3/26: "I think the gay-lien could go anywhere."

-After much hemming and hawing and curling up in my bed in anxiety, I withdrew from Chaucer, yet another star in the constellation of my history of academic givings-up. I never thought chatting with Laurie Kobik could leave me so elated. After all that was taken care of, I called my mom for a good chat. (As an aside, I was amused and a little saddened that, though she was in the same room as my grandparents, she could still call me "Russ," because they're getting so deaf they wouldn't notice.)

-Michael and I had a brief conversation about Footloose, which I haven't seen since I saw half of it on TNT when I was nine. In retrospect, I think it may be one of the greatest films of our time. If the library has it, I know what I'm doing this weekend. WHO'S WITH ME?

3/25: "To start, you must begin."

-After a few class periods of being listless and quiet in Annabel's class, I not only was the only kid in the class to pick up on Peter Lewis in To The North being gay, but cited a way more obscure and awesome passage proving it than Annabel did. It went something like this.

A: Can someone tell me why Lady Waters isn't concerned that Peter and Emmaline would be involved. (Silence) Russell?

R: He's gay.

A: How do we know?

R: Um, Havelock Ellis!

A: [puzzled muttering]

R: He was an early British sexologist who pioneered the study of homosexuality; it's mentioned that Lady Waters asks him about Havelock Ellis at tea.

A: ...I'm not sure you could draw that conclusion from that evidence.

R: [kind of screechy insistence on the legitimacy of queer coding in literature, plus more textual support from the novel]

A: ...[PWNED]

Some of the kids, and Annabel, were also all "they could have just been talking about it because it was in the news/pop science"; I really wish that I'd remembered to point out that Ellis was working 50 years before the book was published. What good is a vast and absurd knowledge of queer history if you can't whip it out and bother people?

3/9: "As opposed to the REASON!"

More queer music videos by popular request:



Highlights include:

-The Canadian-looking androgyne who splits a log.

-Cindy Wonderful (the butch guest star) sings the couplet: "I can be there to relieve your tension/and I could hook up your stereo system."

Here's a new(ish) Athens Boys Choir video featuring Katz's hilarious 1993 bat mitzvah. It is creepy in the best way possible. Best part: "Now my Bubbie wanted a doctor to marry me/and you got two PhD.s/one in fine and one in sexy!"



EDIT: The best part is the end with the cheesy video cut that says "Elizabeth" and young Katz saying, "Goodbye everyone, I had a great time at my bat mitzvah, and I hope to see you at my wedding."

2/26: "I always thought an overhead projector was this!"

-It's good to be back at school. But need a cure for those back to the Bennington blues?



Obv, Athens Boys Choir is kind of my "hip-hop" hero, though to be honest I think the song gets a little too caught up in the 80's references.

2/11: "Bilsons?"

Two good people sightings:

-The librarian at the special collections desk was completely androgynous.  I was researching for two hours and I still couldn't decide if zie was a balding lady or the femmiest man this side of Capote.

-I saw a tall elderly man on a huge cruiser bicycle with extra-long handlebars.  It made me think about how much I enjoy tall elderly men.

2/10: "Lost in Chocolateland"

-It's my last day working for CALC, and as payment I received a huge box of chocolate covered almonds from the office manager who listens to Jack Johnson on Pandora all day. It was very sweet, and also reminded me of the most recent edition of feminist comedienne Sarah Haskin's "Target Women", a series which addresses the ludicrousness of sexist marketing. Maybe I'm just full of shit, but somehow I'm less excited about a box of chocolate than I used to be when I identified as a lady. But then again, I was, like, 15. Am I a bad person because I secretly wished she'd bought me a pack of cigarettes instead? Perhaps, if by "bad person," I mean, "feckless adult."

-This is from yesterday, but Mark Wunderlich requested my Facebook friendship. Even though this means that I actually have to answer to him about my oft-neglected senior paper, I was pleased to be able to finally to see pictures of his cats.

1/28: "He's a bridge between the worlds!"

-Plans to cover Biggie's "Party and Bullshit."