Free Republic

How much would you pay to be pelted by Mick Jagger's sweat at Fenway Park? Try $3,500. That's right ... Three-and-a-half grand! Two mortgage payments! Desperate Rolling Stones fans might even have to trade in the family SUV for a chance to get up close and personal with the rock legends at their historic performances Aug. 21 and 23 at friendly Fenway.

Titled "The Little Black Book - Queer in the 21st century", contains deadly misinformation on health. Written by Boston-based "AIDS Action Committee" with help from Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Boston Public Health Commission. Funded also by major corporations, universities, even charities.

BOSTON - Matt Laderer figured it was the kind of question straight people ask their moms and dads: When is the right time to get married? ''I realized, I don't know that information,'' the 24-year-old mechanical engineer says on a recent night out with his boyfriend at Club Cafe, a gay bar in Boston's South End. ''I don't know when to buy the ring.''

A gun-toting pharmacist - beloved by paying customers for his friendly banter - opened fire on an armed OxyContin robber as the two swapped lead instead of cheery hellos yesterday afternoon.No one, including two workers and a customer who were in the store at the time, was injured. Lawrence Maida Sr.'s pharmacy is just one of dozens hit in recent years by armed robbers looking for so-called ``hillbilly heroin.'' Cops say Maida's store has been robbed several times before, and this is not the first time the second-generation druggist has used a gun to run off bandits.

Charlestown resident Delphine Hamilton swore off dining out six months ago after being sickened by news reports about restaurant patrons finding rat heads and fingers in their fast-food orders. Now she's wishing she had followed her own lead.

Who lives next to you.

A federal judge won't give a dyslexic Quincy woman extra time to finish her second-year medical school exams, ruling that timed tests aren't covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

A violent rapist who terrorized three Boston women at knifepoint for hours in 1982 - forcing two victims' male partners to watch - is a free man after a jury ruled that he was not a ``sexually dangerous person,'' the Herald has learned.

Deval Patrick first came to Massachusetts when he was 14, a poor kid from Chicago with a rare opportunity to learn at a prestigious private school in a leafy Boston suburb. From Milton Academy, he went on to Harvard, then Harvard Law School. As a young lawyer he worked in the Clinton White House, and later provided counsel to some of America's corporate giants. Now he wants the top job in Massachusetts politics. But first, Deval Patrick has to tell voters who he is.

We've all been witness to it: the parent who loses it in line at the grocery store; the child dissolved in tears, or yelling right back. Yelling seems to be a part of many family's lives. Perhaps we've done it ourselves.

WOODS HOLE - Some scientists call the mysterious marine organism "The Blob," as if it were some creature from a 1950s horror movie.But most know it as the less scary sea squirt, an invasive unknown species that has raised concerns among scientists about its possible effect on the marine environment.