Goodbye MJ

The passing of Michael Jackson upset me for various reasons. A large factor being that his music was the soundtrack to my childhood, but another is what he represents to me as a queer person. I am hesitant to claim him for our camp, but one honest look at his gender performance and I know there can be no other way.

Throughout his life the rhetoric around his cosmetic surgery remained at a base level, and the jokes, "he was a young black man who grew up to be a white woman," might of told the truth but mocked it.

To me, Michael Jackson was a trans woman who never got the chance to come out. Someone who was not attracted to women, and had to repress his gay impulses. The Catholic Church has shown us that sexual repression is the quickest way to pedophilia.

His music was the anthem of my childhood. In the time of tapes, one summer we played the Beat It album so many times it broke in the car stereo. The car my brother Craig had named The Beat It. It was he who objected whenever we played anything else.
By the time I was an adult MJ represented everything terrible about this country: the pain of racism, capitalism, and transphobia played out on his body. I cried and felt depressed when he passed. My friend said that she couldn't believe he'd died , but she also couldn't believe he was still alive.

Friday night I went out to a club and when the dj put on Wanna Be Startin' Somethin the crowd went wild. I think what I need is a whole night of danching to just MJ to heal my heart and gladden my soul.

No, the other Campagna

But that's not actually the Campagna my family is from. We're from up North, hence my great-grandma having red hair. But instead of a poignant tale of heroics during the Holocaust, my people have a tale of urban sprawl. I do like that we were near the Tiber:

The Roman Campagna (Italian: campagna romana), or just Campagna, is a low-lying area surrounding Rome in the Lazio region of central Italy, with an area of approximately 2,100 km² (800 m²). Geographically, it is bordered by the Sabini mountains to the northeast, the Alban Hills to the southeast, on the southwest by the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Tolfa and Sabatini mountains to the northwest. The River Tiber runs through the area.

During the Ancient Roman period, it was a popular residential area, but it was abandoned during the Middle Ages due to malaria and insufficient water supplies for farming needs. The region was reclaimed in the 19th and 20th centuries for use in mixed farming and new settlements have been built. Starting with the fifties of last century, the expansion of Rome destroyed large parts of the Campagna, especially east and south of the city.

Campagna, Italy

Location of Campagna in Italy
Country	Italy
Region	Campania
Province	Salerno (SA)
Mayor	Biagio Luongo
Elevation	410 m (1,345 ft)
Area	135 km² (52.1 sq mi)
Population
- Total	15,518
- Density	115/km² (298/sq mi)
Time zone	CET, UTC+1
Coordinates	40°40′0″N 15°6′0″E / 40.66667°N 15.1°E / 40.66667; 15.1
Gentilic	Campagnesi
Dialing code	0828
Postal code	84022
Frazioni	Camaldoli, Galdo, Mattinelle, Puglietta, Quadrivio, Romandola-Madonna del Ponte, Santa Maria La Nova, Serradarce.
Patron	Sant'Antonino abate
- Day	14 February
Website: http://www.comune.campagna.sa.it/

Campagna is a small town and comune of the province of Salerno, in the Campania region of Southern Italy.

The town, located in a mountainous district, gradually lost importance in the 20th century. All its district offices have been moved to other cities since the 1930s, and the Diocese of Campagna merged with the Archdiocese of Salerno in 1973.

During World War II, Campagna was the site of an internment camp. The Bishop Giuseppe Maria Palatucci turned the camp into a shelter for Italian and foreign Jews, many of them sent there for protection by his nephew Giovanni Palatucci; Giovanni was later honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial.

Panorama of Campagna

Challenge!

Due to budget constraints I am going to challenge myself to not eat in restaurants for an entire month starting today. I'll let you know how I do.

dear lil wayne

based on what i have read about you, interviews, articles and such, i think you have an addiction problem. you drink cough syrup mixed with soda all the time, and only eat candy. i think you, like me, might be a sugar addict. i would like to recommend the book sugar blues, i think a smart guy like yourself could get into it.

i know you are a genius because how else could you function, let alone produce good music, with the amount of toxins you put in your system. but now is not the time to let ego get in the way. think of the kind of music you could create if your body was being nourished instead of abused.

dear tina fey

i love you. thank you for being brilliant. mean girls is one of my all time favorite movies. based on a book of feminist theory and starring lindsay lohan and rachel mcadams. what more could a gay women's studies major want? you were the first lady head writer at SNL and made me believe that lauren michaels wasn't an aging, tasteless loser.

then came 30 rock. i resisted for so long, but only cause i was scared. scared of being disapointed once again. i was so missing out. it lifts me up when i am down, teaches me new things, and takes me places i never thought i would go with television. you are my shero.

Boom Boom POW

More good times.

I fell down the stairs at my mom's house last week. I cried a lot and told my cousin, who fell down the same stairs just a couple weeks before, I was moving out. It hurt a lot. This is a picture of my bruise(d ass).