I wore this t-shirt to my gig last night (the color on the photo isn’t very good—the actual shirt totally nails that Red Army olive and the slightly orange red). Honestly, the biggest reason I wore it is because it’s a nice piece of graphic design; besides, it fits in with my enduring affection for Socialist Realism art.

But there’s another reason I wore it, which I tried to explain to somebody in the club we were playing, who teasingly called me “comrade.” I said I thought it was a funny shirt.

I told him, “I just think it’s funny that no one is frightened of communists any more. In spite of the fact that there are over 20,000 nuclear warheads which could be re-targeted on us on an hour’s notice. Instead, we’re so frightened of a few bearded guys living in caves—who admittedly did manage to kill several thousand of us six years ago—that we’re busy dismantling our personal liberties and constitutional guarantees which withstood fifty years of Cold War, not to mention the 160 years before that.”

He said he didn’t think it was very funny.