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Question: How can I ask my wife for sex? We have been married for 19-plus years, and have not had sex for ten years now. I am desperate. IT is complicated. Any ideas? Dear Reader:Thank you for your question. I can feel your frustration. There are many factors to consider. It brings up many more questions that can be directed to both you and/or your wife. * What else is happening with your relationship? * Is there depression or other mental illness? Is depression medication a factor? This can dramatically change a person's desire or inclination towards sex. * Was there a recovered memory of sexual trauma or abuse as a child? * Was there an injury? Is there now a disability that makes sex uncomfortable or painful? * Has an affair occurred? Do both parties know about the affair? Are you certain that either party is unaware? * Has there been a history of drug or alcohol abuse? * Has there been a history of domestic violence, in any way? Verbal, emotional, mental, physical, sexual? * Did she have a child, was it a traumatic delivery? * Have either of you gained a lot of weight? Has this weight created negative feelings? * Do you watch a lot of pornography?

When playwright Arthur Miller directed Death of a Salesman in Beijing some 30 years ago, the tragedy was a hit with Chinese audiences. That surprised some: How could citizens of a socialist country relate to a play about the victim of a capitalist system? But Miller’s 1949 work is more than an attack on economic injustice. It’s also the story of a self-deluded man and his dysfunctional family. Most centrally, it’s about the strained relationship between Willy Loman and his favorite son, Biff, an ex-high school jock who’s never been able to get his life together. The scene in which the tension between them finally explodes is the most powerful moment of SRO’s current production, and probably of most productions. Willy, the titular traveling salesman, is a man of 60-plus years who’s been reduced to working for commissions on ever-shrinking sales. Not only has he been unable to pay his bills—a fact he’s hidden from his wife, Linda—but it’s become increasingly clear that he can’t count on his less-than-successful sons for support. Compounding his problems, he’s begun “talking” to people from his past as he tries to figure out where his life took a wrong turn.

Protestors descended upon the Wendy’s at 9th Ave. and High St. on the Ohio State University campus on Saturday, November 16 to demand that the Dublin-based corporation join the Fair Food Program. Of the five largest fast food companies in the country, Wendy’s is the only holdout against the Program. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has built an historic partnership between farmworkers, tomato growers and eleven leading food corporations based on human rights, dignity and developing a sustainable tomato industry. A boisterous, chanting crowd with drums and megaphones demanded the end to substandard poverty wages. Signs called for Wendy’s to pay one penny more a pound to benefit the workers. The prevailing piece rate today for tomato workers is 50 cents for every 32 pounds of tomatoes harvested.

Eye is Adam Smith from Dead Sea, Matt Bailey of Teeth of the Hydra, ex-Pretty Weapons members Brandon Smith and Matt Auxier. From this roster one could probably ascertain Eye is probably a well-executed, heavy and deep journey into the intersection of psych, space, stoner, progg, metal and the avant-garde with Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath as touchstones. Like any good space-rock band, Eye draws influence from science fiction, fantasy, altered consciousness, nature and life in general. I queried Eye’s vocalist, Moogist, Mellotronist and guitarist Auxier on what science fiction style-problem is looming in reality. His response: “Space migration. Are we ever going to be able ever to venture somewhere else to start a colony? Because we are ruining our planet! We have to figure something out in the next 50-100 years.” He views saving the earth as better described as saving ourselves. “The earth will destroy us all if we don’t figure something out. It’s probably too late. The Earth may still be here, it may just wipe us out on the way.

The website says it all: RadioactiveWasteAlert.org. The billboard with a young woman guzzling liquid with a radioactive warning on it under the phrase: “Don’t Frack My Water, Protect Columbus” set the stage for one of the most important public forums in the city’s history. If we had to summarize the major themes that emerged from the Tuesday, November 12 Radioactive Frack Waste Forum, the first is this: the public has a right to know that much of the process allowing radioactive waste into the central Ohio watershed near Alum Creek is the result of hidden, behind-the-scenes maneuvering by Ohio legislators and Governor John Kasich. Second: the frack waste is undisputedly radioactive and carcinogenic. Radium 226 found at 3000 percent over the allowable limit by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a long-established link to many forms of cancer, including breast and bone cancer. Third: All landfills leak. If you put radioactivity into them, it will come out. Fourth: Ohio has become a radioactive dumping ground for the fracking industry and is now importing the waste prohibited by the regulators in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Ohio’s power plants rank second in the nation in emitting carbon pollution, according to recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data. Private investor-owned utilities such as First Energy and American Electric Power operate the five leading pollution producers in Ohio that account for 50 percent of all the emissions in the Buckeye State. Just prior to the gathering at the 19th Conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 200 Ohioans rallied in front of the Ohio Statehouse demanding immediate action on global warming. The demonstration organized by Environment Ohio urged support for President Barack Obama’s plan to regulate carbon pollution at major U.S. power plants. “Our message today is clear. The time is now to act on climate change,” said Christian Adams, a state organizer with Environment Ohio. “Global warming threatens our health, our environment and our children’s future. Ohioans support President Obama’s plan to clean up the biggest carbon polluters.” The Obama plan directs the EPA to propose new standards for carbon pollution emissions for all existing and future power plants. U.S.

Life on Planet High Street is like life on the shores of an ocean on a far-distant earth-like orb: freaks and geeks rolling by like driftwood; human reptiles and upright dudes and dudettes crawling forth from the primal liquid, the good with the bad; and as always, the interminably ugly with the remarkably beautiful as well as the forgettable in-betweens. Circus time! Working on the city's endlessly fascinating main north-south thoroughfare in the campus area in an ossifying profession known as 'record store,' there have been one or two lethargic days in the last 20 years. But I don't remember them. There is simply too much non-stop action. Like the aging retired American army colonel who owns an antique store in Old San Juan said in Yankee-fied Spanish of his environs, "Nunca un momento aburrido" ("Never a dull moment"). And sometimes these creatures make a sharp left- or right-turn and enter my world. Everyone's greeted with a detached hello but a greeting nonetheless. Their response helps clarify my involuntary survival-instinct gathering of impressions which started the moment they entered my eyesight.

Allen Ginsberg. Jack Kerouac. William Burroughs. Lucien Carr. Lucien Carr? Carr may be less familiar than the others—all icons of the Beat Generation—but he apparently played an important role in the literary movement’s birth. That role is explained in the based-on-fact flick Kill Your Darlings. This stylish first feature by director/co-writer John Krokidas is a murder mystery of sorts, but the crime doesn’t materialize until late in the proceedings. For the most part, the focus is on Ginsberg (Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe) and the quest he undertakes after becoming a student at Columbia University in 1943. While World War II grinds on, Ginsberg and other rebellious young writers basically declare war on literary conformity. And how does Carr (Dane DeHaan) figure in? He’s a student who has no writing ability of his own, but he appears to be an expert at inspiring writers—particularly writers who, like Ginsberg, are attracted to his caution-to-the-wind attitude and blond good looks. Though Ginsberg arrives on campus determined to buckle down and study, he eagerly sets aside his books when Carr invites him to a party in a bohemian part of town.

This past Wednesday in the wake of Wikileaks publishing a draft of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Ohio State chapter of United Students for Fair Trade (USFT) paid a visit to Pat Tiberi’s (R-Ohio) office in Westerville. "We're delivering a letter to Pat Tiberi asking him to not support fast track for the Trans-Pacific Parntership," said Taylor Picorelli, 3rd year in Business/ Environment, Economy, Development, & Sustainability (EEDS). Though Congress has the ultimate authority to negotiate international trade, the TPP is currently on the “fast track,” meaning that President Barack Obama could have the power to sign the agreement into law before Congress approves it. The delegation of Ohio State students visited the district office of U.S. Rep. Tiberi to deliver a letter urging the congressman to join the over 150 members of Congress demanding transparency in the TPP negotiations. "The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a huge threat to democracy and human rights," said Sara Stanger, 3rd year International Studies major and President of the OSU chapter of USFT.

Oh tosh, it has begun. I realize, of course, that I should have been expecting it. But, alas, I was caught off guard. When I walked into the supermarket last night, there it was: the jingling of that bloody bell in the hands of a Santa-clad Salvation Army worker. I'm not entirely certain why it is, but I detest that sound. To me it is akin to the sound of a screaming baby or a wood chipper, both of which make my teeth itch. I put the tinkling of the Salvation Army Santa bell right up there with the sound of an unattended car alarm. Speaking of which, who ever thought that was a good idea? When was the last time you saw someone promptly attend to a car alarm once it has sounded? More often than not, the car alarm blares away outside the earshot of the vehicle's owner, annoying all those who are within earshot. It's senseless, I tell you. But about that Salvation Army Santa bell clattering. The more I think on it, the more I understand about my own loathing of the sound. Several years ago, for reasons I do not recall, I had the occasion to shop at a different supermarket from my regular one.