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).

Fave New Word

is Charismatic megafauna! Say it with me three times real fast. I heard it when I was drunk at a party, so it didn't stay with me at first. But now, thanks to Aleah and Wikipedia I'll never forget.

Charismatic megafauna are large animal species with widespread popular appeal that environmental activists use to achieve conservation goals well beyond just those species. Examples include the Giant Panda, the Bengal Tiger, and the Blue Whale.^{[citation needed]}

babies

my two favorite things!

the office

i send a lot of kids to the office. never thought i would, and last year i certainly didn't, but it helps create and maintain order. here is an example of what gets kids sent to the office in my class:

7 grade--tallkid* touches smallkids* butt
me: that is inappropriate, don't touch his butt
tallkid: but i'm gay
me: it doesn't matter if you're gay, you don't get to touch people in class
tall kid(pulling boy onto him): but he's my boyfriend
me: i think you're making a joke out of being gay and that's homophobic
whole class yells: we're not homophobic, its ok to be gay, ha ha ha!, ect.

shortkid laughs, tallkid is cradling him. i make them separate. tallkid tries to touch shortkids butt again in a more graphic manner. i bounce tallkid to office, shortkid writes I LOVE GAY PEOPLE on a drawing of a banana, then goes over and stuffs his hand in and out of a yoda doll that was part of a sculpture. i take shortkid to the office, banana picture in hand and present it to the VP.

moral: assualt on star wars figures will not be tolerated.

*if i thought there was any chance in hell these kids were actually gay i would have had a talk with them privately. but they seemed like big jocks, later i found out tallkid has some issues and touching is one of them.

the future

its weird how you can look at kids and see their whole lives before them. kids that can't handle getting tagged out in sharks and minnows or capture the flag are going to have long miserable lives. likewise, the kids that are extremely talented at sports and good looking, well i just want to walk over and say "you lucky little weasel." then there are the gay kids.

its hard for the boys. gender and sexuality being too different things i should probably say that i'm talking about the effeminate boys. one kid like that came into class really angry today and i wanted to take him aside and tell him it was going to be ok. but i don't really know what his problem is and i can't have those convos as a sub. however, by the end of class he apologized for his behavior. he is very emo, it was super sweet. breaks my heart.

Eminem Gets Tea Bagged

MTV Shows

I love you Sasha Baron Cohen!

Kids Say

2nd Grade
both kids have some cognitive delays, but kid2 was described to me as a grumpy old man trapped in an eight year olds body (a la benjamin button).

Kid1 He can't eat milk cause hes lactose intolerant
Kid2 (angrily) It's true
Kid 1 What happens when you drink milk?
Kid 2 I don't want to talk about it--it's a toilet problem!

Kindergarten
Child Your hair looks crazy
Me It's supposed to look that way, I did it on purpose

2nd Grade Art Class
Assignment is to create a fable. Lots of kids drew zombies, others drew comics:
Mr Hotdog took his son to the cemetery to visit grandpa hot dogs grave.
Moral: Just because your grandpa dies doesn't mean your homeless

There was once a dog named Dan and a wolf squirrel named Sissy...
Moral: Don't judge a book by it's cover

First Grade Science

I have to approve/assist the children with their worksheets. Here is what one girl observed today during science (I have greatly improved the spelling):

I observered my caterpillar is dead. I wonder how he got dead.

I Want to Party

with Isabella Rossellini. She is clearly the coolest and craziest lady ever.

7 Grade Continues to Hurt

Seventh grade was my least favorite year of life, and not surprisingly is my least favorite grade to teach. The gender performances, whereby the girls act like whiffle ball is beyond their capabilities, are painful, overdramatized, and unconvincing.

Students were much better in my eighth grade class except one girl burst into tears during a basketball game and wouldn't tell me what happened. She also didn't stop crying for forty minutes. Finally another student got out of her that she feels isolated, lonely, and depressed. She was upset that no one was passing her the ball.

Sad times.

Kindergarten is the opposite. The kids are fearful and skeptical of me at the beginning of the day, but then become adoring. After I agreed to hold hands while escorting a girl to gym she turned around and whispered "I love you." It was hilarious. Later she wanted to kiss my arm and we had to establish the rule of no kissing in school. An important boundary.

The Sun Is Shining

This blog is starting to read like my journal: a lot of negative complaining. So here are 10 good things about my life right now:

1. I am in love with my new cat Special Agent Gibbs, he is an amazing creature.
2. In two weeks I go to Provincetown to do a workshop on writing from the adolescent POV
3. I have been making a lot of mix cds, which is really fun
4. My family is gone and I have my room back
5. My father called to take me to breakfast yesterday
6. I play Lady Gaga while the kids play tag or soccer
7. I've been going on 10 mile bike rides
   
8. I got two pair of cute sunglasses
9. I've been subbing which means I'll have more $$ than if I hadn't been subbing
10. I danced my bum off last night wth my bff at the Diesel Prom