Mark LaFlamme: Online ugliness is the rule, not the exception

Street Talk: In the day when public discourse was conducted in a real-world environment, one could expect a punch in the nose if he resorted to the kind of trash talk we see as a matter of course online.

Mark LaFlamme: Dope smuggling isn’t for the faint of heart

Street Talk: As long as there's the potential for big money, somebody somewhere is willing to take the risk, and sheer numbers mean the odds are in their favor. 

Mark LaFlamme: Brother, can you spare a column idea?

Street Talk: I may not have the intellectual gusto to generate ideas of my own today, but plenty of you weirdos were happy to step up and do it for me.

Mark LaFlamme: The robots really ARE taking over

Street Talk: Not only is artificial intelligence producing credible written works these days, by some estimates, those bots may be responsible for HALF the content you find on the web.  

Mark LaFlamme: No time for the monkey bars: Adulting is just a drag

Street Talk: Every kid who dreams of being a grown-up will eventually be cursed with that very thing. 

Mark LaFlamme: James Earl Jones must hate the new baseball rules

Street Talk: Major League Baseball is tampering with tradition all over the place, and in a variety of perverse ways.

Mark LaFlamme: Lost ladies find their way home

Street Talk: Maybe someone will write a folk song about Maine's lost ladies. Someone should. 

Mark LaFlamme: 21 years of blither

Street Talk: It's downright strange to me that a person sitting next to me, drinking legally at a bar, could have been born the year I started writing Street Talk.

Mark LaFlamme: Abused feline has found a home, wanted in another

Street Talk: For the cat named Harlow, the long road to recovery was just beginning. But for the young woman who rescued the animal, all that awaited was frustration.

Mark LaFlamme: Victims are awaiting justice and finding it lacking