate on a kind of sliding scale. A lot of the time I am not sure any of my opinions or feelings are real because of this effect. I can be adamant about a few things that strike me as self-evident. Gerbilling is disgusting. Justin Timberlake is overrated. But my overall temperament is mercurial, not adamantine.

Despite the Garbage identification, I'm really feeling quite clear-headed and not too depressed at the moment. And, of course, I have had a good education and came off my medication a while ago. I'm going to have to try to go to the gym again this week, exhausting and dispiriting as that will be. Another thing I need to do is ask the optometrists about something their new lass said when I was in not long ago to prove the driving test place's machine wrong - I can see well enough to operate a vehicle. Apparently my eyes may be bad enough for me to get my contact lenses subsidised by the state. I have needed a new pair for about a year so if this is the case I say YEAH BUDDY.

And I might make a lemon curd cake...

This has been a rather busy week; job interview Wednesday, job interview Thursday, school visit Friday. Well, that counts as busy for me, I don't have a very full life. Wednesday was for an Image Handler gig at the New Zealand Herald; I didn't get that but they said they'd keep my name on file for if they wanted to take on someone to train. Thursday was to be a four-day-a-week Library Assistant in the Learning and Recreation department at the central city library. I think I have a chance, but then, I don't have much history of getting jobs in New Zealand so it's hard to tell. And Friday was a day spent at James Cook High School, where my honorary maiden aunt Jannie is Associate Principal. To provide some context for my friends who don't live in New Zealand, JCHS is what we call a Decile One school. The ten-point decile scale reflects the socio-economic tone of the students' families. The school I went to, Howick College, was Decile Ten, affluent and white-bread/white-rice (by which I mean the roll was mostly Anglo-Saxon and East Asian). JCHS has a lot of Maori and Polynesian students and serves a community of working-class and poor families. Now, I think in a lot of ways it's a good school. The staff care about the students and work hard, they have a sensible system of discipline and reward, etcetera. But it was the opposite end of the spectrum from the school in which I was educated, so I felt a bit wide-eyed. I felt a bit like giggling at the way the students call their female teachers Miss (whether or not they're married), which to me sounds old-world and polite, but their male teachers a decidedly cheeky Mista. (For the record, at my school it was Mrs/Miss/Ms This and Mr That. You always called people by their names rather than by a title.) I felt a bit like sighing at the answers to some questions I heard in classrooms, because they showed to what an extent these children have missed out on the kind of cultural context learning that you have if you read and converse widely and so do your family, which isn't taught in schools because it can't really be. In a discussion of the encounter/therapy-group scenes in the film Fight Club, a senior English class (who, and when, decided that the study of movies was part of 'English'? I would like to know so that I can punch them) was at a loss to define the term 'New Age.' Their suggestions ('er... young people?' 'modern technology?') showed that they were trying to figure out what it meant just by looking at the name, and good for them for trying, but I honestly hadn't realised it was possible to grow to the age of seventeen or eighteen with your eyes and ears open and not have picked up at least an impression that 'New Age' is crystals and dolphins and hobby-Buddhism. In fact, they were very confused by the idea that 'New Age' includes things of ancient provenance, like Tarot cards and Eastern mysticism. It was strange seeing intelligent young people trying to get their heads around a relatively mainstream cultural concept as if it was perfectly foreign and new.

It always worries and bothers me when grumpy letter-to-editor writers blame the troubling multitude of very ignorant young people purely on teacher incompetence. I think that example shows very clearly how they have gotten the wrong end of the stick. By no stretch of the imagination could you name a subject teacher whose responsibility it was to have given them a grounding in the meaning of 'New Age.' But their lack of familiarity with the concept made it difficult for them to analyse the material under discussion in class, and thus to reap the benefits of the lesson. Fortunately they had a very nice teacher who got them caught up as well as he could, but I'm just saying, teachers alone cannot make kids 'educated.'

Next week I will probably likewise spend a day at Howick College, my alma mater at which, coincidentally, my sister's godmother is an English teacher (having trade contacts makes it so much easier to arrange these visits). That way I'll have some perspective on both ends of the decile spectrum and hopefully the admissions people at Auckland College of Education will be favourably impressed. I would just like to say that I think the JCHS annual production, for which I saw a rehearsal, is going to be better than Howick's staging of Fame. Sorry, but I do.

Tonight the family are going out for dinner and then to see A Mighty Wind at the Rialto, so hurrah! I shall enjoy that. I mean, it'd be nicer to go out for dinner and then see the movie with, say, a boyfriend, but it's food and entertainment I don't have to pay for.

Today I noticed Lizzard's blog saying that I was working hard on the Boston transcript and thought 'Oo-er, I've been on a bit of a break from that.' However, now it is finished; oddly, once I began again it seemed to go faster than the first chunk had. Maybe I was getting used to the voices. Maybe I was just having a Bad Brain Day the first time I tried to do it.

In real world news, I have a job interview lined up on Wednesday to go and be an Image Handler (essentially the same job I had at the Cambridge Evening News of blessed memory) for the New Zealand Herald. The important difference is that I'd be dealing with their editorial pictures rather than merely property, which will make the content of the job a good deal more varied and interesting (I hope). Anyway, we'll see how that goes. It would be nice to be employed again.

Erm, don't know what else. Have resumed going to the gym a few days a week. Very tough going. With the amount of physical condition I have apparently lost, I'm amazed I can still walk and breathe unassisted.

You so want Jet. The older man, how... sophisticated? No. How about:
sleazy?

Which 'Cowboy Bebop' character would you sleep with [provided they were real]?
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Somehow I want to get Bruce Willis' line from The Fifth Element about a 'meat popsicle' in here. Actually, one of the recurring conversations my friend Kevin and I tend to have starts 'Okay, live-action Bebop casting, obviously Luke Perry as Spike and Bruce Willis as Jet, and Daveigh Chase can handle Ed, but who the hell are we going to get for Faye?' Currently we are investigating the possibility of realistic prosthetic boobs for Sarah Michelle Gellar. Apart from anything else it would just be too funny to have the leading man from the Buffy movie and the leading lady of the Buffy TV series in one production.

I object to my infatuation with Jet being characterised as sleazy. So what if he's older than me? Colonel Brandon was older than Marianne! By several more years than Jet has over me! I feel sure we would receive the Jane Austen Seal of Approval, and maybe a Brontë accreditation!

The point is, he's a smart, kind man, who knows how to be both strong and gentle, and who has learned the hard way the difference between being protective and supportive and being smothering. So what if he has a Tonka arm and Homer Simpson syndrome of the scalp at the relatively tender age of 37. He's also got lovely blue eyes and very very good burly legs. Hell yeah, I'd sleep with him if he were real!

However I suspect that the quest for the RL Jet Black would be about as successful as the quest for the RL Dryden Fassa. I actually found him, and he lives in San Diego in contented matrimony. Grr, arg.

Toys in the Attic You're Toys in the Attic. You're a bit weird, and
while people claim that you have a deep
meaning, you're just really weird and
entertaining. http://www.projectbag.com/cowboy_bebop/ep_guides/ep_3rd_session.html

Which Cowboy Bebop Episode Are You? (spoilers)
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Why am I not surprised?

Technically this means I also get Nudie Jet.

I went to the gym. It was bad. I haven't been able to go for a year. I came over faint in the cardio room a quarter of the way through what used to be my easy workout. What I hate most about going to the gym is the utterly futile, Sisyphean feeling of it all. That and the shit music.

I'm feeling down on a lot of things today, of course; illiterate depressive fourteen-year-olds with GeoCities homepages (I think that unless a person can demonstrate and maintain a certain level of spelling, grammar and coherence, their access to the Internet should be read-only), cats who think you ought to serve them lunch, the dull colour my hair is turning, opening an umbrella and having a brown praying mantis fall out on your hand, the list goes on.