The Honorable Thing

[Ed. note: The grown-up me with the benefit of 20/15 hindsight now disagrees with the statement below, and apologizes for its sanctimony]

President Bill Clinton will be addressing the nation in less than two hours. It will be what NBC News is calling “one of those unscripted moments.”

Nobody has any idea what Clinton will say. But I’m willing to take a guess.

Bill Clinton, in acting reprehensibly in his “private life,” has not only humiliated himself, but also his family. Not only his family, but also our government. Not only our government, but also our nation.

I’m one of those folks who believe that this isn’t been the first time he’s lied to his family and to everyone else. It’s a horrible situation. In letting his desires lead him to a compromising situation, he has dragged every one of us down with him.

From the TV coverage I’ve seen, it appears that he admitted to an “inappropriate relationship” with Monica Lewinsky, refuting what has been one of the several lies he’s told the nation with regard to every other woman who has complained about or filed suit against.

President Bill Clinton needs to summon up the scrap of integrity he has left. The honorable thing would be for him to resign and live out his days on a government pension in Little Rock, Alabama. Otherwise, may the impeachment papers be swiftly filed by Kenneth Starr, and efficiently voted into being by our government in Washington, D.C.

I wonder what Al Gore is thinking right now.

Warning: Strong language

I don’t often use such vocabulary, but sometimes I find it necessary. Please move on to the previous column if such language offends you.

Ick. I hate Bill Clinton. The man is slime. I wouldn’t want him to sell me a used car. How can we believe anything from a man who fucks around on his wife? And then consistently lies about it.

Nice that he took full responsibility for the “inappropriate relationship” between himself and Monica. I’m sure she’ll think of that every time she collects an unemployment check for the rest of her life.

How did we end up with an adulterous president? I talked to my neighbor Danny about it. He raised the point that Kennedy screwed around on his wife. “Yeah, but nobody ever asked him about it,” I responded.

“That’s true. What would he have said if they had asked?” Danny riposted.

“He would have said, ‘Hey, I’m a Kennedy. What are you going to do? Shoot me?’.” Ahem.

Nice that Bill said that he was sorry that he hurt the two people closest to him — his wife and their daughter. I’m sure Chelsea appreciated the mention, considering that he never bothered to thank her when he gave his second inauguration speech.

Mom was pleased that at least Bill Clinton had the decency to look like hell. Guess four hours of testimony about a relationship with a twenty-something mistress takes its toll on a guy.

So, Tipper Gore has probably put away the party hats. Hopefully she’ll have the foresight to put them toward the front of her linen cabinet. I’ll pray that she has the opportunity to use them before they get too dusty.

*****

10/22/1998 If you’re neither 18 years old nor mature enough to handle frank talk about reproductive organs and adult relationships, please stop reading now.

I took my clothes from Kevin’s closet last night. Coupled with that is the fact that I’m in the process of going off the Pill. Between the sorrow of recrimination and the wooziness of blood loss, it was one of my lousier evenings of record.

***

It seems that every single couple I know is breaking up. I talked to a former coworker last night and she’s found the same to be true. I will wager a bet that the number-one reason women break up with their men is because their men no longer pay sweet attention to them. Comments?

***

I’ve reached a point where I’m tired of words. There’s a great song in “My Fair Lady” called “Show Me”:

Don’t talk of Spring,
Don’t talk of Fall,
Don’t talk at all! Show me!
Never do I ever want to hear another word,
There isn’t one I haven’t heard.
Here we are together and it ought to be a dream…
Say one more word and I’ll scream!

***

So, as previously mentioned, I’m going off the Pill. It wasn’t a conscious decision. I just forgot to take it for a week. Since I’m up on the chastity bandwagon again, remembering to take the hormone-studded wonder is a big pain. I’ve decided to simply do without.

I’ve been a bit alarmed at my resulting blood loss. I told John I thought I was hemorrhaging. It got to the point at Kevin’s that I had to slump against one of his stereo speakers (his speakers are much bigger than I am) and let the world spin for a minute.

I stopped at Dragon’s warehouse before driving to Kevin’s last night. As I was leaving, Dragon stood up and sniffed.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Come here.” I suggested. He came closer to me and inhaled the scent from my neck. Michelle told him it was probably the air freshener emanating from the bathroom.

“No, that’s not it.” Dragon said. He looked at me as if puzzled.

I didn’t want to tell him that what he smelled was my blood.

***

OK, so I know that there’s always the chance that I’ll fall off the chaste-in-singlehood wagon again. In that case, you may ask, what will Lynn use to prevent fertilization? Easy: Reality, the female condom. People laugh at me when I tell them that. I just say that means they haven’t tried it yet. True, it’s a bit of a pain to put in, but it is *so* worthwhile. It’s the best “barrier” method I’ve found. And it feels great! The best thing is that I’ve learned is that it prevents nookie-related urinary tract infections.

Another tip for avoiding those is to use products that don’t contain spermicide. They kill the good, germ-fighting bacteria. My doctor told me that the female condom is also more effective in hindering the spread of diseases such as herpes.

Two, uh, thumbs up. Lynn B. says “Check it Out!”

Marilynn and her Singing Dog

After Gregory, the Sheltie my folks had owned longer than they’d owned me, died, we mourned for him and were dogless until Megan, the dog across the street, got knocked up. She was owned by the mother of our neighbors, the Dodds. A tri-colored Shetland sheepdog, her manner was sweet and her eyes were clear and dark.

We told them that we would like a puppy from the whelping. They agreed. A puppy was secured. One morning shortly thereafter, Mom called me out of fourth grade to watch the pups get born. It was amazing. I remember being surprised that the puppies were born with their eyelids closed shut. I also remember being grossed out when Megan ate the afterbirth, something that the Dodds took in stride.

I visited the puppies every day. There were 10 in the litter, a group of squirmy blind small silken beasts. The Dodd’s other dogs, including Misty, a prize-winning Norwegian Elkhound with a cinnamon-roll tail, felt left out so I was always sure to pay attention to them on my way in and out of the door.

When we brought Chaucer (named by my Anglophile mother) home, he was a handful of puppy fuzz. His favorite place was our yellow vinyl beanbag chair. Dad constructed a wire-mesh puppy-pen for Chauce in our backyard. Chaucer taught himself to climb up the mesh ladder until he reached the top coil of leftover mesh, at which point he would whine piteously and I would lift him into the air and call him “Super-puppy”.

It was around this time in his life that we discovered Chaucer’s other talent. I was practicing piano when I heard a wail in the background. Chaucer was sitting on the floor beside my piano bench, howling. I tried to not take his action to heart. From that point, I shut him out of the room while practicing. The next summer, Frank Dill and Mike Cleary, then the morning men for KNBR-68, started talking about a festival. The festival was conceived by one of Mike’s character voices, a fellow named Gus. Gus decided that KNBR should throw a festival in his own honor. The name? The Gus Festival! Frank and Mike commenced on-air petitioning for listeners to send in their wacky act ideas. Mom looked at me. I looked at her. I wrote a letter that same day.

Christian, my first friend in the whole world (my Mom and I drove her mom to the hospital to have her when I was six months old), was visiting from North Carolina when I got a response from KNBR. “Miss Benson,” it read, “congratulations on being chosen for the stage of the Gus Festival, to be held at Pier 32 on the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend.” I think the echo of the scream that left my lips is still echoing in the distant peaks of the Himalaya mountains.

Soon after receiving the letter, I started to hear my name on the radio. Frank would talk to “Gus”. “Soooo, Gus, how are the acts lining up for your festival?” “Well, Frank, we’re going to have a fellow who wrestles chaise lounges.” “Hmmmm. Interesting. Got anything else?” “Well, let’s see. Oh! We’ve got Marilynn and her Singing Dog!” “Wow!” Frank would exclaim. It was all terribly thrilling.

I chose a Rondo from one of my more advanced piano books and practiced ceaselessly, bringing in Chaucer only occasionally so he wouldn’t strain his voice.

When the day of the Gus Festival arrived, I dressed up and made a placard that would be propped up on the stage for our act. We arrived with plenty of time to spare so we wandered the perimeter of the pier. People came up to us, asking, “Is this Marilynn and her singing dog?” They were thrilled to find out that it was, we were. KRON-TV filmed me standing with Chaucer and our placard, but I spent so much time telling Chaucer to look at the camera that they didn’t show the clip.

Finally, it was our turn to perform. Chaucer and I mounted the stage, my hand clutching his leash, the spotlights blinding me to the 2,000 people who faced us. I set up the placard and went to the piano they’d provided stage right, sat down, cleared my throat, and began the rondo.

Chaucer didn’t sing. I continued to play. Chaucer sniffed the edges of the stage. The dog wasn’t singing. The dog wasn’t singing! After all this, the dog wasn’t singing!

W.C. Fields said that you should never share the stage with animals or children. Well, I was a child sharing a stage with an animal, and the only thing I could think to do was to finish the rondo. So I did.

Mercifully, that was when Frank and Mike stepped out onto the stage with us. One of them picked up the dog as the other welcomed the festival-goers to the event. After a few minutes of easy banter, they looked out into the crowd.

“Whaddaya say?” they asked. “Should we give the dog another try?”

The audience cheered.

I sat back down at the piano and called to Chaucer. Upon hearing the opening notes, he ran to the piano. And sang his little fuzzy heart out. When the song was over, I picked him up and nuzzled his neck with my face, and it was in this position that we took our victorious bow.

Chaucer doesn’t sing anymore, which probably has to do with the fact that he’s old and deaf deaf deaf. But until the rest of my days, I will be thankful for him, for the thunderous applause he brought to me… to us.

A Case of Mistaken Identity?

OK, so I’d been *wondering* why my hit count has doubled this month. Silly me, I figured it was due to my recent spate of updates. Fortunately, my buddy Ben K. set me right. Via e-mail.

“Hey Lynn,” he wrote, “did you know that your domain name is in MicroTimes this month?”

He saved me from driving out into the night to look for the magazine by sending me the URL of the article that mentions dear sweet Motormouth.com. Of course, the use seems to be entirely fictional. As far as I know, I’ve never met the author, David Strom. No, smart aleck, I didn’t pay him off, either.

It’s a real trip. He’s got me (or rather MotorMouth.com) as the content-rich competitor of HarleyWheels.com and HotRod magazine. Guess they know I’m a leadfoot at heart… “The MotorMouth folks have pages of parts galore and are starting to draw lots of traffic. Worse yet, the print ad sales rep from HotRod are starting to hear more and more about the competition from these MotorMouth guys.”

Uh, *gals*. Actually, *gal*. Also amusing is that he mentions the side issue that Harley Davidson might come down on our “two friendly [fictitious] Web gurus because of the nature of their domain name.” Uh, been there, done that.

So, if you ended up at my site due to this MicroTimes article, a hearty welcome to you. Sorry, I don’t have any motorcycle parts for sale. And there aren’t any nekkid pictures around here either. I hope that you’ll stick around for a while, regardless.

How I Spent my Summer Vacation

Yeah, OK, it’s been a while.

Seems that right after I finished revamping motormouth.com into the lovely, classic site you see before you, I got really sick of Web sites (might have had something to do with the fact that I was also knee-deep in a revamp of IBIS’s site at the same time).

To make up for my neglect of you, I’ve typed long and hard until the wee small hours of the morning.

I promise to never neglect you for this long again.

Well, for a while, at least.

***

My summer began with a camping trip to Yosemite with the junior-high youth group I advise.

Three advisers, eleven junior-highers, no running water. We all had a blast!

Steve, the male adviser, was quickly dubbed “MacGyver” for his now-I’ll-make-something-out-of-twigs-and-string prowess. Kimberly (the youth director) and I borrowed an extra tent — a six-person tent — from one of the campers. The kids called our tent “Buckingham Palace.” Other tents were nicknamed “Taj Mahal” (a dome tent, natch) and “Hearst Castle”.

One night I was sitting near the campfire with two of the boys in the group. They asked me, “Lynn, do you know how tents are rated as one-person, two-person or more-person tents?”

I had to plead ignorance.

They continued talking amongst themselves. Pointing to a very small tent, Josh said “I bet not even Yoko Ono could fit in that tent!”

Matt replied, “Yeah, but he has a really cool Web site.”

I was thoroughly confused, so it was time to interrupt. “Guys, I don’t think that Yoko Ono is that big.”

They looked at me and burst into simultaneous laughter.

I continued. “I really don’t think that Yoko Ono is more than five feet two.”

Then, a light bulb flashed above my head.

“You two don’t mean *Akebono*, the sumo wrestler, do you?”

“Of course!” they replied. “He has a really cool Web site, too.”

I sucked in my cheeks to keep from laughing before I could explain to them, “Yoko Ono was John Lennon’s wife.”

When Kimberly came back to the campfire, it took us five minutes before we could all stop laughing long enough to explain why we were laughing.

The Saturday we were there, we hiked up the Mist Trail to Vernal Falls. It was exhilarating and humbling at the same time. There’s just so much water! My fingers prune up just thinking about it. A couple of the kids had a tough time making it up, but everyone arrived at the top in one piece. On our way back down, five of us sang “The Ants go Marching”. We got up to 20 before we ran out of rhymes, so we sang up to 20 another two times.

🙂

***

What else? Sabrina and Dave (my married neighbors across the street) have had members of Sabrina’s family in from France for the past four months.

Her brother, Michael, was a lot of fun and got me and Alex hooked on World Cup Soccer. So hooked, that while driving to my Mom’s house on the day of the championship game, I searched in vain for a radio station with a live broadcast. The only one I found was in Spanish. When I heard the announcer say en Espanol that France was leading Brazil 2-0, I thought “naah, must be my rusty Spanish.”

Upon arrival at Mom’s, and after presenting her with her birthday present (a wicked cool Coleman gas barbecue with side gas burner), I rushed in to catch the rest of the game.

I talked with Michael a few days ago. He said that when he watched the championship game (he was back in Bordeaux by then), it was in a large hall with a big-screen TV. “Lynn, it was great. People were smoking and drinking, and when France won, well, I partied until 8:00 the next morning,” he told me.

Sorry, Alvaro. But I wore my Brazil futbol cap for the weeks preceding the championship, so I feel your pain.

***

And, while I’m on the subject of Dave and Sabrina, they had their baby nearly two weeks ago. Their new daughter was 20 inches long and weighed 8 pounds, 4 ounces, which, incidentally, is what I weighed at birth.

(Jeez… I’ve put on like more than 100 pounds since then… 🙂

The baby is really amazing. I got to hold her today and in the span of five minutes, she spat up a bit, and then she started hiccupping, and then her face like froze for ten seconds until she sneezed! Truly, she’s remarkably intelligent.

When they brought her home from the hospital, the song playing on the radio was “Daughter” by Pearl Jam. Honest!

***

The vegetable seeds I started four months ago are bearing vegetables. I’ve got 15 ears of corn and God knows how many tomatoes. I got some heirloom everbearing raspberry bushes today from my friend Larry’s grandma. The bushes grow wild on her property and bear the most luscious berries I’ve ever seen.

Larry has been teaching me how to shoot hoops. It’s really fun, and I even beat him in a game of H-O-R-S-E two weeks ago. “Larry’s a HO.” I singsonged. It was even more fun to sing when he had H-O-R…

***

Yesterday was Johnny P’s birthday. He’s 28 years old, so I get to be two years older than him for another few months, which I’ll be certain to remind him if the opportunity should arise.

I had dinner with him, his mom and his grandma last night and we had a great time. Buck’s Restaurant in Woodside is terrific. I’m eager to go there for breakfast. Any takers?

No, you wouldn’t nudge me, you’d meet me there. Smart aleck.

***

OK, so I guess I’ve talked about everyone and everything else by now so I have nobody left but myself.

My job I are no longer one. I’ve been doing some consulting and am *really* enjoying it. It’s so wonderful to work at home, and the projects have been right up my alley — tough to argue with that! My Duo is all hooked up to my 56k USRx2 modem and my Color StyleWriter 4100 (got a great deal on it at Fry’s — thanks, Dragon!). I’ve also appropriated the kitchen table as a desk: Figured I might as well because we never *eat* on it.

In my free time, I’ve learned how to sew and have two new dresses to show for it. I’ve read 20 books this summer, tended my garden, and have seen Kevin as often as his schedule allows. I think he enjoys suburban life, though it pains his citified heart to admit it. We went to Portland in June to visit his grandma, and recently spent a weekend at the Blackthorne Inn in Inverness Park. Magical!

***

Best of all, it’s still only August, which means hot days for corn to grow and long days for shooting hoops.

Aaah, it’s a good life.