Ace of Spades HQ

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September 17, 2004

Best of: Special Ace of Spades HQ Guest Editorial

For some time, I've been casting about looking for guest contributors who could help shoulder the blogging load. Recently I received the following essay in an email, and I think the writer's words are important for all of us.

If You Touch My Hoagie One More Time, I Will Fucking Kill You

by Rich "Psycho" Giamboni
Special Guest Columnist for Ace of Spades HQ

If you touch my hoagie one more time, I will fucking kill you. I don't mean that metaphorically. I mean I will fucking reach across this table and literally, physically kill you.

You had your fun. You thought you were cute. You thought it was clown-time, and you were driving the little car. You touched the top of my turkey and provolone hoagie, and now I've had to rip off the piece of bread that you fucking contaminated.

Well I've got news for you, Chuckles. Clown-time is over. Now it's Psycho-Time. And if you touch my goddamned hoagie one more time, I'm going to fuck you up so bad you'll end up looking like Kuato from Total Recall.

Don't believe me? Think I'm joshing with you? Look at my face: I am not joshing with you, pal. I am deadly serious, and if you so much as fucking lay another finger on this sandwich you'll enter a world of hurt of beyond your very capability to conceive. No fuckin' foolin', you touch this hoagie one more time and I will spill life's blood all over this fucking Quizno's.

You finished your fucking cobb salad and now you're still hungry. Well, Poindexter, who the fuck told you to order that fucking cobb salad? I sure as shit didn't. You looked up at all the delicious, filling sandwiches you could have had and instead you went all queerbait on me. That was a mistake, amigo. That was a very bad mistake.

But I implore you-- if you value your very life, don't compound your error by touching my hoagie again. I shit you not, that will be the very last mistake you ever make.

Okay, okay. Now you're getting "funny" again. Now you're holding your hand a couple of inches away from my hoagie. Well aren't you cute? You're like a sixteen-year-old girl who just got her tits looking all sweet and ripe in her party dress. You're a doll, Susan. You're an absolute plum.

But if your fucking hand actually crosses the sandwich Rubicon, I am going to go apeshit up and down your spine. I am going to punch your fucking kidneys until you piss blood out of your fucking eyeballs.

Think I'm being farcical? Think I'm just "pulling your leg"? Right now I'm a 747 filled with only flying elbows and head-butts and I'm running an ad that says "Fly Me." You want to fly me? I offer Frequent Flyer Miles for fuckers who touch my sandwich. I'll take you to hell and back-- no extra charge.

You want to know how serious I am? You know that part in Dirty Harry when he says, "Go ahead, make my day?" Well imagine Clint Eastwood with a fucking turkey and provolone hoagie he's been looking forward to since 10:30 AM.

That's how fucking shit-serious I am, baby. You touch my hoagie again, I'm going to Dead Pool your grinning fucking face until I turn your brain into a slushing mess resembling gray applesauce.

I've got a little switch in my head. I call it my "Psycho Switch." And you're about to flip it. You flip that Psycho Switch, and I go into Full Retard Berserker Mode. I'll come at you with 100% retard-strength. I'll be all over you like a whirlwind of spazz-slaps and drool.

We don't have to go down this road, Chester. If you want a sandwich, they'll make you another one. Don't let your urge to nosh lead you into the grave. But if you want to play, we can play. I consider myself a bit of a "gamer."

So go ahead. Roll the dice. Let's see how all this plays out. But I warn you: This isn't Yahtzee. You won't be collecting pairs of fives. You'll be collecting your fucking teeth out of the Condiments Bar.

You're pulling your hand away now. Congratulations -- you chose wisely, my friend.

And now you're looking up at the menu-display over the cashier's heads. You're smartening up by the minute, Chief. Buy yourself a nice toasted ham and swiss sandwich. Ain't no lie, a nice toasted ham and swiss sandwich beats a trip to the morgue every day of the week, hands down. And that's the name of that tune.

Oh, and-- while you're up? Do me a solid and and grab me a pack of barbeque-flavor Ruffles. I forgot to get them. Thanks.

Rich "Psycho" Giamboni is an award-winning columnist for Hearst Newspapers. His most recent book is Take Back What You Said About Kevin McHale Or I Will Take a Shit in Your Jeep. His column appears here while Helen Thomas is vacationing.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah: This set-up is Onion-esque. So friggin' what? Psycho Giamboni can write what he wants.

Update: Of all the sports-fans that could have discovered this article and enjoyed it, why did it have to be Philadelphia Eagles fans?

New York Giants: 12-4 this season. You heard it here first. And also, last.

This will be the only time you hear this.

posted by Ace at 03:21 PM

Comments

But if your fucking hand actually crosses the sandwich Rubicon, I am going to go apeshit up and down your spine

Its time we take this shit to hollywood Ace.. You put together the script, and I take it to the right people.. Whada you say?

wheres joe?

Posted by: Arvin on September 17, 2004 04:02 PM

Psycho looks a darned lot like Jake "The Snake" Roberts.

I'm just saying...

Posted by: IgwanaRob on September 18, 2004 07:52 PM

Sounds like a retread of a De Niro rant.

Posted by: Helen Lewis on September 20, 2004 01:41 AM

I just nearly peed myself I laughed so hard.

Posted by: Matt on December 30, 2004 01:35 PM

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In more marketing for Project Hail Mary, scientists say they've found the biosigns indicating life growing on an alien planet. It's not proof, just signatures of chemicals that are produced by biological metabolism, and it could be nothing, but scientists think it's a strong sign that this planet is inhabited by something.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of scientists announced the detection of dimethyl sulfide (along with a similar detection of dimethyl disulfide) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18b. This is actually the second detection of dimethyl sulfide made on this planet, following a tentative detection in 2023.
Tons of chemicals are detected in the atmospheres of celestial objects every day. But dimethyl sulfide is different, because on Earth, it's only produced by living organisms.
"It is a shock to the system," Nikku Madhusudhan, first author on the paper, told the New York Times. "We spent an enormous amount of time just trying to get rid of the signal."

He means they tried to prove the signal was caused by things other than dimethyl sulfide but they could not.

Artemis moon shot a go, scheduled for 6:24 Eastern time tonight
Great marketing arranged by Amazon to promote Project Hail Mary. Okay not really but it does work out that way.

TJM talks John Boorman, director of Excalibur

Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

Finish the job, Mr. President!
Melanie Phillips lays out the case for the total destruction of the Iranian government and armed forces. [CBD]

TJM acts like he knows anything about John Wick and screenwriting. It's embarrassing, really.

Podcast: Sefton and CBD talk about how would a peace treaty with Iran work, Democrats defending murderers and rapists, The GOP vs. Dem bench for 2028, composting bodies? And more!

Oh, I forgot to mention this quote from Pete Hegseth, reported by Roger Kimball: "We are sharing the ocean with the Iranian Navy. We're giving them the bottom half."

Batman fires The Batman
Batman is disgusted by the Joachim Phoenix version of Joker
Batman tries to fire Superman
Batman is still workshopping his Bat-Voice

Forgotten 80s Mystery Click: Red Leather Suit and Sweatband Edition
And I was here to please
I'm even on knees
Makin' love to whoever I please
I gotta do it my way
Or no way at all

Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)

Sec. Army recognizes ODU Army ROTC cadets for their bravery and sacrifice in private ceremony
[Hat Tip: Diogenes] [CBD]

TJM gives you a brief tour of his movie collection.

Forgotten 80s Mystery Click
One day I'm gonna write a poem in a letter
One day I'm gonna get that faculty together
Remember that everybody has to wait in line
Oh, [Song Title], look out world, oh, you know I've got mine

US decimation of Iran's ICBM forces is due to Space Force's instant detection of launches -- and the launchers' hiding places -- and rapid counter-attack via missiles
AI is doing a lot of the work in analyzing images to find the exact hiding place of the launchers. Counter-strikes are now coming in four hours after a launch, whereas previously it might have taken days for humans to go over the imagery and data.

Robert Mueller, Former Special Counsel Who Probed Trump, Dies

“robert mueller just died,” trump wrote in a truth social post on march 21. “good, i’m glad he’s dead. he can no longer hurt innocent people! president donald j. trump.”

TJM has thoughts on Superheros and Iconography