Playing catch-up today! Today’s prompt was to write a sijo, yesterday’s was to write a sonnet. I’m not really happy with how the sonnet turned out (sonnets in general are one of my least favorite forms), but the sijo form is new to me and I really enjoyed it!
ICYMI: A shady organization threatening its participants with physical harm if they don’t do as they’re told sounds like a plot from a movie. But it was reality for former beauty pageant contestant Kumai Hitomi, who found herself caught up in the Luffy crime ring.
The two presenters, the rebel queens, are full of enthusiasm for female criminals. They talk about "lawless women" in an almost excited and cheerful way. I have to admit that I enjoy listening to them. Be careful, not all the women discussed in this podcast are heroes or victims who resist. Some women are simply violent.
Kumai Hitmo worked in the Luffy crime ring in the Philippines alongside another Japanese woman. Both wanted to flee - but the group took away both women’s travel documents and showed them videos of alleged runaways having their ears cut off. That was enough to convince both of them to stay put.
Murder and resistance to inequality in the Victorian era: “Lady Killers” https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m0016pq3
This BBC podcast discusses crimes committed by women in the 19th and 20th centuries from a contemporary feminist perspective. These are often biographies of women who resisted and/or committed murder out of necessity. It is worth listening to all thirty episodes.
Kumai Hitomi had a promising future. But she ended up running with the wrong crowd - and had to cheat and steal to save her own life. A look into how Japanese crime rings like Luffy force the young and vulnerable into doing their dirty work.
It was a horrific murder that shook Japan and brought into question how the country treats juvenile defenders. Today, the culprits are free - and some even have social media accounts. Learn more about how the killing of Furuta Junko continues to haunt Japan even now.
Officially, the crime is known in Japanese by the cumbersome name 佐世保小6女児同級生殺害事件 (The Murder in a Sasebo by a 6th Grade Girl of Her Classsmate). However, the Internet will be the Internet. And thanks to the power of memes, the story took on a life of its own.
Criminal couples in literature, TV, cinema and real life are a source of fascination to many. Novelist Joel H. Morris, whose book, "All Our Yesterdays" focuses on Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, has some ideas about why that might be the case. "A single immoral mind we can make sense of," he writes for CrimeReads. "But an immoral romantic couple — Bonnie and Clyde, Aileen Wuornos and Tyria Moore, the 'Lonely Hearts' murderers — unites two corrupt sensibilities working in tandem."
“Looking back on it, it’s hard for most people in general, and certainly most TV network executives, to wrap their head around the fact that there may be reasonable doubt.”
Really enjoyed an episode of the Criminal #podcast about outsider musician Connie Converse, who disappeared in 1974. Her life was complex, beautiful, isolated, and interesting. Check it out if you like #TrueCrime or #OutsiderArt. If you're like me and have proclivities toward both, you may find it extraordinarily moving!
And if you've never listened to her music, now's your chance.
In my new project of watching every episode of the original run of Unsolved Mysteries on the Roku Channel, it only took until the 2nd episode until we got a #DnD and LARPing referencing Satanic Panic segment. It simply wouldn't be 1988 without it.