Well, Mr. Ames! Sorry for the interruption, but could you believe it when the entire internet collapsed? That's exactly what happened. The big secret! The huge increase in the sending of video material was just too much for the system to handle. We're pretty much down to jammed phone lines that rarely work and ham radios. It's turned the world on its ear. Drove it crazy. "Communication" a no-no word? "Services?" Still fairly big. Serious blunders were just as bad as anything. Nearly everything even vaguely attached to the Net went down too at the same time evidently. [Many who were with brokers or who brokered lost everything.] One good thing: There is far less access to all the data on each citizen. [I heard that there's been no more renting of federal land for quite awhile. But who's "saving" rotten judges?] At least there can be no more business takeovers. [The "rich" can get fat, but I have actually lost some weight.]

If my so-called career is destroyed, all my correspondence could be someone's great joy to read. [Sob.] My "swift" machine for dictating is down. But I don't even know how much to tell you and others about dear old loud Molly, my WASP. [And a wholesome addict.] It wasn't her fault that I missed that big vote on a labor bill, and that awful caboose that was quietly hooked to the end of it, just before the House vote. ("Throw it on the track and see if it runs.") Re the "speech," why the bill's trailer?! Congress knew the country's stand on "Church and State" - a "stand" that the Party in power sought to

change from the word go, when they messed with the Constitution. And we know an aide's job - to notify a Senator most definitely if it is at all necessary. The Senate may even know how laws like the one they proposed might affect me personally! What guts I would have if I truly said: "They might affect me!" My record on church attendance this year is nil. [No one knows that she thinks she hasn't grown up yet, that there's an explorer in her. She always made a great variety of funny faces. It threw them off in D.C.] I had a lot of fear and a lot of pain. But I never tired and I wanted some fun.

And I wanted to get in on those final minutes at the Capitol - with those with no deadly spin-off of AIDS (genetics or no, "Gays" are being forced by law to stop the practice with others) - where I could learn what had been going on without my presence! No buzzer rang?! Molly was right here with me, but she was in another part of the office, and she didn't hear a buzzer either. I think she was spraying our vile insects. Once in a while she becomes really alive to do only that. And, I can add, no phone calls from Doug, my "best" [?!] aide and writer and general front-man; no bells nor buzzers; no message from him on my obnoxious, flawed, powder-blue answering-machine that I can't possibly understand. Things like that - plus computers - I always lump with "machines."