Only this week did I learn of the death, one year ago today, of Kenji “Damo” Suzuki. We weren’t close; I knew him from his work with CAN in the early 1970s, which I only discovered by tracing back from the bands they’d influenced, most notably Pavement.

I thought of CAN this week as people adopted the spoon as symbol of resistance to the man some people call the Space Nazi. I used to think that was an exaggeration, but apparently not. I am going to call him That Other Fucking Guy; while the president sits in the Oval signing executive orders that he hasn’t read, TOFG has been running around trying to dismember the government like Jeffrey Dahmer with a bunch of laptop-toting interns in tow.

Nobody likes bureaucracy and no doubt there is a lot of waste that needs to be cut. But the way it’s being done is capricious, cruel, and I think illegal. The worst part of it is TOFG’s childish glee as he announces USAID has been fed “into the wood chipper” or that the Department of Education no longer exists. These are the livelihoods of thousands of people we’re talking about, asshole. Wipe that fucking smirk off your face.

Anyway, here’s a song for today: