I am much amused...and bemused.

[kyburg]

So LJ is going to be managed by a Russian company. Wait - watch me show my age again.

Lessee. Let's assume for the moment the average age of an LJ user is around 23. Just - hang with me a moment.

When I was 23 - that would be 1984. The wall had not come down yet, we had Reagan in office with his finger on The Button, we were warned not to watch "The Day After" alone, and "Testament" was in the theaters.

I tried to take Russian as a foreign language, and was refused because the only time I could get it in, only the intermediate classes were available - one, mind, ONE - and I was scrutinized VERY closely. Why do you want to learn RUSSIAN, hmmmmmm?

Seriously. No, way. Very much way, dude. I could learn all the French I wanted. Spanish, natch. German...still got some strange looks, but okay. Itallian? Oh, that. Well, maybe. Hebrew? You're not Jewish. You don't need that. And English got a lot more attention - you actually had to be able to read and write it legitimately, or they flunked you.

(Really need a memory jog? Go listen to this again.)

1984.

I was still buying music on vinyl records then. I picked up a Genesis collection over the weekend, and listening to it I was remembering how many of the cuts I'd actually bought as 45 rpm vinyl. (I probably still have them, too.)

Wasn't that long ago. Except that if you were born that year, you're legal to drink already. Whee.

The fact that this lovely bastion of "I WANNA ROCK" is going to be managed by the people I knew the least about, when I was the age of the average user today - is ironic in the extreme.

Cliff would be delighted to see what his beloved Yeltsin has wrought.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

My advisor almost got himself in trouble similarly. As a faculty member he could audit any class he wanted. There was this gorgeous lady Russian instructor, and gus decided he was going to audit the class, both because, well, by then things were starting to trickle out of the USSR, and he was interested, and, well, she was easy on the eyes. Only, her obligatory time in service had been in Intelligence... same as gus' field! The spooks about had a hissy fit until gus convinced them that, no, really, I'm not passing her all our secrets...

I never will forget, either, the time they played "Red Dawn" for all us gung-ho Techies... part of me was just a little spooked at how all these hot-headed young engineers WANTED Russky blood...

Boris Nikolayevich went a long way, but if it weren't for a couple of upstarts the names of Havel and Walesa furiously undermining the Iron Curtain, it would never have fallen. But I don't doubt Cliff would've been delighted, just the same.

the only thing...

[tomlemos.livejournal.com]

I am worried about is my financial information that is now in Russian hands.

I've already had my bank accounts in the hands of Russians. It wasn't pretty.

I'm going to be paying by other means now, that's for damn sure.

[n6vfp.livejournal.com]

It is interesting, as we drift toward fascism here, Russian petrodollars buy a site noted for free speech... Putin is returning Russia to the Stalinist era, we are returning to the Nazi era, the last time this happened we had a 'cold war'. We also had a lot more level headed people in intelligence. No, welcome to the global economy...can I add that Putin is an ass?

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

That's...an interesting take on it.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Let's not forget the various brands of Russian big-time mobsters who do business with neglected weapons, either...

[stormdragon.livejournal.com]

Bah, original link in the comment pooched.

Here's the 1984 I remember =P

http://radio.about.com/od/funradiothingstodo/a/aa060503a.htm

[bigbigtruck.livejournal.com]

A new friend of mine is just over 10 years my junior. The last time she came up to visit, I suddenly realized she didn't spend her childhood knowing that we were all eventually going to die in a nuclear war with the USSR. When I was little, that was just a given.

I wonder what that's like...

That, and growing up with the Internet.