I’m just trying to distract myself, and right now I’m not really up for watching old depressing foreign movies. So I decided to watch the Dodgers play the Nationals. You know, what I used to do.

After one inning of watching the broadcast, I had to mute it. There was too much Charley Steiner, too much Nomar Garciaparra, too much Orel Hershiser. When I was covering games, I was used to just the sounds of the park, the crack of the bat, the sound the balls make when it hits the catcher’s mitt, the organ, the cheers, the boos, the choreographed claps, the awful pop music that’s foisted upon the public in the name of entertainment that these teams are aiming to strive for. The games were allowed to breathe in its own juices and not be strangled by the announcers. I know, I’m spoiled.

So instead of all of that, because of my sort of fragile emotional state right now I’m listening to Tori Amos. (Okay. That’s a bald-face lie. I’m using my emotional state as an excuse to listen to Tori Amos, to justify going back to my sensitive 17-year old self, to think about nine inch nails and little fascist panties tucked inside the heart of every nice grrrrrrrrrrrrrl.) Little Earthquake and then Under the Pink, just going chronologically.

Watching the game, I learned some things.

A. Chin-Hui Tsao is back to pitching for the Dodgers? I remembered him pitching before I started writing for LAist in 2007. Here he is now?

B. Pedro Baez is no long the second coming of Jeebuz. At the start of the season he was the bee’s knees, the shit, the everything about the bullpen. In the eighth inning he gave up a two-run pinch-hit homer to some Danish(?) guy Matt den Dekker. Belgian? It definitely has to be some country involving dikes or fjords or something chocolatey or potty. Anyhow, it gave the Nationals a 5-3 lead which set the stage for Drew Storen to get the save.

C. At some point the Dodgers went out and got Albert Callaspo. AND KEPT HIM!!!! I know how wheeling and dealing the Dodgers front office is, yet Callaspo is sill on the 25-man roster. They do want to win a World Series, right?

We went to my grandmother’s doctor who gave her a steroid injection into her back. That will help the pain she’s feeling in her legs starting tomorrow. Hopefully. But I did get confirmation from the doctor that her pain will keep getting worse no matter what. So I guess I have that to look forward to.

I want to thank people for their kind words. I’ve spent a lot of the day as an emotional mess. A few tears have been shed, but mostly there is this fluttering feeling in my chest and gut that’s ready to explode. Although I’m feeling better now than I did earlier. Actually, that’s a lie. I’m feeling more numb. And tired. It’s amazing that despite not physically exerting myself just how fucking tired I am right now.

Now I have to steel myself for Dallas Aunt coming. She’s getting in tonight and leaving Monday. I haven’t really forgiven her for her outrage back in March. So on top of everything else, I guess I have that to deal with. Although I aim to just ignore and repress because I’m just not in any fucking mood for it.

I really wonder how my grandmother gets through this. I’m amazed by her strength to endure all of this pain. It’s astonishing because here I am just breaking down at the drop of a hat. She actually has reason to, but she’s just plugging along.

I love my grandmother. I wouldn’t be her caretaker if I didn’t. But this week has been particular taxing for me culminating in today.

My grandmother has chronic pain. Mindnumbing I-wish-I-were-dead sort of pain in her legs and lower back. This week the pain has gotten so bad she hasn’t been able to walk (hobble is probably the more adequate verb to use to describe how my grandmother is ambulatory.) To move around she has taken to sitting on the ground and using her arms and ass to propel forwards.

Today she can’t even move without screaming in agony. Even the smallest movement brings with it hell on earth for her. I hear her crying in Korean, “ican’tlivelikethis.godpleasetakeme.thisistoomuch.”

The problem is that mentally she is still sharp. Her body is what’s let her down, and at 86 it’s completely betraying her. Nothing can be done to help her, not surgery not drugs not anything. Nothing. This is her life.

And here I am, helpless to do anything. Nothing I say or do will take the pain away for her. Nothing I do will make her wake up magically able to do the things she was able to do ten years ago. Nothing. I am useless except for moral support for whatever good that does (to prolong her suffering?)

For the first time, I broke down. Here I am in my bedroom writing this tears in my eyes just completely spent. I know I can’t be emotional in front of my grandmother, that I can’t make her feel any worse than she already feels. But it’s tough. It’s really really tough.

I’m taking her to her primary care physician just after lunch, and we’re going to take it from there. I know the logical steps to take to try and help her, but I know it will be useless.

I don’t know what to do.

So for her sake I hope she goes soon just so she doesn’t have to endure this pain she goes through 24/7. And selfishly I hope she goes so that I don’t have to witness someone I love dearly die in front of me in the slowest, most excruciating way possible.

Shhhhhh. My toilet is sleeping. This is what happens when rot upon rot upon rot is detected beneath your linoleum. It happens, and it is getting fixed.

The grandmother has been in more pain the last couple of days, her left leg right above her ankle making her life damn near impossible (and by extension, mine also). All I can do is watch helplessly — it’s not going to get any better and nothing I can do will make her feel better.

So I’m rereading Infinite Jest, because, why not? It’s great against the soundtrack of a drill going off in my bathroom.

I’m going through this list of the 1,000 greatest films of all time which has been going slowly and steadily. I got to no. 33, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet last night.

It’s gorgeously shot in the Danish countryside with minimal cuts. It’s also said that Dreyer didn’t like light meters instead opting to adjust the lightning of a scene by eye.

But the story is what got me. Three sons: the eldest who has become agnostic; the middle who think he’s Jesus Christ; the youngest who wants to marry the neighbor’s daughter. The death of the eldest son’s wife during childbirth is perhaps the saddest thing I have ever watched. And of course how that affects the family’s religion and the belief of miracles.

Although this is listed at 33, this is definitely top 10 for me. Better than The Passion of Joan of Arc for me.

Today, the death knell of the gay community has started to toll. The Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage today, and millions of my queer brothers, sisters and everything in between are celebrating. I’m not exactly jumping up and down with them.

Same-sex marriage has nothing to do with equality. It’s about enforcing the white male morality within the queer community and sanitizing everything with their antiseptic imitation of heterosexual respectability.

The Human Rights Campaign has been fighting for gay marriage for the better part of the last decade. In an internal report leaked to Buzzfeed earlier this month, the HRC has been compared to a “White Man’s Club”. An organization that is rife with sexism, a glaring lack of diversity and repeated belittling of transgendered staff is supposed to be leading the fight for this so-called equality?

As Yasmin Nair explains, same-sex marriage is a conservative cause. Marriage should not guarantee rights, yet rather than fight for that issue groups like the HRC were complacent enough to join the hetero privilege party rather than fight for real equality.

These people are not interested in equal access to health care. They aren’t interested in dealing with homeless queer youth. They aren’t interested in real immigration reform. They don’t believe racism exists since they don’t realize that they are racists themselves. The list goes on. All they care about is extending the white heterosexual patriarchy into the queer world.

And that is the danger of saying that same-sex marriage is only the first step in gaining equality. For a good many people the fight is over. Fuck the trannies. Fuck the poor black folk who can’t afford healthcare. If you can’t help our bottom lines then just stay the hell out. That’s the way the world works, right?

So as people crowd the streets of gay ghettos all across the country, just know that we are witnessing the end of gay culture as we knew it. The vibrant tapestry of black and white and boy and girl and poor and rich and everything will now be replaced by the same ugly condo, same ugly dogs, same ugly lawns, same ugly clothes.

Sure, now us gay people can make the same mistakes as the heteros. Hooray equality! And now we can die like the rest of the straight world.

I was in the waiting room for my therapist this morning while idly thumbing through a bunch of Aleister Crowley’s writings. I mean, what else are you going to do as you’re getting ready to get your head shrunk? (I know, I know, I know. Crowley wasn’t a Satanist. But he was dubbed “the wickedest man in the world”, and he was a racist anti-semite cunt.)

I was reading through a bunch of stuff he wrote for Vanity Fair from 1915 to 1917 when “A Hindu at the Polo Grounds” jumped out at me.

Crowley is writing a letter to a friend describing a Yankees-Red Sox game at the Polo Grounds in perhaps only the way he could. To quote:

Now the priests take their stations in the temple, and the ritual begins. One high-priest throws the white balls; this represents the sun traveling throughout he heavens. Another high-priest strikes it with the Mahalingam club, meaning that even the sun is tossed about by the will of God. Many priests representing other gods are stationed according to the places of the planets, as I understand, for my friend says: “It is an all-star team.”

As he continues, he seems not to appreciate the game.

The worshippers are full of religion; sometimes the sacred cry changes to a roar as if they wanted something killed. Then, my friend says: “See! He sacrifices himself,” but I do not see him sacrifice himself. He only throws himself down at the feet of a god. But there is no blood; it is not good religion.

See? Even 100 years ago people could see that these Yankees-Red Sox games were bullshit.

This is a tale of horror, incompetence and comedy.

I was getting ready to take my grandmother to her acupuncture appointment and went to get my car. I was looking and looking and couldn’t find my car. Fuck. Either my car was stolen or it was impounded.

Now I couldn’t think for the life of me why my car would be impounded. The registration is current. It was parked legally. There were no temporary construction no parking signs anywhere. So it must have been stolen. But if it were stolen, shouldn’t there be shards of broken glass littering the sidewalk and street?

I went to my apartment’s management office to see if they heard anything — nothing. The LAPD Harbor Division gave me the number of their tow yard. Nothing. My double checked with the LAPD Harbor Division. Nothing.

All signs pointed to my car being stolen. What other explanation is there?

Before calling the insurance company, I decided to walk around the neighborhood to look for it one last time. Perhaps the people stole it, realized what a piece of shit 2002 Toyota Camry it is and just dumped it. Perhaps someone pranked me and moved it elsewhere. I mean, that did happen to me once in high school.

So I walked. I walked down a block. I walked up to Ralphs. And there it was. Right in the middle of the parking lot was my car. My stupid fucking car. It dawned on me what happened.

One thing that gnawed on me throughout this episode was I couldn’t remember exactly where I parked my car. I park on the same block everyday, and I usually remember exactly where it is. But I couldn’t remember this morning. I just knew it must have been parked there because I always park there.

What happened yesterday was I needed to move my car from the parking garage to the street and decided since I needed to go to Ralphs I would just be lazy and drive there. I parked, went to market and walked home leaving my car in the lot. That’s why it wasn’t on the street this morning, and that’s why I couldn’t remember exactly where I parked.

So there is the incompetence and comedy. The horror?

I am 36, and senility has already hit me. I am so beyond fucked.

Yesterday I had five-hour lunch with a couple of sportswriters in Long Beach. Yeah, it took that long to catch up on things. We are a chatty bunch, and I’m sure we would have felt bad if the restaurant were busier. There were tales of being on the road, drunkenness and former players still living up their glory days. Tales of former glories and current frustrations.

Usually the only real conversation I have is with Brendan when we record our podcast every Saturday. I’m not a good telephone person, so that’s about it aside from small talk here and there with neighbors and family. So that’s why it was nice to be in real conversation yesterday.

It was nice to be away from the news of the day, the “hot takes”, the outrage. Most of you people are obnoxious.

For years I heard our national anthem. I’ve heard great renditions of it. I’ve heard mediocre renditions of it. I’ve heard it butchered so badly I wanted to throw canned hams at the singer. I’ve heard it vamped beyond recognition by a bunch of talentless nobodies who thought they were Whitney Houston. A few times when a Canadian team was in town, I have heard “O Canada”.

It needs to stop. If we need to be reminded at sporting events what country we live in, we’re in worse trouble than previously imagined.

Oh. Above is this week’s Handjob, Blowjob and Anal.