Someone next to me is humming and it sounds like the lullaby from "Pan's Labyrinth", which is slowly driving me to a delirium. It's like my mind can't move around a block. I've only written one page of this paper, I have 14 more to go, and my time is disappearing rapidly! Too little time for too much work. I probably shouldn't have left all this to the last minute, I probably should be more responsible, and I probably should just disappear into the night without a name to begin again. I'm hungry. I have no money. This frappuccino is not satisfying. I have this nightmarish LSAT. I know all this Russian history as if it had been downloaded into my brain like The Matrix, but writing it down in logical order is excruciating.
Ahhh, this is one of the most emo posts I've had in a while. One would think that one grows out of the emo impulse after a time (or after one gets a boyfriend), but the horrors of school, testing, and my uncertain future laid out bare like bones in the sun have again propelled me into a contemplation of the existential unknown, the fate of the stars, and why I can't have 45,980 dollars in my account with which to buy all the Starbucks I can physically consume. The sky is growing dark outside like my heart, and I swear if it rains on my hair I will melt into a pool of unruly death.
I DON'T CARE ABOUT YELTSIN. There, I said it. I don't. He's dead anyway. Stop bitching western world - you're not going to change Russia. And you too, Russian intellectuals - if you're so damn unhappy, why don't you just undertake another revolution? God knows you had, like, 5 of them in the past century. It's not that hard. A couple tanks, some guns, and a few Molotov cocktails to really do it with style, and you could easily overthrow Parliament. Just wait until Medvedev assumes power - God knows I've seen pictures, the man looks like he just hopped from the pages of a Brooks Brothers catalog, you can take him down - and try some real down 'n dirty democratic reform. I promise the US and Europe would back you guys, they hate the "semiauthoritarianism" which is such a challenge to their precious liberty. Yeah, liberty. I know guy from the United States, you can stop laughing. We DO have it here, at least for some of us (you know, the people who don'thavetheirphonestapped
theircivillibertiestakenaway
theirlibraryrecordssearched
theiremailsgonethrough
ortheirrighttoafairandspeedytrialwithrepresentationtakenaway
merelybeacusesomeoneinthegovernmentjusthiccoughstheword"terrorist")
I'll tell you, Russia ain't gonna change as long as the people have food and the majority of them don't feel the watchful eye of the government, because people don't KNOW anything else. Security before freedom. I can't blame them - the "freedom" of the '90's only brought economic and political misery. So you know what, Professor Kanet? Russia isn't going to become democratic. Not now, not in ten years, probably not in twenty, and for a variety of reasons which I REALLY don't feel like writing about and which you, as a former Sovietologist, already know in painful detail.
So just give me an A and we'll call it even, OK?
Ahhh, this is one of the most emo posts I've had in a while. One would think that one grows out of the emo impulse after a time (or after one gets a boyfriend), but the horrors of school, testing, and my uncertain future laid out bare like bones in the sun have again propelled me into a contemplation of the existential unknown, the fate of the stars, and why I can't have 45,980 dollars in my account with which to buy all the Starbucks I can physically consume. The sky is growing dark outside like my heart, and I swear if it rains on my hair I will melt into a pool of unruly death.
I DON'T CARE ABOUT YELTSIN. There, I said it. I don't. He's dead anyway. Stop bitching western world - you're not going to change Russia. And you too, Russian intellectuals - if you're so damn unhappy, why don't you just undertake another revolution? God knows you had, like, 5 of them in the past century. It's not that hard. A couple tanks, some guns, and a few Molotov cocktails to really do it with style, and you could easily overthrow Parliament. Just wait until Medvedev assumes power - God knows I've seen pictures, the man looks like he just hopped from the pages of a Brooks Brothers catalog, you can take him down - and try some real down 'n dirty democratic reform. I promise the US and Europe would back you guys, they hate the "semiauthoritarianism" which is such a challenge to their precious liberty. Yeah, liberty. I know guy from the United States, you can stop laughing. We DO have it here, at least for some of us (you know, the people who don'thavetheirphonestapped
theircivillibertiestakenaway
theirlibraryrecordssearched
theiremailsgonethrough
ortheirrighttoafairandspeedytrialwithrepresentationtakenaway
merelybeacusesomeoneinthegovernmentjusthiccoughstheword"terrorist")
I'll tell you, Russia ain't gonna change as long as the people have food and the majority of them don't feel the watchful eye of the government, because people don't KNOW anything else. Security before freedom. I can't blame them - the "freedom" of the '90's only brought economic and political misery. So you know what, Professor Kanet? Russia isn't going to become democratic. Not now, not in ten years, probably not in twenty, and for a variety of reasons which I REALLY don't feel like writing about and which you, as a former Sovietologist, already know in painful detail.
So just give me an A and we'll call it even, OK?
