An aside appropos of nothing: Tipper Gore is an amateur photographer who, as I understand it, has been shooting photographs for much of her life and I've noticed she often has a camera over her shoulder as she stands in the background behind her husband when he's speaking, sneaking the odd shot of the crowd. I first heard of Tipper when she mounted an attack on (sexual, violent, deviant, fill in the blank) pop music lyrics, promoting the instigation of a ratings program similar to the movie industry's rating code.

This is one of my hot buttons. They didn't like the music I listened to in high school either (Elvis had those not ready for television swivel hips, my man, and you can't believe how that freaked them out.) Drug lyrics did the same in the late sixties and seventies when every other band on the planet including the most popular band the world was suddenly singing songs about pot, speed (it kills), coke and LSD, the devil's drug itself, and the end of the world was clearly imminent. So my reaction to Tipper and her camera doesn't put me in any mood to like her tight assed husband.

Tuesday, six in the evening, and my goodness, Gore is still in the race. Florida has gone to Gore. Tennessee, it appears, Gore's home state, has gone to Bush, and I am sitting here at the computer drinking a beer and trying to get a handle on it.

Ah, now, Florida has no longer gone to Gore, some sort of, um, computer glitch, and both candidates have got to be going bat shit. Too bad I have this cold which has now gone to my chest and I really don't feel like writing this or watching the returns on television. Election Year 2000, this joined at the hip whirl on the floor, too tight to call mind numbing Tango. Ah, now Hillary has won New York and we are guaranteed another six years of kick the senator to see if she'll bleed contest. Dear Hillary. Dear Bill. Dear Al and George. You make my little head hurt.

For whatever reason I am up and typing at 4:30 in the morning, having slept what I suppose is a reasonable night's sleep, although I wonder. All that fuss with the operation on the jaw to get rid of the sleep apnea and I wonder, not so much did it work, it obviously worked, but did it work enough? Did I get 90% there and that last untravelled 10% is now dumping me out on the floor every morning? Every other morning? Am I waking up in the middle of the night because I stop breathing or because I don't need the sleep quite so much? I don't feel tired. Well, not too tired, I still have the cold. Hi, ho: Life and its little unanswered questions, one of which appears to be Florida. Someone on the Today show has just said Bush has a 1,700 vote lead and they're recounting the entire state. At least another 12 hours, maybe another two days before they're finished. Bush appears to be a 1,700 vote winner.

I have no idea what that means. I don't believe the world will end because the Republicans have won, will win the presidency. For an old ex-hippie my age, Republican will forever be Richard Nixon and the Vietnam war, auditing the tax returns of your enemies, hiring rats and gnomes to do your breaking and entering. What of Kennedy who started the war and Johnson who waged it? Don't like them much either. Not many heros in real life, I guess, not on the national stage where money and power are endless and the people who are willing to play that game hire rats and gnomes and press agents. I wonder if there is any "breaking and entering" going on right now in Florida?