The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

I have realized that some things never change- like when my parents used to nag me to do my homework before I could play, so I could play without interruption later.

Now I am on my own and don't have anyone to remind me to do my homework, which is both good and bad.

Like a good girl I did my History of Urban Planning homework so I could have fun this weekend. (my legal environment of planning book has yet to show up despite my purchase of expedited shipping)

I decided to save my readings for Sustainable Cities until tonight so that the readings would be fresh in my mind. Little did I know that while the readings are "recommended"- some of my classmates are reading the articles in depth and presenting on them- they are all reallllly long. Thank God for footnotes and bibliographies, but I am still slugging my way through a twenty-page paper on the controversy surrounding the terms "sustainability" and "sustainable development" (analysis to follow- if I survive this) that I started last Thursday. But owing to Facebook and my new computer and new place with wi-fi I got a little distracted and didn't finish it in one go.

I also have found it a bit hard to swallow in places. One of my favorite bits is about how some author considers sustainability "ecological socialism." Ah academia, the last haven for socialists. But have those so-called socialists ever really considered what socialism in action is really like? If they want to know, they could talk to pretty much anyone born after 1920 in Eastern Europe and how much "fun" their lives have been. (excluding the lucky girls and boys who were able to snag modeling contracts and I think Putin is a little biased. But that man is scary- even and especially with his shirt off, so I won't say anything against him.)

(this is just him fishing!!! for heaven's sake. Why does it make me think of Deliverance!?

Oh yeah, probably because of this picture that scares both me and the editor in chief of GQ. (I can't find the specific edition that the editor's letter mentions that seeing Vladimir Putin shirtless makes Jim Nelson more than a little nervous, but it's in there- just not preserved in cyberspace.)

I thought that my undergrad professor's babbling on and on about semiotics and Ferdinand de Saussure and his "signifiers" and "signifieds" were painful exercises in academia, but this might win king of the hill. And something tells me there's going to be a LOT more of this!

Thank God for Dad's devotion to Stephen Covey and his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People- some of it just might have stuck :P cuz I know Saussure sure didn't! OK, gotta keep reading. . .