America

This is the pin Madeline Albright wore when she met with Kim Jong-Il. The display card at the New Orleans Museum of Art, where Read My Pins: the Madeline Albright Collection is on display, delicately explains:

In no country are pins more crucial and less decorative than in North Korea. Every North Korean is required to wear an image of the country's founder. Absence of this badge of adoration is a sign of independent political thought and cause for severe punishment. On a  negotiating trip to Pyongyang, Albright dramatized her support for democratic values by wearing her American flag pin. Standing next to North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong-Il, she wore heels to appear taller; so did he.

The Sopranos
Kevin Brockmeier, The Illumination
David Sanchez, Ninety Miles
Maya Beiser at TED
Todd Reynolds, Outerborough
The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Abbey Road, Help, and Yellow Submarine
The Dukes of Stratosphear, Chips from the Chocolate Fireball

WWOZ
Louie

Collum McCann, Let the Great World Spin



The three-day weekend :





In order: a red-tailed hawk trying to fly off with a squirrel from my neighbor's yard after successfully staring down a housecat; I made a remark that in haute cuisine, beets are ovah, and it is time for rutabagas to have their moment in the sun, so my friend Kevin took up that challenge and put both in the July 3 crab boil. Rutabagas hold up with the spice and consistency but even I have to admit, the beets somehow assimilated the salty murk of the crab boil and made it something rather wow.; A carnival ride at Storyland behind the Museum in City Park. Say what you want about Lady Gaga - "Poker Face" remains a highly effective, all-purpose pop song on the one zillionth listen.; a very wet dog fetching a stick from a marina in the backest part of back Brusly.

Allen Ginsberg, "America", reposted from Andrew Sullivan

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956. 
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world. 
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument. 
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister. 
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke? 
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.

Prince, "America"