Monday, October 29, 2007

Socialism can rock!

I was reading my October edition of The Atlantic when I came across the name The Correspondence Publishing Committee. It was in a review of a book about cricket (and many other things) called Beyond a Boundary by CLR James. James was a cricket buff, Marxist, black activist, Pan-Africanist and a lover of literature. He founded two Marxist splinter groups: the Johnson-Forest Tendency, a faction of the Socialist Workers' Party, and the Correspondence Publishing Committee, an off-shoot of the Workers' Party. As the author of the article, Joseph O'Neill, pointed out, the first sounds like the name of a bad rock band and the second sounds like the name of a cool rock band. Both are catchy and have an element of meaninglessness, but The Correspondence Publishing Committee is snarky. It sneakily jibes at the meaninglessness of most committee work. If there is anything rock-and-roll is against, it is committees.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Meet Zorro!


Unfortunately, Lumos has returned to the SPCA. He was a very noisy cat, much too noisy for a person who lives in an apartment. He has now been adopted by someone else and I hope that he has happier now.
Leo and I went back to the SPCA last weekend to try and adopt another cat. Leo fell in love with Zorro above. He's a big muscular cat, definately a hunter. Every evening he pounces on the geckos and bugs which come in through the windows. He's much mellower than Lumos. He usually likes to postion himself somewhere with a good view and keep his eye on everything around him. Leo, especially likes his mouth. It curves upward more than other cats, which gives him a very cheerful expression.