OK, so as I'm writing this, the California Recall Election is just four days off. Thank goodness. (Of course, the bad news is, we've still got another four days of this BS...)

I already know I'm voting no on the recall because it's the best way I have to tell the California Republican Assembly to go f*** themselves...but I am still trying to work out who to vote for for governor. Now that Arianna Huffington has dropped out of the race, there isn't anyone I can really support, even half-heartedly. If I take the two extremes: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Larry Flynt, I think I'd have to be leaning toward Larry. I mean, Flynt's run a very successful publishing empire...but how many of Arnold & Co.'s Planet Hollywoods are still around (well, by that I mean open for business...I still see the sign outside the long-vacated Planet Hollywood whenever I wander into San Francisco)? Which of those two candidates sounds like someone who can get California out of the fiscal hole its in?

Of course, this has made California a laughing stock, and this time "we" (and by "we" I really mean Darryl Issa) deserve all the shit the rest of the world wants to fling at us for this debacle. California is, what $35 BILLION in the hole, everybody's bickering over how to get out of the hole and the very last thing the state needed was to spend another $20+ million on this stupid recall election. And, if California's budget crisis is all Gray Davis' fault, as the Republicans insist, then why don't they extend their own logic and demand that George W. Bush be removed from office, given the enormous debt and grim economy that has happened under his watch?

I have a cost-saving solution, though. Re-jig the computerized voting machines so that right after you touch the screen to select your choice for governor, you can immediately hit "undo" (ctrl-z...or for us MacHeads apple-z) if you so choose, and INSTANTLY RECALL who you've just voted for. No need for people shoving petitions in your face when you go grocery shopping, no more "special elections," it's all done in one trip!

Clearly, I can't wait until this recall is over. But I'm betting that people on "both sides" of the recall have their piles of petitions, clipboards and pens at the ready so that whatever the outcome of this election, there'll be a group back in front of the supermarkets this time next week trying to recall the recall...

Sigh...

update 7 October, 2003
Oh boy! Looks like we do have a "Governator"...bleh.

update 8 October, 2003
Why does the word "governator" sound like something GW Bush would say? I mean, he'd mean to say "governor," but it would come out "governator"...

At any rate...done is done. I'll try to reserve judgement on (I can't believe I'm about to type this) Governor Schwarzenegger, at least for now.