Remember that stupid animated version of Animal Farm, with the bizarre non-book ending? You may know this already, but it was funded by the CIA. I didn't know that. This article by Louis Menand looks, among other things, at how Orwell has been appropriated by damn near every ideological and political color in the spectrum, especially those that otherwise clash. I've always ranked 1984 as one of the defining reads of my life, along with The Sun Also Rises and Crime and Punishment. The Menand article has me reevaluating why. No conclusions yet. I just feel lucky that I escaped my teenage years without reading The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged or Battlefield Earth. Who is John Galt? Fuck you, that's who. [Note: Excise last paragraph before posting -- crass.]