coketalk:

Blue Jeans (RAC Mix) - Lana Del Rey

RAC is so good at finding missing ingredients and making canned music sound fresh.

imwithkanye:

dogsareadorable:

YES

On an unrelated note: Beyonce named “World’s Most Beautiful Woman”, does not dine alone. 

The product of a 24-hour news cycle. Lil gems of “news” like this one. Liquor and literature should always be a first resort in times of involuntary solitude - anyone who does not ascribe to this philosophy is just kidding themselves.

thedailywhat:

Marketing Campaign of the Day: As if it weren’t enough that North Carolina already doesn’t recognize same-sex unions, the state votes next Tuesday on a ballot measure that reads: “Constitutional amendment to provide that marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized by this State.”

This ad campaign, by Winston-Salem agency The Variable, plays on segregation-era discrimination to shock voters into voting down the offensive legislation, called Amendment 1: “On May 8th, make history. Don’t repeat it.”

Yes, please.

[adsoftheworld]

(via theslyestfox)

Legislative process already done.

Bankruptcy tomorrow.

(via deathbycupcakes)

fannylemon:

brb, still vomiting rainbows over this and this and this and this and this and this.

Synergy between my two favorite shows ever. Priceless.

(via fuckyeahparksandrec)

Wise words.

via:

garrettmccarthy

(via humblebumble)

chapelthrills:

Truth.

barackobama:

Daily dose of Joe.

hyperallergic:

This letter is as relevant today as it was when she wrote it over a decade ago.

uchicagopress:

July 3, 1997

Jane Alexander
The National Endowment for the Arts
1100 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20506 

 Dear Jane Alexander,

I just spoke with a young man from your office, who informed me that I had been chosen to be one of twelve recipients of the National Medal for the Arts at a ceremony at the White House in the fall. I told him at once that I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration. I want to clarify to you what I meant by my refusal.

Anyone familiar with my work from the early Sixties on knows that I believe in art’s social presence—as breaker of official silences, as voice for those whose voices are disregarded, and as a human birthright.

In my lifetime I have seen the space for the arts opened by movements for social justice, the power of art to break despair. Over the past two decades I have witnessed the increasingly brutal impact of racial and economic injustice in our country.

There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice. But I do know that art—in my own case the art of poetry—means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage. The radical disparities of wealth and power in America are widening at a devastating rate. A President cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.

I know you have been engaged in a serious and disheartening struggle to save government funding for the arts, against those whose fear and suspicion of art is nakedly repressive. In the end, I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope. My concern for my country is inextricable from my concerns as an artist. I could not participate in a ritual which would feel so hypocritical to me.

 Sincerely,
 Adrienne Rich
 cc: President Clinton

**

Adrienne Rich’s “Final Notations” is included in The Open Door: One Hundred Poems, One Hundred Years of Poetry Magazine, forthcoming this fall.

Courage of conviction. Happy Poetry Month!

Orion

Far back when I went zig-zagging
through tamarack pastures
you were my genius, you
my cast-iron Viking, my helmed
lion-heart king in prison.
Years later now you’re young

my fierce half-brother, staring
down from that simplified west
your breast open, your belt dragged down
by an oldfashioned thing, a sword
the last bravado you won’t give over
though it weighs you down as you stride

and the stars in it are dim
and maybe have stopped burning.
But you burn, and I know it;
as I throw back my head to take you in
and old transfusion happens again:
divine astronomy is nothing to it.

Indoors I bruise and blunder
break faith, leave ill enough
alone, a dead child born in the dark.
Night cracks up over the chimney,
pieces of time, frozen geodes
come showering down in the grate.

A man reaches behind my eyes
and finds them empty
a woman’s head turns away
from my head in the mirror
children are dying my death
and eating crumbs of my life.

Pity is not your forte.
Calmly you ache up there
pinned aloft in your crow’s nest,
my speechless pirate!
You take it all for granted
and when I look you back

it’s with a starlike eye
shooting its cold and egotistical spear
where it can do least damage.
Breath deep! No hurt, no pardon
out here in the cold with you
you with your back to the wall.

(via 23rd-block)

Watched “Reality Bites.” Successful 90s night.

whatshouldwecallme: