Cassie's Poetry and Paintings

Cassie's Poetry and Paintings
Cassie's Poetry and Paintings main page.
Name	Cassie's Poetry and Paintings
Type	Website
Owner(s)	Cassandra Newton
User(s)	Willow Rosenberg Buffy Summers
Appearances
Appeared in	"Help"

“Poems. Always a sign of pretentious inner turmoil.”

―Alexander Harris

Cassie's Poetry and Paintings was Cassandra Newton's personal website, under the address www.cassienewton.com.

History

Cassie maintained an online diary in which she uploaded her drawings, paintings, and poetry. Looking her up on Google, Willow Rosenberg found the website. As they read the poems thematic on death, the Scooby Gang wrongly believe that Cassie considered suicide, when in truth her precognition abilities let her know she would soon die.

Poems

A list of poems were available at the website, such as "Pretty Monday", "People fall in love", "Sitting in te diner on 3rd", "Waiting for my Prom Date", "My Pulse", "I am a Pale Fish", "I am the Statue of Liberty", and "They're right". The Scooby Gang read the following:

I am a Pale Fish

"I am a Pale Fish" webpage.

The sheets above me

cool my skin

like dirt

on a mad woman's grave

I rise into

the moonlight white

and watch

the mirror stare

Pale fish looks

back at me

Pale fish that will

never swim

My skin is milk

for no man to drink

My thighs unused

unclenched

This body is

not ready yet

But dirt waits for no

woman

and coins will

buy no time

I hear the chatter

of the bugs. It's they alone

will feast.

Poem #5

"Poem #5" webpage.

I sit alone at my

window sill

Trees crackle,

sunshine blares and

children laugh like death

their sharp happiness is a

knife to me—

One jealous snake on a

window sill—

They will be here, trees and sun

and children with canes

and pruney skin

when I am but a memory

a laugh in the trees

of time. I sit alone

and try to love them

I sit alone, a snake

I sit alone and try to

love them

I sit alone

and laugh.

Behind the scenes

• Following a suggestion from Joss Whedon, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer production team decided to create this website for real, complete with poetry. It was actually composed and created by Rebecca Rand Kirshner, the episode writer. The site was created and hosted at Geocities, and the writers even registered a domain name for it in the name of Cassie Newton.

• The whois entry for the domain name:

Creation Date........ 2002-09-14
Registration Date.... 2002-09-14
Expiry Date.......... 2003-09-14
Organisation Name.... Cassie Newton
Organisation Address. 13 Shadow Lane
Organisation Address. 
Organisation Address. Sunnydale 
Organisation Address. 94086
Organisation Address. CA
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES

Admin Name........... Cassie Newton
Admin Address........ 13 Shadow Lane
Admin Address........ 
Admin Address........ Sunnydale
Admin Address........ 94086
Admin Address........ CA
Admin Address........ UNITED STATES
Admin Email.......... newcassie@yahoo.com
Admin Phone.......... 666-442-8363

• Thus Cassie lived at 13 Shadow Lane, Sunnydale. 94086 is actually the zip code for Sunnyvale, CA. The town is much further north than the supposed location of Sunnydale, but the similar names make it a logical joke. The use of 666 — biblically known as the number of the beast — in the phone number is typical of Whedon's sense of humor.

• The site became extremely popular, exceeded its download limits, and the site guestbook filled up some thirty times over.

• When the domain name registry lapsed, the Geocities site was deleted; the Internet Archive has a cached copy. The domain name is now registered to a company in Hong Kong.