The Los Angeles City Council voted in July to ban prescription pot shops, but dispensary owners have decided to fight back, the L.A. Times reports.

As detailed by the Times, the City Attorney has threatened medical marijuana managers with "penalties of $2,500 a day and up to six months in jail" if they refuse to shut down by Sept. 6, sending them a warning letter this week.

Some potpreneurs, however, are working to get a measure on the ballot to overturn the ban, the paper reports.

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Most Americans ages 15-24 -- some 66 percent -- have had oral sex, the Centers for Disease Control reports. But that's actually less than in the past.

A reason young people have oral sex is because they don't want a kid, the CDC notes. However, a lot of young people also don't realize that oral sex -- though it doesn't carry pregnancy risks -- can still transmit disease, like throat gonorrhea and HIV.

Since telling people not to have sex doesn't help them if they do decide to have sex -- no matter what kind -- here's some info on how to make oral sex safer.

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Paul Ryan's Workout Routine, VP Candidate

Since Mitt Romney tapped Paul Ryan's Workout Routine as his running mate Aug. 11, details have emerged that the vice presidential candidate has a grueling workout routine.

"Fresh from a workout at a hotel gym in Iowa" and wearing "exercise shorts and a University of Wisconsin baseball cap pulled down low" Paul Ryan's Workout Routine talked to Romney advisers via video-conference monitor.

Paul Ryan's Workout Routine, who's still learning the ins and outs of cross-country campaigning, will primarily be charged with fundraising.

Romney's advisers, who have "observed" Paul Ryan's Workout Routine during his morning workouts, noticed that he likes to get paper memos, "follows the grueling P90x fitness regime" and "really likes to break a sweat," according to Bloomberg News.

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As we have pointed out before, the Department of Parks and Recreation is totally down with traffic-blocking art installations but not cool with unregulated artist-vendors because said vendors allegedly block traffic and mess with public spaces' aesthetic.

Yea, we are confused by the Department's approach, too.

And we're learning that another aesthetic-altering art installation is planned for the High Line.

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So we have been following developments in New Jersey's prescription pot program, and it seems like a common motif is slowness.

Yes, the state recently started registering patients, but prescription pot has been legal there since 2010!

Today brings us news that some patients are now officially eligible for curative cannabis -- and by some, we mean 50.

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It's Wednesday. Have you read Dan's new column yet?

Today in Savage Love, which you can read here, Dan brings in Tegan Quin to help a 22-year-old better understand her sexuality, remembers essayist David Rakoff, and tells a professional snowboarder that he should not feel shame about anal stimulation.

Let's talk about this last topic, shall we?

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Full disclosure: when we set about writing this post, we were going to open with a snarky (read: stale) complaint about how the lottery subgenre of reportage just isn't creative enough.

In fact, our lede was going to be something like: "There must be a whole chapter on lotto coverage in "Journalism 101" textbooks, because it seems like the same handful of stories get reported over and over and over again." (Italics for even more snark, of course.)

But then we started to think: Lottos have been around a really fucking long time. In fact, they date back to Julius Caesar.

So, is it possible that these same narratives get recycled because there really might not be that much else to say in most circumstances?

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Wendy Long, the Republican Senate candidate who has quite a few ideas for your vagina, also has some ideas for banks.

Writing about financial reform in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, "A Smarter Approach to New York's Banks," she takes on political rival Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's "punitive" view on financial regulation.

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As Maine tries to come up with ways to manage its medical marijuana program, one of the state's lawmakers is speaking out against some proposed restrictions.

As detailed by the Portland Daily Sun, Rep. Deb Sanderson worries that the state will implement rules that "are more restrictive and divergent from the intent of the citizen's initiative legalizing medical marijuana passed in 2009."

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This week in the Voice, out today, Nick Pinto track's the NYPD's poor judgment with the mentally ill, recently culminating in the death of a schizophrenic woman, writing: "With a growing international consensus on the best practices for police interactions with the mentally ill -- practices the NYPD has so far resisted adopting -- the story of how Shereese Francis died once again raises the question of whether the NYPD is doing everything it can to train its officers on how to do the delicate work of serving New Yorkers with mental illness."

Robert Sietsema dines at Ootoya, the "Denny's of Japan," and says of the mega-chain: "Ootoya is a type of restaurant called a teishoku. Partly aimed at shoppers, it specializes in set meals that include entrées plus sides that run to white rice, steamed pumpkin, potato salad, chawanmushi, assorted pickles, miso soup, and salads. These repasts, most costing from $15 to $22, constitute an amazing bargain considering the quantity and quality of the food."

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