Speaking of bubbles, Bazooka Bubble Gum is ending its Bazooka Joe comics.

"New inserts will feature brainteasers, like a challenge to list 10 comic book heroes named after animals, or activities, like instructions on folding the insert into an airplane."

Here's a brainteaser: What was the name of Bazooka Joe's sidekick and what distinctive clothing did he wear?

Mort, the character with a red turtleneck forever pulled up under his nose — he was a boy with voice but no mouth. He always seemed to me to represent a central duality of man: We wish to be heard, but we fear being misunderstood. Have I nailed it? Duality?

So asks WaPo columnist Gene Weingarten, interviewing Jay Lynch, the main Bazooka Joe jokewriter, who says his literary influences are Henry James and Thomas Aquinas. Lynch answers:

Jay: Sure. Why not? There’s a question, though, because in 1980, they pulled his turtleneck down, and showed his entire face, and changed his name to Red. That lasted a year or so, then they pulled it back up, and he became Mort again.

Me: Wow. What was that about?

Jay: No idea.

Me: Why did Bazooka Joe have an eye patch?

Jay: I never asked. I always assumed it was a terrible bubble gum accident.

At the Robot Eclipse Café...

... shake 2 red fists and get on with whatever conversation you wanted to have.

AND: Stock up on the official chewing gum of the Althouse blog.

Things for sale in Madison.

By the way, I spent time in various Madison spots today — 2 cafés, walking on various streets including State Street and around the Capitol, basking and brat-eating on the Union Terrace — and I didn't see any activity related to Tuesday's recall election. No signs, no protesters, no drumbeating, no clipboards. And there were lots of people out on this beautiful June Sunday. I did see an old chalking on State Street.

And in the first café — where I sat alone, grading exams — there were about 6 people sitting at another table, talking politics. But they weren't talking Tuesday. They were talking Wednesday. What should they say on Wednesday? Who should be blamed for this calamity? They sounded especially upset at how much money had been thrown away. Not the $18 million dollars of tax money the state must pay to conduct the election, but all the contributions that went to the Democratic candidates... down the rat hole.

Later, I met up with Meade at the Terrace, and I asked him the question: Who should these people — the ones who wanted the recall — blame on Wednesday? Meade said: Obama. Do you see why?

Perhaps you'd like to try the diet of the first celebrity dieter.

It's the Lord Byron diet:

... a thin slice of bread and a cup of tea for breakfast and a light vegetable dinner with a bottle or two of seltzer water tinged with Vin de Grave.

Other 19th century dieters:

Nietzsche tried a traditional restricted calorie diet and [Henry] James went in for Fletcherism, an elaborate system of chewing each morsel of food several hundred times.

Fletcherism, eh? Horace Fletcher, "The Great Masticator" said we should only eat when "Good and Hungry" and never while angry or sad.

Seeing — at the linked Wikipedia article — that Mark Twain visited Fletcher, I decided to find some searchable text and happened upon this collection of 300+ Mark Twain works in the Kindle format for $1.99. I was hoping to find something about Fletcher. I didn't. But that's a side issue. I'm absolutely delighted to have a single searchable text of 300+ Mark Twain works. For 2 dollars. What a world we live in! What would Mark Twain have thought of it? Anyway, nothing about Fletcher, but what about chewing? Any morbid fascination with chewing? There's this dialogue:

"Do you love rats?"

"I hate them!"

"Well, I do, too--LIVE ones. But I mean dead ones, to swing round your head with a string."

"No, I don't care for rats much, anyway. What I like is chewing-gum."

"Oh, I should say so! I wish I had some now."

"Do you? I've got some. I'll let you chew it awhile, but you must give it back to me."

That was agreeable, so they chewed it turn about, and dangled their legs against the bench in excess of contentment.

ADDED: The 1919 NYT obituary for Fletcher:

The theory is, in brief, that everybody eats too much and that the cure is to be found in thorough mastication of food....

During [WWI] Dr. Fletcher... was given the full opportunity... to demonstrate the worth of "Fletcherism" though which he taught the 8,000,000 starving Belgians to get the full nourishment from their food. Early in 1912 he had himself subsisted on a diet of potatoes for fifty-eight days.

AND: There's also the first scene in Tennessee Williams's "Glass Menagerie," where our first glimpse of Tom's problems with his mother play out in the context of her admonitions about chewing:

AMANDA [to her son]: Honey, don't push with your fingers. If you have to push with something, the thing to push with is a crust of bread. And chew! Chew! Animals have sections in their stomachs which enable them to digest flood without mastication, but human beings are supposed to chew their food before they swallow it down. Eat food leisurely, son, and really enjoy it. A well-cooked meal has lots of delicate flavours that have to be held in the mouth for appreciation. So chew your food and give your salivary glands a chance to function !

[TOM deliberately lays his imaginary fork down and his chair back from the table.]

TOM: I haven't enjoyed one bite of this dinner because of your constant directions on how to eat it. It's you that makes me rush through meals with your hawk-like attention to every bite I take. Sickening - spoils my appetite - all this discussion of - animals' secretion - salivary glands - mastication!

AMANDA [lightly]: Temperament like a Metropolitan star! [He rises and crosses downstage.] You're not excused from the table.

Obama and the Green Bay Packers.

The full 9 1/2 minute video.

A reader emailed, recommending the video and adding:

I think you will see a President eroding, much like Nixon did in 74. The visit to celebrate the Packers had a lot of sympathy humor from Obama. Sympathy in that he was telling them it was hard to stand there as a Bear fan, really tough, but unlike a comedian, he lingers too long on the subject, becoming more bitter, like Lenny Bruce at the end of his career. Obama kept the focus on him and how hard it was on him, and then compared it to negotiating with Republicans (implied but still a 16" softball coming at one's head).

Truly sad. Say what one will about George W. Bush, but he exuded proper decorum at the proper times. I can't imagine if he had acted like this with a Super Bowl winner what the media would have done to him?

I didn't think it was that bad.

By the way, how many of the Packers were chewing gum?

ADDED: The email is from our regular commenter Issob Morocco.

Humble gum.

I was ready to hate this guy, because I expect arrogance from artists.

"I had a piece of Carefree Sugarless gum and I was still worried."

"It never kicked in, I took it back to the store and said 'Bullshit!'"

"Across the country, Four Loko 'vigil' parties have ... been held to say goodbye to the drink."

The FDA — with pressure short of an actual ban — has driven the product off the market. Four Loko combines one cup of coffee's worth of caffeine with 4 beers' worth of alcohol.

The fight against Four Loko has led many consumers – especially young ones – to defend their favorite party pop – and stock up....

"Every time I drank a Four Loko, something terrible happened," one person told the website Gothamist at a tribute march to the drink in New York City. "And each time I grew from it."

Facebook groups, petitions and even YouTube videos have also sprouted up in support of the drink.

"Get the government out of my Loko!" wrote one petitioner.

It's hard to believe the government gets involved in such matters. It's almost a kind of snobbery. It's not a classy product, by design. It's like Smucker's Goober. Some people think you seem like an idiot not being able to get peanut butter out of one jar and jelly out of another... and why are you eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches anyway? Why don't you make a sandwich with thinly sliced turkey and fresh greens? You... goober!

So, without Four Loko, what will you do? Let alcohol have its effect without the offsetting effect of a cup of coffee? Eh. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that you can drink coffee with your alcohol. I'm sure simpler approaches easily occur even to drunks. You could take a big swig out of a can of Red Bull or DoubleShotEspresso and top it up with vodka. Or you can do what I observed Ohio State fans doing here last month:

They drink beer and guzzle 5-Hour Energy in berry and grape flavors. Run yourself down with alcohol and then pep yourself up again with that awful glop?

See? I'm a snob. "Awful glop." But I'm not the government enacting my snobbery into law. I'm just insulting your taste, exercising my free speech. It seems to me that if I can sip French-press coffee with a single-malt Scotch, you should be able to slug Four Loko.

And, in honor of Black Friday, here's a Christmas present idea: a nice case of Jolt Caffeine Energy Gum. Or: Penguin Caffeinated Peppermints.