Did Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office use a coded veto message to send the f-bomb to Tom Ammiano, soon after the San Francisco assemblyman made news by telling the governor to "kiss my gay ass"?

Schwarzenegger's people say no. But the X-rated evidence is hard to miss in a message that Schwarzenegger sent to explain why he was vetoing an Ammiano bill dealing with financing for the Port of San Francisco.

A straight reading of the guv's letter laments "the fact that major issues are overlooked while many unnecessary bills come to me for consideration," and concludes, "I believe it is unnecessary to sign this measure at this time."

But a vertical read of the far-left-hand letters in each of the missive's eight lines offers a more blunt explanation: "I f- you."

Schwarzenegger's press secretary, Aaron McLear, insisted Tuesday it was simply a "weird coincidence." He sent us veto messages the governor sent out in the past with linguistic lineups such as "soap" and "poet," which he said were also unintended.

"Something like this was bound to happen," McLear said.

Maybe. But the veto message came after Ammiano called the governor a liar and shouted from the audience to "kiss my gay ass" when Schwarzenegger unexpectedly showed up at a Democratic Party dinner in San Francisco on Oct. 7.

Ammiano later called Schwarzenegger's attendance at the event a "cheap publicity stunt" that wasn't at all amusing, in light of the governor's cuts in social services, ordered furloughs of state workers and failure to act on some gay-rights issues.

The governor's veto letter was in response to Ammiano's AB1176 - a rather mundane bill meant to help San Francisco's port with finance issues. The "coincidence" was first picked up on Tuesday by the Bay Guardian newspaper.

As for Ammiano, a professional comic in addition to being a liberal Democrat, he's playing it straight on this one: "They probably think they are even now," he said.

"I think it was very creative, and it's time to bury the hatchet," Ammiano added. "I'm not interested in prolonging it."

The hidden message - if that's what it was - "was certainly more subtle than 'kiss my gay ass,' " said Barbara O'Connor, political science professor at Sacramento State University. "But it shows the acrimony and bad feelings in Sacramento are pretty bad.

"I doubt if it was the governor himself," O'Connor said. "But maybe the staff was having a good time."