Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

Pardon the bunch of short, post-dated journal entries just to get this last week recorded!

Cathy came over after her work Friday and brought the razor that I left in her car last Sunday (which even my slow-growing facial fur is very much missing, since I didn't even use it at the Cape).

I was still finishing up on a site that was launching, and then I realized my way of theming forms broke their submission, and had to fix that right away. Cathy did the invitation cards for Steph's bachelorette party in the meantime, and I finally took a shower. (Still didn't shave though.)

Last Sunday (one week ago, March 9th).

The weather was so nice, if a little windy, that we circumnavigated Doctor's Hill and later walked all the way to the shack. Zelda and Rusty got a lot of walk

The purpose for my going was to help Grandpa out.

Cathy did the driving both ways and helped move beds in the re-done guest room and put photo albums back in the red room, and arranged the the strange knickknacks on the shelves.

I cooked veggie and real meatballs.

Grandpa and I owe Cathy a better meal and an actual Cape vacation :-P

Open Letter to Greyhound / Peter Pan Bus Lines
AKA More travel adventures with Ben!

Decided maybe I should stretch instead of just walking around on my toes.

After a few minutes of stretching my feet turned blue. Any medical students out there care to diagnose that?

Today, 2008 February 10, Sunday, 7:30 a.m. I Benjamin Maurice Melançon will not look at any more online comics

Period.

Except ones sent to me.

So if you're really kind, you'll send me links to good Non Sequitur or Ted Rall or Pears Before Swine or anything once in a while.

Also I will no more partake in going to Counterpunch, Common Dreams, or similar random browsing of news and opinion.

Same here– if you're kind and care about my mental health and awareness of the world, you'll send me some facts and analysis once in a while.

going 80 mph, dark

came over the hood

car almost certainly insured for others' damage only

Specifically, I held the "O" for a while across from Natick Common with Kim Nguyen and a dozen others, mostly the regulars, who have been out every week, Saturday noon to 1 p.m. or longer, for peace, since before the U.S. military invaded Iraq.

With very, very little media coverage, as they couldn't help but mention. Need to write to the list about coordinating media-- and food, every gathering should be a little bit of a party too.

West Virginia's slogan no longer "Open for business" thank goodness.

Back to being "Wild and wonderful"

Friend of Dan's suggested go one further: "West Virginia: We take our tops off" with a picture of two mountains with their tops leveled for coal mining.

As I said, "open for business" might as well be "we sell our soul to the highest bidder," and common sentiment is probably: ok, you're politicians, you're going to give tax breaks to giant corporations and unfund our schools, let our rivers be destroyed, and dgenerally screw the public. But do you have to put it on our signs?

The fluorescent tube light cast a warmer glow than the dawning day.

Waiting with Dimitrius for his friend to arrive at the Logan / Peter Pan bus stop near where Shopper's World used to be, before they tore it down and put a strip mall there, the man in the next car had a Red Sox game on the radio.

It's a shock to hear the Red Sox announcers.

How can they go on after my father died? (goes the internal monologue) What's their point?

A yellow-orange bird that likes mulberries. With a black-and-white design on the wings. A bit smaller than a robin.

Maybe that's orange-yellow, comparing it to the goldfinch, now also in the mulberry tree (and the goldfinch is yellow, not gold, incidentally).

OK, this is also personal, but of far less importance.

I got nailed at 3 a.m. in Virginia going down to Atlanta. The state trooper was fairly reasonable, and the fine was too, $75 for going 75 mph in a 60 mph zone (the officer alleged he could have thrown a special zone that was just behind, or a few more miles per hour on my speed, that would have upped the price a lot).

This one hits a little close to home:

Nothing says that poor people can't make good soldiers. But let's not kid ourselves. There's a reason so many of the dead come from high-unemployment, low-wage states like West Virginia. They're desperate. And desperate people are more tempted to accept a job that could cost them their lives.

Hi Dan!

Perfect, really, the weather held off perfectly, for the overnight trip to Provincetown, Saturday to Sunday.

I'm about three quarters less happy and at least fifty percent more angry?

They're tearing up the tracks by our house in Natick, Massachusetts.

It's very strange the way it's being done. In the middle of the summer, rather than in the spring (when the train stopped running), so I rather doubt we're going to see a bike path on it this year. Also, the rails have been pulled from the ties (and some railroad ties dislodged from the ground), and put on the side. What's the point?

I still wish it had become a commuter rail plus freight, with a bike lane beside it-- or better yet make room for pedestrians and bicycles on the roads.

Keep rails rails,

Somewhere in the army labs, in the vicinity of the baseball diamond I assume, there's been a lot of people making news– it sounded like a huge crowd this morning, and now a smaller group doing karaoke. Loudly and fairly enthusiastically, if not too well.

Zelda is a little upset. She ruffs at it every once in a while.

I need a political reason to not eat potato chips.

The first United States Social Forum was fantastic.

The trip down, with picking Lambert up in Boston and Camilo and Juan Carlos in Providence, was 1130 miles (not counting getting lost) and the trip up was longer, with stops in Philadelphia and New York City.