We are back! Brendan went missing last week having gone camping last week rather than spend an hour or so talking with me. Since I’ve been in a pop mood, we opened with Annie’s cover of “Two of Hearts” and ended with MU’s “Paris Hilton”.

We talk about:

* Go Girl, the female urination device
* Snowpiercer and The Host
* Grieving Koreans
* Brendan’s adventures in Sequoia
* Hobby Lobby and the war against women and the Affordable Care Act
* What if Christians chose the wrong religion?
* Power bottoms and how easy it is to mock fundamentalist Christians
* My illiteracy
* Shia LaBeouf and performance art
* Menstrual blood and its use in protest
* Fuck the Human Rights Campaign
* Two minutes of sports (which became 10 minutes)

You can subscribe to the podcast with the RSS feed or on iTunes.

most everyone knows my general distaste for children, but this one seems to be evil enough to have blown past that wall. after all, when she says, “uncuh jimmy,” how else am i supposed to react?

she also has some habits that are near and dear to my heart. for example, she doesn’t like wearing pants. pants off dance off!

so this little shit was a little terror about me this independence day. then again, some of it was my own fault. i did instigate her a little. after all what sort of “uncuh jimmy” would i be if i didn’t influence her in a bad way?

it was a good independence day. tons of meaty meats, pasta salad, fruit salad (cannibalism!), apple pie and stuff. tons of illegal fireworks set off by neighbors. not bad, really.

i had some time to kill waiting to pick up my aunt from lax today since her flight was delayed. somehow, i found myself in manchester square.

i just wanted to find a spot to park and read, and as i drove around i noticed a lot of fences. a lot. then i remember reading about ghost towns recently popping up lately because of proposed lax expansions that have gone by the wayside over the years. i thought this was supposed to be an expansion of the north runways of lax.

it turns out there really hasn’t been concrete plan for this neighborhood. as dan weikel wrote in the la times on oct. 27, 2013:

Nancy Castles, an airport spokeswoman, said the city developed a voluntary purchase program in 1999 to replace soundproofing after a majority of Manchester Square property owners filed a petition with LAX officials. The approach, she said, has provided flexibility during the planning process and made land available for future airport projects.

Airport officials acknowledge that no plan to reuse the land has ever been finalized. During the administration of Mayor Richard Riordan, a cargo facility was discussed. Mayor James Hahn later proposed a giant transportation/check-in center, part of an ambitious LAX master plan challenged in court.

Planners are now eyeing other possibilities, such as a consolidated car rental facility, additional parking and a public transportation hub to accommodate light rail trains and a people mover to serve passenger terminals. Construction could be at least a decade away, assuming those plans proceed at all.

so it was cheaper for LAX to buy out the residents one-by-one rather than mitigate the noise from the airport.

also, as curbed pointed out, the neighborhood was used as a setting for a disaster movie.

some surprising things:

* there is still street sweeping. in the still occupied part of the ‘hood, i was looking for a place to sit and read. because i didn’t want to make a u-turn or three-point turn, i kept driving further and further into the heart of what was once a neighborhood.

* they just repaved. when i finally turned around as i was taking some of these pictures, i noticed by tire marks what seemed to be newly-laid asphalt. i didn’t and still don’t know what to make of that.

it sounds like there will be plans for this ‘hood after all. as laura j. nelson reported on the la times on june 26, it will be the rental car hub of the newly-approved $200 million light-rail station and spur for the airport.

manchester square is far from the eerily picturesque seaside ghost ‘hood of surfridge which is just west of lax. but that abandonment in the ’60s and ’70s, a long period of time according to our collective unconsciousness. but manchester square started in the last 20 years and is still in the process of happening which i find fascinating.

it’s been nice getting back into a hiking rhythm again. i basically took last week off since after fisting class last saturday i came down with a really bad migrane while driving home. the pain shifted all over the right side of my head last week. that probably means i’m going to die or something. one can only hope.

now that the us is out of the world cup, the sports media/shouters are having their quadrennial debate about whether soccer has finally made it in america. who cares? if you like soccer, keep watching it. if you don’t, don’t. it’s almost bad as the fucking retards who spent the entire world cup so far on twitter just bashing the game and the round-robin format of the group stage. we get that you love [insert favorite sport] above any other sport that others may enjoy. no one really cares, really. you just end up looking like a cunt.

i think i’m going to use flickr more than instagram. i like the editing capabilities of flickr more than instagram.

just because it’s now july doesn’t mean june gloom has left us yet. it’s still clinging on, and for some reason it feels like it’s been more humid lately than it has been in past summers. i can’t wait for august and september when the pure heat starts and this humidity vanishes. hopefully.

but the gloom is a bit appropriate. mexico was ousted the other day in the world cup. today the us bows out. so there is a bit of that in the air.

The long-standing practice at these AMBOPEDIA get-togethers is to visit literal geographical borderlines, a different one each year. – Ch. 2

…Giuliani and his developer friends and the forces of suburban righteousness have swept the place Disneyfied and sterile… – Ch. 5

There is also her mostly unavowed fascination with Latrelle Sprewell and his history of coach assault, on the principle that Homer strangling Bart we expect, but when Bart strangles Homer… – Ch. 16.

…a steamy August evening out to Queens to a strip club called Joie de Beavre. – Ch. 20

once you get past the fact this is pynchon, the book is enjoyable. it reads like 41 different short stories that have the same plot thread unifying them. it’s certainly not as obtuse as gravity’s rainbow, and you can get through the book fairly quickly.

of course with the story set in 2001, i was constantly going back to the state of the web back then. and as futuristic this story may seem — a tech-ish mystery caper novel — it’s also quite retro. it reads like film noir

as you may have heard on the latest podcast, brendan and i attended the fisting class hosted by his employer stockroom and presented by damon holzum. there was an adorable boy wearing the t-shirt pictured above.

the first hour was instructional filled with information and guidance about lubes, toys, opening up the ass. the second hour was the live demonstration where we saw damon stick his fist in aaron’s ass. hearing aaron’s moans and watching him tremble in the throes of body orgasms — plural — was the real turn on.

there was nothing nefarious about it. the actual fisting was very gentle and loving, and it was a very sex-positive environment: there was a nice mix of old and young, straight and gay, boys and girls, top and bottom. if everyone could have this sort of sex education, the world would probably a bit nicer to exist in.

Brendan and I talked nothing about sports in this podcast.

* I tell my really bad Farsi joke that cracks me up.
* We try to honor Tony Gwynn as best we could.
* We talk about Clayton Kershaw’s no-hitter and how it stacks up in history. Kerry Wood and Harvey Haddix are mentioned.
* We talk about Eric Garcetti and his f-bomb.
* The obligatory OJ nostalgia trip.
* World Cup nonsense.
* Rian Johnson and Star Wars.
* We talk about the fisting class while in a car!!!

The podcast opens with Revolting Cocks’ “Beers, Steers and Queers” as heard on the Wax Trax Black Box compilation and ends with Coil’s “Teenage Lightning (10th Birthday Edition)” from Black Antlers. I even snuck in a bit of Foetus’s (J.G. Thirlwell’s) remix of Nine Inch Nails’ “Wish” entitled “Fist Fuck” from the Fixed EP.

You can subscribe to the podcast with the RSS feed or on iTunes.

children are stupid and usually good for nothing. today on my jaunt through the ocean trails, one of my favorite places in san pedro, i have to cross through trump national. i’m listening to the latest episode of “cyberage radio” and sort of lost in a bigod 20 remix of birmingham 6’s “police state”.

two golf carts loaded with kids drove past me. i heard the chorus, “excuse me old man,” from these stupid slobbering miniaturized humans. i look around and realize i’m the only motherfucker walking around. these stupid shits just called me an old man. i hope they all get cold sores.

for the first time since i sprained my ankle, i was able to jog a bit which made me happy and incredibly sweaty. of course it is this ocean trails which have what i’ll call the sagebrush stairs since it doesn’t have an official name. i guess the “sagebrush walk trail” is the official name, but it doesn’t cut it for me. the thing to be wary about with the stairs is the cacti growing along the side of the stairs. it’s not too prolific, it’s just long enough to the heart beating.

i swear, chandler parsons. he’s a restricted free agent with the houston rockets. he’s cute as a button and wears pretty clothes and all that. i don’t know if i would actively want to have sex with him, but i wouldn’t turn it down if he offered. he and jeremy lin have some sort of “bro-mance” i suppose.

but does he have to be such a dullard? i guess that’s what you get from florida?