he Tuesday polls have closed, the ballots are still being counted, but estimates make the outcome clear: California has lost the recall election.

California voters turned out in record, ignorant numbers Oct. 7 to make their confused voices heard, and the answer was a resounding, "What's this all about again?" As voters chose to recall Gov. Gray Davis, elected only 11 months earlier, and replace him with female-violating, Hitler-loving pure beef slab Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Not that a truly inept politician can't ruin an entire political system in less than a year. The current president only needed 9 months before the world as we knew it fell into a shitcan. And Gray Davis, described by friends as "a necessary evil," probably deserved a good pink-slipping. But to replace the deviously crafty with the hopelessly out-of-their-league, a trend already set at the presidential level, left California in the position of the biggest loser in the U.S.

Early estimates show the recall winning by 55%, with Schwarzenegger leading the recall candidates by a sizable margin. Among the opponents not just doing it for shits and giggles, Lt. Gov. "Tom" Cruz Bustamente, Sen. Tom McClintock, apparently not the character from the John Wayne movie of the same name, and a Green Party candidate who pushed a referendum where new ballots were cast with hemp. Schwarzenegger's 7,000+ votes over the next nearest candidate was called "overwhelming" by some overly-excited reporters. After all, here is a difficult foreign name they already know how to pronounce.

McClintock conceded happily to his fellow plus-sized Republican, calling it a "great day for California."

"In response to a common danger, the people of California rose to their duties and ordered a new direction for our state," said the well-rehearsed GOP mouthpiece. The message on that direction couldn't be less clear: We want the dumbest, most sexually-excitable candidate who runs a chain of failed over-hyped restaurants to do for us what he did for The Last Action Hero.

The white media, plagued with their fascination with celebrity, lauded the Schwarzenegger victory in many subtle ways, some calling it a "Hollywood ending." Leaving one compelled to remind reporters Dr. Strangelove and Taxi Driver had Hollywood endings, too.

Exit polls showed many voters disappointed with the failure of Gray Davis to mend California's budget problems during his 11 months in office. "It's not like the whole country's in a recession here," said one angry voter, drooling on this reporter's tape recorder.

The results of the California recall do little to surprise most pollsters, who predicted the election weeks in advance with their preemptive announcement of recall results beforehand. When asked what features they were looking for in a state governor, most Californians cited a vague understanding of the problems afflicting the state, poor pronunciation of English, and having appeared in at least one horrible Batman movie.

In a concession speech, Gray Davis called for everyone to "get behind" the governor-elect. What Davis neglected to add, but surely was thinking, was either that, 1, you could then proceed to push him off a cliff and into the Pacific Ocean, or 2, he's a big guy and you'll need the shade when the air conditioning dies after every power grid goes out, you fickle yellow-bellied traitors.

Schwarzenegger's new lieutenant governor, a bronze bust of former president Ronald Reagan, could not be reached for comment, as it's incapable of speech.

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Like that faithful old pisser of a national monument out there in them park, one could always set their watch to the Great Burping German of Pistro Falls, Pennsylvania. When Ned was a boy he would often go to see that German down at the bookstore or the dog track to ask him questions or just to stand there and stare in wonderments. People came from far and near and places too near to be far or too far to be near just to see that eighth belching wonder of the world, as he sat with a little schnauzer dog named Blueten on his lap and burped the merry day away.

Some said that one could peek into the future by listening careful to them reverberant conflagrations of air and sausage fumes, like lookin' close at tea leaves or the part in Teddy Wetzembaum's hair. Others waxed and waned poetic 'bout them ringers like they was the music of the night, a waltz of the human iced with the frosting of the divine. Still others called him a big fat pig of a slob and wished he'd eat his dinner in some other restaurant. But nobody not here nor there denied that he belched, nor argued that it weren't frequent.

Once a scientist-type tried to catch one of the Burping German's belches in a great big balloon, like the kind them kiddies tie to their half-formed fists with a band of rubber and then proceed to punch at the thing until one of them is the loser. Needless to say, once he had that balloon he didn't have to wait long for the German to belch, and when he did, that scientist was lifted up in the air like a hot air balloon pilot. And we didn't see none of him for eight more months until one day he floated on back into town dressed up like a geisha girl and with two black eyes. Nobody never did ask him what happened on his trip when he was riding that magical belch but nobody argued that he hadn't caught a burp in a balloon nor that he didn't fly away like a squirrel taped to a blimp.

Some folks, like the owner of the opera house who'd never once put on an opera that wasn't punctuated by rafter-rattling burps, or the dental assistant who'd had her fillings shook out when she got too close to one of the Burping German's grade-A rumblers, and possibly the German's upstairs neighbors also, thought that we should run that German out of town by torchlight for disturbing the public peace.

But the rest of us remembered all that the Burping German had done for us, ever since the day many a year ago when he arrived in town mysteriously, being burped up out of the belly of a beached whale and all down by the shore. And unlike the Sneezing Chinaman of Cinder Nook or the Flatulent Finn of North Tonken, the Burping German never stopped giving back to them peoples, teaching little know-nothing children how to burp whenever they asked, and delivering a special belch sermon in church on Sundays.

So them next time you hear a sound not quite like a goat and more roundish than a foghorn, one that gives your earlobes a tickle and makes your hair feel electrimafied, before you go to your cabinet for that elephant gun remember that it may just be the Great Burping German of Pistro Falls, stopping by to see if you have any baking soda to spare.

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Hey, Shorty, get me a glass o' buttermilk, will ya? Ah, thanks… nothin' like a nice cold glass o' buttermilk, no sir. Hey, I ever tell you the one about the milkman's boy? No? Well, listen up a spell…

You remember that ol' boy Floyd that used to deliver the milk, don't you? Long time ago. Guy was always pissed off at everybody, couldn't nobody talk to him for very long or he'd go off on 'em? You remember. Anyway, it turns out that ol' Cecil , who brings the milk now, is his son. I know, he's Moira's boy, rest her soul, and no, it didn't happen the natural way. Ol' Floyd was too mean and lowdown to ever spend enough time with a woman for that. And crazy Moira… well, you know I don't like to speak unkind of the dead. But anyway, here's what happened…

See, Floyd, he was always pissed off about something, like I said. And for a long time he held a grudge against Moira and her sister Penelope. Somethin' about 'em not givin' him a Christmas tip or some damn thing, I don't know. The thing was, he was in a position to do somethin' about his grudges if he wanted, and I guess he did, too. What I heard was that he used to take a bottle o' milk and get in the back o' the truck and whack himself, then he'd stick it in the bottle and get his duck butter all in there with the milk. He called it a "protein shake," and if you was on his shit list, pardon my French, you had to watch out that he didn't deliver you a protein shake with your regular order.

Well, I guess he had been givin' them ol' girls Moira and Penelope some o' them protein shakes for quite a while. And the way Penelope tells it, Moira didn't always use the milk to pour on her corn flakes. She said that if Moira coulda afforded it, she woulda bought enough milk to take a milk bath every morning. Now you know, them ol' girls wasn't rich, so Moira never did get enough milk at one time for that. Instead, she used to take one bottle each morning and wash her lady parts with it. Dutchy, I think they call it. So anyhow, turns out that she uses one or two o' them protein shakes and dutchies herself with 'em, and bingo, whaddaya think? Couple months go by and she realizes she's fragrant.

I'm tellin' ya, Shorty, no one in town could believe it, and not just because Moira and Penelope were about as ugly as monkfish left out to dry for a week. Thing was, they never had no truck with the men in this town, none of 'em. And they didn't have no truck with no men from no other towns, neither, far as anyone knew. They was suspected of being lebanese, to be perfectly honest.

That ol' Moira, though, she didn't try to hide it or nothin'. She said it was a sign from God, a whaddaya call it, one o' them unmasculate deceptions. She walked around town like she was givin' a watermelon a ride, just as proud as could be. Then when ol' Cecil gets born and grows up, whaddaya know, he's the spittin' image o' Floyd. Damnedest thing I ever heard, but it's one hunnert percent true. Ask anybody.

'Course now, Cecil, he's a little easier to deal with than ol' Floyd was, but that don't mean he don't got a temper. You just gotta stay on his good side, that's all.

Hey Shorty, you ever notice how chunky buttermilk gets sometimes?

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