Bill Clinton will be speaking (literally) across the street in Oakland in the morning. I passed the workmen setting up the raised speaker's platform and sound system while men in dark suits and very white shirts walked about the grounds, although they didn't have the little cyborg ear plugs and the other paraphernalia you expect from watching television and the movies. So I'm going to bring a camera with a long lens and maybe wander over. The crowds should be large and I probably won't be able to get in close enough to make it worth while and the rally may well take place during an hour when I have to remain in the office, but what the hell. Why not? Forty seven eleven billion pictures of Clinton in the world. Maybe I'll be able to shoot, (er, not "shoot", "shoot" makes some people a bit nervous, but "photograph"), three or four more. From a comfortable distance.

I have to admit a certain depressed state over the idea of Bush as the next President. The impeachment folks will have finally won out, but at what price, what price? I don't much like either one of them, but I don't very much like one of them a whole lot more than the other. This woman's right to choose business. I'm old enough to remember what it means when that goes away. Life in the fifties. Was not altogether wonderful. If you were a woman. Still, what do I know? A nice preppie man, graduate of Yale, governor of the Great State of Texas. I have many friends who live in Texas. All of the old Rip Off Press people, Janis Joplin, Chet Helms and the Avalon Ballroom, all of them were Texans. Long haired Texas freaks when I knew them, not one of whom, I assume, at least those who are still living, have voted for Mr. Bush. But I could be wrong.

These feelings of foreboding come from the media and Viv's saying that it looked as if Bush would be President. Viv works in a business that counts who is voting for whom noses and my thought is maybe her comment comes from reading some disturbing computer print outs. Willie, Willie, why did you have to get a knob job from that loose lipped young woman? Too young, too young. Fucked her life up, fucked your life up, fucked up our lives as well. The Kennedys, at least, waltzed with Marilyn Monroe. One can better understand the existential questions with a Marilyn Monroe. Stupid, Willie, stupid. It may cost us more than we can afford.

"So, what's the answer?" asks self.

Well, I take another couple of these swell orange flavored zinc lozenges and get into bed. It's late. I feel a cold coming. And I need to prepare for the long winter ahead.