I’ve been bandying about this particular entry for at least a week or two, but was only recently able to snag a few screen captures via the TV tuner card in my computer so I could bring this to life for you, my adoring readership (hack puke wheeze).

This is—purportedly—the new Prime Rib Sub from Quiznos. According to Quiznos’ (I have no goddamn idea what a “Quiznos” is; it is apparently not a name, since if it was you’d assume that there’d be a possessive apostrophe thrown in there somewhere, other than the one I just hung on myself for the sake of good grammar) Web site, the Prime Rib Sub consists of a “Double portion of prime rib [“double” compared to what, I wonder?] with mozzarella, sautéed onions, and Mild Peppercorn Sauce.”

I have to say up front that I’m not a huge fan of Quiznos. Their food, while not particularly vile or poorly prepared, aspires to something it most certainly is not, namely not fast food. That is to say, it ain’t not fast food. It is. Fast food. I don’t care if you toast it, squirt some sort of weird sauce over it and serve it on flaccid, wholly contrived faux-artisan bread. It still tastes about the same as an equivalent Subway sandwich. Which itself is largely reminiscent of Hollofil sleeping-bag insulation.

So basically what you get at Quiznos is a warmer, slightly knobbier version of what you get at just about any megachain fast-food sub joint. Only more pretentious.

With this new sandwich, however—and particularly the attendant, incessant television campaign—the Quiznos Corporation seems to aspire to so much more than mere fooditude. They seem to be reaching for genuine terror, a veritable Subzilla.

I’d be willing to bet that the folks who threw this commercial together never previewed it on a big-screen TV:

The first time I ran across this ad, I literally let out a yelp. “Holy crap, what the hell is that?” I exclaimed. I witnessed a similar reaction in our housemate while he and I were channel-surfing a few nights later. “My God!” he yelled. “That is one ugly sandwich!”

When my words returned, I managed to say, “It looks like it’s made from toasted skin grafts.”

I repeated this line to Margaret when she returned home from work, during a reprise of the ad. To my mingled delight and revulsion, she replied, “I’ve done skin grafts, and you’re right: they look pretty much just like that.”

I mentioned this offhandedly to another friend during a car trip, and he responded by telling me that his girlfriend is terrified of these ads.

So apparently this phenomenon is not isolated to our household, and is therefore less likely to be a byproduct of some other random factor, such as radon or carbon monoxide. If anything, this makes me feel worse. It means that someone felt—in fact, was paid probably quite handsomely to feel—that presenting this baleful, glistening Signal 30 of a concoction to the after-dinner television audience would cause folks to flock to their local Quiznos instead of making a mad dash for the john.

Remember, you can’t spell “Quiznos” without “Quease”. 😛