Just dump oil all over everything

Everywhere and get it over with

I lost my baby due to penalty kicks.

Hope has turned to cobalt goo

Change we can believe in the way

We believe in unicorns and Jedis.

It’s too hot to be a free agent

Each atom is a poem with its

Own spinning agenda, which demands

[Line of poem drowned out by vuvuzelas].

Let me put my poems inside you with

A spatula and we’ll ride across the grammar

To a whistle on the mortgage of a field

Speckled with dusky crickets who have

No regard for human life.

It’s not Convex Mirror, it’s Houseboat Days

And you’re the sunburned, bearded captain

Drifting further out away from the cherry

Chocolate harbor.

I tried to climb the ladders but a gorilla

Was throwing barrels at me.

You’ll need guide wires, a harness and a team

of Sherpas just to get through the day.

Here we go

The whale reminds us how much we have failed.

Jim Behrle is the world’s greatest living poet. He would be on Twitter but that shit is down. Again.

“He didn’t trust anyone. He asked me why I had chosen a Russian bride and asked what business I had in Russia, and I said none…. He was scary. He would never introduce me to other Russian people who came to the house and he always seemed to have a lot more security than the other diplomats. He had a Land Rover with blacked out windows and there was always one car in front of it and one car behind.”
—That’s Alex Chapman, ex-husband of the Russian spy Anna, talking about his ex-father-in-law Vasily Kushchenko to the Telegraph. Kushchenko was presented to Alex as a “high-ranking” officer in Russia’s security forces, which probably only added to his mystique as a not very welcoming father-in-law!

Big news! Coming in Monday’s New York magazine! A plot twist in the long-established narrative of New York City rich people parenting!

The Misery of the American Parent, by Jennifer Senior
“Social-science researchers keep coming to the same conclusion: having children makes adults unhappy. Why? Maybe it’s because American parents are demanding more of themselves than ever before. Or maybe it’s because we’ve forgotten what ‘happiness’ actually means. A look at why parents hate parenting.”

by Abe Sauer

The USO is urging Americans: “This Fourth of July, as we remember all those who fought for our independence, let’s make sure the brave men and women who are defending our country today know how much their sacrifice means to us.” The organization wants you to honor the troops this Independence Day so bad they are even spending your tax dollars to buy Google Ads against searches for “4th of July.” And what better way is there to celebrate the rigors and risks of a life spent actually risking life in combat than to recreate PTSD in your own backyard for your children?

Currently, all throughout the Midwest, any already-half-lit-up dude can pull his Escalade EXT and boat into a tent on the side of the highway and buy an unlimited amount of explosives. And for God’s sake buy them; homemade fireworks will do exactly what you expect homemade fireworks to do.

I dropped by a fireworks tent on Highway 151 in Wisconsin to give you an idea of just how you can support those troops fighting terrorist explosives by igniting explosives.

Air Tactics! This is the preferred Independence Day firework of AmericanAirPowerMuseum.com.

“Bad Ass” is the only firework that, through its logo, marries the 80s-obsessed “ironic” hipster Americans with “Fuck Yeah” blow-it-up American dudes.

Guys spending a “desert night” laughing about “blue steel?” Now that’s meta-enabling.

Light it and get the real ending to Lost.

Awesome. But the package designer maybe doesn’t understand “multi”?

I suspect the summer-break fireworks sales kid is making a tremendous point about global politics with this product layout. He should probably get an Awl column.

Next: Also there are fireworks about bears???

Appropriately, this offering from The Colbert Report is discounted.

“Night Invasion” plus “Bling Bling.” How many of your drunken late-night mistakes does this combo describe?

The greatest generation of our entertainment.

This is the firework that Disney copyright attorneys tell their spouses to tell their nannies to tell their non-English-speaking gardeners to ride a bike down the highway to get because it’s “ironic” and everyone will find it hilarious.

Freedom that truly speaks to us.

It is.

America, just remember, that assload of explosives in your trunk might now disqualify you from driving through Minneapolis’ I-94 Lowry tunnel. And dad, there’s no better way to ruin Independence Day than to couple your DUI charge with a federal terrorism indictment!

Oh fine people of Brooklyn, won’t you help find ‘Dennis’? Last seen crossing Atlantic Ave. by Court Street!

English countryside real estate developers must now protect their sad little plywood houses by digging moats to prevent the invasion of their land from caravanning tossers! Stabbing to ensue. It’s a wonderful return to the old ways. I hope there are flaming arrows again soon too; also, a burning of heretics.

It is kind of crazy to think that Diet Coke is only 28! The Frisky looks back on the fizzy drink’s rise and role in the cola wars: “On July 4th, 1982, Coca Cola threw a gala party to herald Diet Coke’s arrival. At the event, the Rockettes shimmied and high-kicked around a 14-foot of Diet Coke can, while waiters in tuxedos passed out Diet Coke on silver trays. Bold-faced names of the time, like Bob Hope, Carol Channing, and Telly Savalas, waved to video cameras at the party, and the footage became Diet Coke’s first televised ad.” (The reminder of Lucky Vanous’ existence is also instructive, and it makes one wonder if he would have a reality show or two were he to rise to prominence in 2010.) [Via]

Eh, I’m lightly losing my mind over this opening paragraph: “Factory owners have been adding jobs slowly but steadily since the beginning of the year, giving a lift to the fragile economic recovery. And because they laid off so many workers — more than two million since the end of 2007 — manufacturers now have a vast pool of people to choose from.” Setting aside that the article goes on to explain that these “factories” are not looking for floor muscle, they’re actually looking for low-end coders and analysts, and therefore just can’t find anyone to hire, can we all read those two sentences again? The industry that laid of millions… is giving a lift… to the recovery… that is not much of a recovery… because of layoffs…. So, one thing that would help is if everyone could stop looking at everything in terms of “this quarter over last”? Is a little historical context too much to ask? Here, like so! “Since early last summer, factories have cut more than one million jobs, or 5.4 percent of their payrolls, and fewer people now work in a manufacturing plant than at any time since 1964.” Oh, that’s from September 8, 2001. But surely unrelated. [Photo by TheeErin.]

Apple PR is saying that the e-mails sent from “Steve Jobs” telling a steamed iPhone 4 user to calm down about his new device’s tech issues because “it is just a phone” are fakety fake fake fake.

The news that Facebook has developed “facial-recognition technology” sounds like a somewhat spooky innovation from the privacy-flippant social-networking site (especially to those of us who spend a lot of time untagging photos we aren’t happy with, cough) but don’t worry just yet — this innovation, which currently is in beta-test mode, only recognizes the existence of faces in photographs uploaded to the service. Until The Machines get their collective act together, tagging still has to be done by those mean friends of yours who want the world to know that you looked kind of like an idiot while you all were out the other night! Hooray? [Pic via]