- Help Animals in Need (12/29/2005) - It's end-of-year charity-giving time. If you want to help rescue and nurture a dog or cat, I recommend a donation to the North Shore Animal League. It's a wonderful no-kill shelter, where I have adopted most of my pets. The cat (still no name, suckers) was rescued from a Wal-Mart parking lot by a nice lady who would not let me contribute to her vet bill, so I made a donation in her name to… …
- Catching Up With 2005 (12/28/2005) - Although list-averse (or else simply VH1-phobic), I would normally constrict a best records of the year list around now. Poverty and nagging unemployment, alas, put a real crimp in my record shopping for 2005. There are still at least a dozen releases that I must hear before I could properly judge. However, I am catching up. So here are some notes on 2005 releases that are new to me. "Honeycomb" by Frank Black In between… …
- January-February 2006 Socialist Magazine (12/21/2005) - I've been hard at work on this (and work, and school). It is done and off to the printers. Should be in the mail in a week, and on the web any day now. I'll post more details at that time. I might now have time to elaborate on the transit strike. …
- Cabs are Scabs (12/21/2005) - And that's really all that needs to be said on the matter. …
- Socialist Party Supports TWU 100 (12/15/2005) - The Socialist Party of New York City strongly supports the right of transit workers to free speech, free assembly and free labor. We denounce, in the strongest possible terms, the Metropolitan Transportation Agency's callous disregard of the safety and health of transit workers, as well as their unending demands for for wage and benefit cutbacks. We are sickened by the slave plantation politics of Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Pataki and Attorney General Spitzer, who would fine… …
- Gene Russionoff Doesn’t Understand (12/15/2005) - Gene Russianoff, the grand poobah of the New York Public Interest Research Group and the Straphangers Campaign, is oft-quoted in the city's media, and usually reliable for sensible good government critique. But Gene, apparently, doesn't have a clue how unions work. Responding in the Times to a City Council bill that recognizes that local unions are distinct political entities with their own agendas that are distinct from the larger federations to which they belong, Gene… …
- Finding J.D. Salinger (11/30/2005) - Shedding itself of Sara Edward-Corbett's delightful cartoon, "See Saw" and Alexander Cockburn's enjoyably bilious essays long ago, the NY Press lost the rest of my interest when zinester Jeff Koyen resigned as editor. I'm glad, however, that I caught Sean Manning's account of scanning a microfiche library of "New Yorker" back issues to read the most famous of J.D. Salinger's "underpublished" short stories, "Hapworth 16, 1924." Salinger had a very formative influence on me as… …
- Cat (11/22/2005) - She still has no name, but at least now she has her own page on the internet. Perhaps a MySpace profile will follow. It's the cat! Call her whatever you would like. The best names of late have been Lt. Sulu, Jesus, Chairman Meow, Mr. Bojangles and Pukey McTwitches. …
- So Long, Armistice Day (11/21/2005) - It is amazing to think that a few veterans of the first World War still provide a living link to the war that provided the blueprint for the bloody twentieth century. Naked aggression and empire-building, chemical warfare and ethnic holocaust and official lies, deceit and stupid propaganda all marked that war, which left millions dead in its wake and the world's people and governments vowing - briefly - never to do it again, only to… …
- Lament for the Lost Bush Years (11/19/2005) - The Bush administration's deep problems don't quite feel like a good reason to celebrate. Lies and incompetence have caught up with Bush, whose presidential approval rating hovers around Watergate-Nixonian levels, while Dick Cheney's even less popular, after his chief of staff's indictment. "I divide time now between BSI--Before Scooter's Indictment--and ASI--After Scooter's Indictment," says Working Life blogger Jonaathan Tasini. First of all, I'm not sure if we're witnessing the crucifixion or the martyrdom of Bush-Cheney's… …