Dear Mistress,

I'm a guy. I like sex (perhaps even more than the average guy). So here's my question: While I can't envision being happy in a long-term relationship without a healthy diet of good sex, I've found that leaping into sexual activity too early in a relationship can — if the sex is really good — put one or both people into a state of blissful desire that can make everything seem exceptionally swell, even if other forms of compatibility may be lacking.... Read more

Last January in this space, we reported on Cambridge resident Christine Sullivan’s self-published book 44 Days Out of Kandahar, which told the story of her desperate search for a puppy lost halfway around the world. Sullivan’s Navy reservist brother, Mark Feffer, had befriended the flop-eared red mutt named Cinnamon in Afghanistan, but circumstances derailed his plan to bring her back to his Annapolis home.... Read more

Lyric Theatre has earned a reputation over the past 35 years for serving up family-friendly entertainment. The company’s new show, a raunchy romp about male nudity and shifting gender roles, should prove no exception.... Read more

Following last year’s run of her play Dreamtime — a fictional drama based on the 2001 murders of Dartmouth professors Half and Suzanne Zantop by Chelsea teens James Parker and Robert Tulloch — Vermont playwright Maura Campbell returns with another original work inspired by troubled youth.... Read more

Beep, beep, beep.

“OK, I’ll pick you up at 8:15 tonight, but I gotta run. I got another call coming in.”

I clicked off the one customer, scowling at my infernal cellphone. I could say that I have a love/hate relationship with technology, but hate/hate is more on the mark. No matter how many times I try it, the call-waiting maneuver escapes me. In the relentless race of 21st-century life, I’m way behind and out of breath, with no realistic hope of ever catching up.

I pushed a few buttons, more or less at random.... Read more

Playing the lottery is a risky business. Sure, blowing a couple bucks on the occasional scratch ticket is essentially harmless. But if you’re not careful, the danger is always there to become addicted, which can lead to a lifetime of near poverty, near toothlessness and an unhealthy amount of time spent in gas stations buying tickets and praying for that elusive big score — which you would then, of course, use to buy more tickets and maybe a Twisted Tea tall boy or three.... Read more

The media has engaged in plenty of navel gazing and hand wringing in the wake of several small “s” scandals involving officials keeping info secret from the public.

Oh, if we only had more resources, we’d be able to hold officials accountable, has been the mainstream media’s lament. What would the public do without us? How our democracy would suffer.... Read more

Here's the weekly astrological forecast for November 4 - 11, 2009. What's your sign, baby? They're all here...... Read more

Curses, Foiled Again ... Read more

(All By Ourselves Records, digital download)

On their MySpace page, local rock outfit Indecent Exposure brazenly claim their latest album, Sleazy, sounds like “nothing you’ve ever heard before.” As if that statement weren’t fraught with enough foolhardy bravado, they challenge skeptics a step further with this perilous line: “Deal with it.”

Them’s fightin’ words.... Read more