European History

As I sit here, having just studied European History since the interwar years, a few things strike me as incredibly odd.
-The United States is the second most mentioned nation in this section
-The USSR was the most dominant European superpower of the post war era, yet they imploded due to their own internal mismanaging
-The devastation of WWII actually stimulated the European economy vis-à-vis the Marshall plan and the resulting improvements in infrastructure (notably transportation and manufacturing)
-Hitler gets the bad rap, yet Stalin outright killed 10 million via starvation and put another 20 million into gulags during the 1930s (the irony of course, he was our "ally")
-Charles de Gaulle is the only Frenchman who has gotten anything done politically in the last hundred years (I don't count Clemenceau)
-Europe always seems to go through cycles of conglomeration and separation, its like clock work
-There is a myth that American children are fed, it says we saved "millions of lives" by dropping "the bombs," the truth is that we were sending a message to the Russians
-The Cold War wasn't about Truman and Stalin, it was about Wilson and Lenin
-A "Radical" French party is a more moderate one
-Socialism isn't a naughty word in Europe..

-I have a plant on my desk that is refusing to die
-I've had a pumpkin since mid-october, it shows no signs of aging
-"The Squid and the Whale" may be my new favorite movie, honestly, stunning
-My IKEA candle seems to regenerate without me noticing
-GRAVITY, seriously.. why, how does it work so well (why doesn't it just have an off day every once in awhile... like... hmm... today, I think gravity will be 9.6 m/s^2)
-There is a guy on my bus who acts really standoffish toward everyone except me, he always waves at me.. and I always seem to catch him staring at my shirts
-The mail gets delivered everyday (I don't even want to imagine how complex that infrastructure is)
-French Intellectual History (my Euro teacher's field of study), I read part of Vincent's book and was like.. WTF is going on here, this makes no sense
-How they will give you a dry erase marker for free at the library, but there never seems to be any next to the boards, where do they all go?
-My wallet never seems to have money in it (I know, this is a personal issue, but it still amazes me)
-That the Tribune went bankrupt because "it was about time"... what is that supposed to mean? (I mean come on, I can understand why, but how bitchy)
-Its been a bad week for Illinois (karma for an Obama victory I think).. your Governor is an underhanded criminal and your newspaper went bankrupt.. ouch..
-IKEA is so far away from here.. But on the bright side, I could almost take a day trip with the cost of gas right now