Well, I am pretty much better today. I'm suffering from lack of sleep but that can be blamed on our fourth furried roommate. But other than that and the cold meds I took to make sure I don't fall any more sicker that are made me drowsy, I'm okay.
There has no been a mouse sitting since last night and that's a good thing. Knowing it's probably somewhere still in our apartment because there's no where to go is not a good thing. And despite what Masha says, a mouse in general is NOT a good thing.
I just got back from K-Mart. I feel disappointed that the erasers that I wanted to buy weren't there... I've noticed lately that my click erasers were all going down to the last bit of erasers so I wanted to buy some more to replace them but they didn't have them! How annoying! If I had known they didn't have them, I would have just gone to Staples where its supply was guaranteed. But I had to want to buy some snacks (stocking up in the times where I go without food for long periods of time) and some sponges since the last couple seemed to have disappeared. I suspect Steph threw them away but I can't be totally certain.
But that wasn't the other thing about K-Mart that ticked me off. It was their service! Their cashier was abrupt to me and made me take my stuff out of my own basket (at home they would have done so for us) and even take the basket to the front of the store to put them away. I went out of my way like 3 yards just to do that since it wasn't totally on the way out. Grrr! New York retail clerks are so lazy.
Anyway, aside from that, I had come from my World Cult. class and Cohen brought his 13 year old daughter to work with him (probably because they have break and they couldn't leave her alone or something like that). He even told a story about her first walk at Gorky (sp?) Park in 1991 in May for some important date thingie dealing with soldiers. And red flags. Red flags were mentioned.
Anyway, how embarrassing for her! We've been hearing stories about her and her basketball games since the beginning so we all craned our necks to look at her when she was pointed out. If I was his daughter, I would have so totally killed him when the lecture was over.
What I wanted to say in this post is that before this lecture, I had thought Cohen to be terribly Russia-biased.
Now, I still think Cohen is Russia-biased but for valid reasons. I guess I hadn't realized my arrogant self-centric American upbringing was rearing its ugly head until now since I had always thought of myself as a bit outside of all that since I was raised in a Chinese family in America.
But the key phrase in that is "in America." I was born and raised in America so I guess I can never totally separate myself from the American conceits. And I admit, I can be very patriotic about America when the time calls for it.
Today's lecture was on World War II but not on the war itself but rather on its impact on the Russian people and political system. Okay, I can see how the Soviets thought they won WWII because they basically did in Europe. I reserve the right to say the Americans won over Japan though because we definitely did that even if we weren't the total bringers of peace and goodness in Europe.
Also, I can see how Stalin could be revered today more so than Lenin. In a way. I kinda liked Lenin more because Stalin was kinda stupid during the beginning of WWII. Actually, very stupid but that's besides the point. And I can see how something as devastating as 27 million dead can bring a country together. I can see that.
I think the reason why Cohen comes off as being Russia-biased is because of the fact that he isn't like the normal American who doesn't know anything about Russia except what other people have told him. He's met all these great, important people in Russia politics and history and he understands the circumstances that were in Soviet Russia. Well, at least more than the all encompassing view that Soviet Russia was the greatest evil of the 20th Century. So he understands that not everything is as black and white as we like to believe things.
But despite that, I still think he is a little Russia-biased. And Gorbachev-biased as well. The way he talks about that man, you'd think he was the greatest thing to happen to Russia EVER and single-handedly rescued Russia from the clutches of the bad Soviet System.
And of course, he doesn't understand Putin at all since he loves Gorbachev so much. It's really funny. I don't think we've had a lecture yet where he doesn't bad-mouth Putin and what he's doing to the elderly's social security.
I don't know. I'm starting to get the feeling that Cohen is rather big out there. He's talks about important people as if they were his best friends and it seems like he's met everyone out there -- he has these little ancedotes about how he was having tea with this former high official of the Bolshevik party who fled and is now living in NY about the times back then... It's rather scary actually. He doesn't seem like he's all that important and yet... I don't know.
Oh, something funny that maybe only NYU students would get:
From Rush Limbaugh's Show on Feb. 14, 2004:
LIMBAUGH: This is from The Nation. Now, The Nation is one of our favorite publications here, the far-left fringe publication of the liberal journal of opinion that is edited by [a] well-known communist named Katrina vanden Heuvel whose husband is a well-known communist at Columbia.
Well, I use the term advisedly. Stephen Cohen's his name. They're both big lovers of the old Soviet Union.
We had a lot of fun with this when Cohen opened the lecture on the 15th (day after) with this.
But aside from that, even if Cohen might be a bit Russia-biased in my mind, I have never though of him as a Communist.
O.O
Wow, Cohen's wife... Wow. She's rather...controversial. I guess I can see how they go together. It's kinda scary how they have personal information on her out there... I don't think people like her or Cohen all that much...
I mean geez, this feels wrong. Gah, I don't know who to believe any more! vanden Heuvel and Cohen feel like they're towards the left (or at least labeled as so) and...and...and...
*gives up* I like Cohen as a professor. Let's just leave it at that. Whatever his personal beliefs are, whatever. I just want to get an A in his course.
edit x1: Reading more on this and how people seem to continuously attacking these two people, I can see why Cohen said that if you wanted to be involved with Russia on an academic sense, you had to have a thick skin. I wouldn't be able to put up with that sort of stuff on the internet. It's no wonder Cohen doesn't use a computer himself. Just type in his and his wife's name into Goggle and you can see all that hate surrounding them. :( It's not bad being Russia-biased. Or Russia-knowledgable. I feel for them, really, I do.
Again, I am reminded at how mean Republicans can be.
edit x2: My website has been fixed, temporarily. Right now the system thinks I have 130 MB on the server when I really have nothing at all so they've increased it to 150 MB so I can continue working. That means only 20 MBs for me! :( That's 30 MB less what I was supposed to get. :( Damn glitch. And now I have to wait until March 4th for it to be fixed completely. :( NYU's system sucks.
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