Ace of Spades HQ

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November 11, 2004

Barbara Streisand's Top Ten Explanations For Kerry's Loss

by the unofficial shadow staff of Ace of Spades HQ

"This reign of witches will pass"

10. Exit polls show that Elves went big for Nader (Alex)

9. Bush's Flying Monkeys surpisingly effective at getting out the vote (suggested by Frank Villon)

8. One word: Cheneymania (Senator PhilABuster)

7. Damn Republicans kept making their saving throws against Media Bias
(Blacknimbus, Jimmie, Bbeck were all on the same track)

6. In the house of R'yleh, Dead Cthulhu lies sleeping, except when he mans the phones for the Iowa Republican Party (Jimmie)

5. James Carville, busy with his Crossfire gig, couldn't get down to the bayou and work a little cornpone voodoo (BlueDevils)

4. JoBu did not answer our chickenbone prayer. Fuck JoBu. (RD Brewer)

3. Stupid American voters couldn't grasp the subtle political arguments contained in Papa, Can You Hear Me? (suggested by Alex)

2. Opening speakers of Republican convention -- Smurf-Archenemy Gargamel and Pinhead from Hellraiser -- really "connected" with public (Ace)

... and the Number One Barbra Streisand Explanation for Kerry's Loss...

1. Public simply had no confidence in Kerry's constantly-evolving, multiple-position nuance; in D&D terms, they decided to stick with the +3 Holy Avenger that is George Bush, rather than the Dick of Many Things that is John Kerry* (Ace)

* Why only +3 and not +5? Two reasons: One, we haven't taken out Fallujah yet. But more importantly: I don't run a Monty Haul campaign.

Thanks to everyone who contributed. I hope no one's too disappointed to not see their contribution on the list; there are only ten slots, and sometimes one joke is too similar in subject matter to another.

Geek Overload Update! Well, due to the premise I offered, and then the selections I made, I think I've just about constructed the most geeky damn post ever seen on this site, and that says an awful lot, given how all of this nonsense started.

My God. I'm looking at what I've become and my heart is sinking.

Did I never play outside as a child? Had I no friends at all?

Well, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to pop into the garage and hang myself for a little while. See you tomorrow.

Maybe.

posted by Ace at 04:23 AM

Comments

"I'm going to pop into the garage and hang myself for a little while."

Ace, wouldn't this method of masturbation simply close the door on your escape from uber-geekdom?

Go have a beer instead. Some nice elven mead will hit the spot.

Did I say elven mead? I meant Sam Adams. I hear it's pretty good.

Posted by: ccwbass on November 11, 2004 05:33 AM

Ace,

This isn't related to the post. At least not directly.

One thing that may cheer up you up is the prospect of some "Celebrity Deathmatch" action. Say, for example, Johnny Coldcuts vs. Ken O'Keefe.

Just trying to help you out.

As the man says: "Courage!"

Posted by: ccwbass on November 11, 2004 05:44 AM

Looking back at your early stuff *giggle* you were so meticulous and had pictures inserted and everything wooo. Silly Ass. :)

Great stuff

Posted by: Jennifer on November 11, 2004 08:02 AM

Yeah, I made the cut! Although I thought the Carville one was one of my weaker ones, but who cares, I'm in the club. Wait....do I really want to be in "the club?"

Posted by: BlueDevils on November 11, 2004 08:56 AM

"I don't run a Monty Haul campaign."

*snorfle*

That was the single geekiest thing I've read from all your D&D stuff. I became geekier just reading it. Although, the argument can be made that because I knew what it meant I may have already reached maximum geek potential.

Posted by: Brass on November 11, 2004 09:29 AM

Anyone want to start/host a Carnival of the Geeks?

Posted by: JohnL on November 11, 2004 09:55 AM

Brass, I got you beat. As I was reading the last one, I was thinking... "Hey, maybe Ace never really did play D&D. Apparently he doesn't know that a Holy Avenger is ALWAYS +5."* Then I read the asterisk.

* unless it's +7, which happened once in a Ravenloft adventure.

Heh. Beat that, bitch.

Posted by: The Black Republican on November 11, 2004 10:04 AM

You would think that, with all her money, she could afford to have her hair done!

Posted by: Sid on November 11, 2004 10:29 AM

Papa, Can You Hear Me

*snort*

"I don't run a Monty Haul campaign"

*SNORT!*

Ow! OW!!! Coca Cola in the sinus cavities! Ow!!

Dammit, that was funny. And you all know we just barely excaped the Rod of Lordly Might reference...

Posted by: Jimmie on November 11, 2004 11:11 AM

Don't feel bad, Jimmie, I failed my save on that one too. Damn those Tasha's Uncontrollable Hideous Laughter spells!

Posted by: Joe Katzman on November 11, 2004 11:41 AM

Is that Holy Avenger a vorporal weapon?

Posted by: Bill from INDC on November 11, 2004 11:57 AM

Go Senator! Glad to see that someone else noticed Major League on the tube last night. One of the great movie lines of all time, uttered by Pay-droh.

Posted by: Patton on November 11, 2004 12:17 PM

That's vorpal (as in 'Jabberwocky'), Bill. And I think it depends on which version of AD&D you're playing.

It's nice to see that the 'Monty Haul' reference turned up a goodly crop of geeks. As for my geekerific credentials:

You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

I first read that on a VT100 greenscreen attached to a PDP-11 timeshare cluster in 1978. So nyaah.

Posted by: David Gillies on November 11, 2004 12:44 PM

No Ace, don't hang yourself!!

http://www.xenafan.com/movies/bod/sounds/newyork.wav

Posted by: Brock on November 11, 2004 12:59 PM

I wonder if maybe the Democrats election strategy was eaten by a grue?

Posted by: Jimmie on November 11, 2004 01:29 PM

Daaaamnnn! That photo of Barb looks EXACTLY like Denis Leary would in drag.

No, I'm not going to elaborate on that.

Posted by: Mr. Bowen on November 11, 2004 02:42 PM

David Gillies,

I remember that. That was a great game! I solved all the puzzles except how to get into the white house. (Of course John Kerry couldn't solve that puzzle either.)

Posted by: Frank M. on November 11, 2004 03:08 PM

Auto-asphyxiation. Kinky.

Posted by: someone on November 11, 2004 03:36 PM

Is that Jennifer Anniston?

Posted by: Aaron's Rantblog on November 11, 2004 03:53 PM

Wow, that was scary.

And yeah, i'm with aaron's rantblog. Anniston looks alot less hot to me lately. must be her stupid politics.

Posted by: austin mls on November 11, 2004 04:37 PM

Well done, Ace!

Posted by: Frank Villon on November 11, 2004 07:49 PM

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Top Headlines

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