(Dear first-time voters: Sorry about that.)

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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
— Hunter S. Thompson
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Okay. Summer’s almost here, so three things are inevitable:

• At least ten times a day, some very dull person is going to ask you, “So! Hot enough for ya?”
• Every week, car dealerships will extend their “LAST CHANCE!” Memorial Day sale for one more week. This will continue until Labor Day.
• Any minute now, stores will start playing Christmas music.

But this year, we have something else to look forward to, besides ticks, gas prices, and pollen. In just over twenty weeks, we get to elect a new President, in case you haven’t heard, which is not physically possible unless you’re dead, and if you vote Democrat, not even then. And if you’re not excited about the candidate choices, you’re right.

Basically, this time around, we have to choose between an alleged conservative that women can’t stand, and an alleged woman that nobody can stand. And for comic relief – as if we needed any more comic relief than those two – there’s an insane geriatric socialist who’s farther out in left field than Carl Yastrzemski, and an independent candidate who announced he’d decided a few weeks ago to run for President, so he quit smoking pot.

The Presidential primary part of the election season is just about over. Last week included two big ones: California and New Jersey. At last count, 18 million people in California were signed up and qualified to vote in the primary; in fact, over 650,000 people signed up just in the last two weeks, including two guys from Huntington Beach that allegedly speak English.

After last week’s primaries, Hillary “The People’s Uterus” Clinton has (theoretically) secured the Democrat Party’s nomination. Hillary now claims this makes her the first woman in US history to clinch a Presidential nomination. That’s not true, or course, but if you challenge anything Hillary says or does, you risk getting gang-audited by the IRS. Besides, I’ve still seen no concrete proof that Hillary is, in fact, a woman.

(To give you some idea of Hillary’s penchant for – well, let’s call it getting creative with the facts – grab a copy of her not-exactly-autobiographical autobiography, It Takes a Village Idiot, in which she claimed she was named “Hillary” in honor of Sir Edmund Hillary…in spite of a few pesky, niggling details: Sir Edmund didn’t actually scale Mount Everest until six years after The People’s Uterus was born.)

But she’s apparently clinched the nomination, despite other pesky, niggling details…like the millions of primary voters who voted for Bernie Sanders. In fact, Hillary’s delegate lead is largely due to a little trick the Democrats came up with known as Super-Delegates, which is a phrase from the Middle Ages loosely translated as “paid vote whores.” It’s true that the Super-Delegates can change their votes, but if they dared do so, Hillary would have them audited.

And then, last week, President Barack “Tee Time” Obama endorsed The People’s Uterus. This marks the first time in history that a US President has endorsed a Presidential candidate who is the target of an active federal investigation. And that means that later this year, unless the Super-Delegates snap out of it, Bill Clinton will become the first impeached President to commit adultery against the first Presidential candidate to be the target of an active federal investigation.

Take that, glass ceiling!

And then there’s Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a surprisingly old six-year-old who’s made a boatload of money, but forgot to tell his hair. This is a grown-up who likes to refer to himself as “The Donald,” as if he’s the only Donald that ever was. (I personally know several people named Donald, and at least one duck.)

Trump’s had the Republican nomination locked up for a while now. He’s the only candidate still standing. But that doesn’t stop the insane, enraptured media from making observations like this:

Donald Trump has won the New Jersey primary. Political pundits agree it could’ve been a tighter race had there been any opposition.

Trump has this weird thing he does, where he opens his mouth and things come out of it. Usually what comes out are words, but they come out in odd arrangements, like a menu at Denny’s. It’s as if his larynx was mad at his brain. Witness:

• “I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday.”
• “Nobody should be judged by their race, or their color, or the color of their skin.”
• “You will see so much very very…”
• “Something that how she’s getting away with…”
• “We did what nobody thought was absolutely possible…”

So here we are. These are our Presidential candidates. But don’t feel too sorry for yourself. Imagine all the bitter 18-year-olds out there, muttering, “Seriously? After nearly two decades of looking forward to voting, these are my choices?”

In closing, let me share with you something that didn’t happen, something I simply made up, as if I were running for President as The People’s Uterus. It’s my short version of Presidential primary news coverage, which is fitting for a humor column about Presidential politics; plus, it lets me sneak in an obscure Frank Zappa reference, because any election cycle as bizarre as this one really ought to contain at least one reference to Frank Zappa.

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Tomorrow is Montana’s Presidential primary. Here are our delegate predictions:

Bernie: 115
Hillary: only 1 delegate, but a coarse, filthy, State-grabbing sack of Super-Delegates
Trump: support from 2 heterosexual bakeries in Bozeman
Zappa: very strong support from dental floss farmers
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So, good luck, America! Vote early, vote often! As for me…on election day, I think I’ll pencil in a write-in candidate.

I’m gonna vote for the duck.