Alameida's Biscuits
Probably not the best thing to call that recipe after the first half of the post.
I think we'll just let it stand now, though it is notable that I didn't see the problem.
maybe it was a product placement thang. does Hardee's advertise on that abomination?
Your wine glasses are too big.
My wine glasses are Slurpee cups, but I cut biscuits with an old tuna can.
no, I bet she just likes hardee's biscuits. like I say, they're not bad. what else, could be popeye's, they do a decent biscuit--I'd stick with hardee's though. the point is, she's supposed to say, 'when they're done right, like how I bake them' or 'like how my aunt eunice baked them' or whatever. hardee's? you can't outsource the love of biscuits like that?! they take 25 minutes. you can teach little kids to do it, or if you are making dinner, it's certainly the easiest part. plus, she could be eating raw biscuit dough! salty...tasteless yet mesmerizing...I'll confess my sin here: I know which biscuits are from the first roll and which from the scraps pushed gently together. My husband adores biscuits but is not expert enough to do so and so always I eat the perfect ones and give him the second pass...wait, now this all sounds like some horrible meditation on my sex life. damn you, boo boo honey chile lady!
Good call on Popeye's biscuits, alameida. I knew you'd be sound on this, although I would have guessed that you'd be objectively pro-Bojangles.
Hey beautiful alameida, it looks like there's an indiscretion error in the portion of the text following "read more."
4: a tuna can is still too big by my lights. biscuit cutters are as big as one of them fancy single-serving catfood cans. or the end of a narrow champagne flute. 2 1/2 inches or something.
I have never made biscuits, actually. Why can't I use lard? I'm avoiding transfat.
You can get transfat free Crisco, and possibly it's all transfat free now. I bet lard would work fine, though.
I thought Crisco was pure transfat. I'll look for the new kind.
A 2 1/2 inch wide champagne flute would be one serious motherfucker. The standard 150cl white wine glass I keep as a cooking measure is only 2 3/4 inches.
Really big wine glasses are common now. Some one the ones for reds can hold a pint.
Searching google images for "biscuit" has never felt so lurid, but I'm not really seeing what we're talking about here. Can someone point me to an image of a biscuit that's been "cooked right," like those from Hardee's? This doesn't really seem right.
Listen, people, you cannot use glasses because you cannot use anything so smooth and/or blunt that it will seal the edges of the biscuits or they'll be under-cooked. A proper biscuit cutter will slice through the dough rather than just mashing a circle out of it.
IME, lard will result in a heavier, grittier biscuit that isn't as light and fluffy. YMMV. This post is like a sop to my soul. I'm making the fuck out of some biscuits this weekend. The image of the basket with a couple of clean dish towels full of biscuits is like a moment stolen from my own childhood.
Other acceptable fast food biscuits include those from Bojangles but honestly, yes, just make your own fucking biscuits. Homemade is different and special and wonderful. When a friend bought her first home a year or two ago she asked me (as my housewarming present) to make some biscuits using her then-gravely-ill mother's recipe. I baked a batch and then I made a couple hundred more and froze them so she could have homemade biscuits from her mother's recipe for months. It was easy. I just kept making more of them because, well, it would only take a few more minutes. Of course frozen aren't as good but they beat nothing.
Come to think of it, I've never tried a champagne flute. That might be thin enough. Just don't grab one of the oddly polygonal juice glasses, the edge of which is like a dozen little line segments at angles, and think Oh I bet these will look neat because what you'll get is an oddly polygonal ball of hot dough. Bleah.
No glasses. Got it. Why does the dish towel need to be clean?
Some one the ones for reds can hold a pint.
I know, we've got some. But when an old recipe says 'a wine glass' of some liquid it means 125cl (not 150 as I wrote above because I wasn't thinking), i.e 1/6 of a bottle. So you keep an old wine glass of appropriate size to do the business. Modern champagne flutes can be pretty big, but I've never seen one that width, because they're meant to be narrow.
I find Bojangles' biscuits to be a touch on the dry side. Acceptable, mind you, but not great. As mass produced industrial biscuits go (and I can't believe I'm about to type this), McDonald's actually does a pretty decent job. However, this is the place to go.
Sweet Space Pope, don't tell people about Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen. The lines are already long enough.
You can get transfat free Crisco,
If true, this is *so* wrong.
I get my small southern town reality show fill by semi-watching Small Town Security (something like that) after Breaking Bad.
So it appears, googling, that these 'biscuits' look basically like [and have a recipe very similar to] scones. You learn something, etc.
For those who like a little protein with their biscuits, this is what you go to Hardee's for.
I've never measured a champagne flute, but I've never cut out biscuits with a glass for the reasons mentioned. it has to cut them like a knife. I guess 2 inches? 1 plus? my biscuit cutter is tiny and, as it was my grandmothers it has cut our countless dozens of delicious biscuits. in case you're not joking moby, you need clean cloths in there to keep the biscuits warm and whoever took biscuits most recently better have put the darn cloths back over them!
Unless scones are different the in U.K., the recipe is similar but the texture is very different.
The lines are already long enough.
True dat, but DAMN those are the best steak and egg biscuits. I make special trips into Chapel Hill just for them.
re: Crisco. Wikipedia says that the trans fat free version was discontinued but that regular crisco has been modified to have much less of the stuff.
Speaking of food, I generally find Jeffrey Steingarten too precious but he did a very good piece for Vogue on Charleston food. (For some reason he thinks that kale is an abomination.)
re: 27
Yeah, wiki tells me that because scones are made from butter rather than the fats used for biscuits, the texture is denser and less airy for scones.
Do the biscuits change across the great Hardee's / Carl's Jr divide?
31: Scones aren't ever very good, IMO. Biscuits are good, depending.
my biscuit cutter is tiny
As it should be, what with being a female-type human and all.
16: That is such a sweet story, mcmanly. Also, it's lovely to see you.
25: The "new" Monster Biscuit? I'm confused. That's been in the Hardees down here for at least three years now.
Really, everything about the mom on this show says she is *super* self-aware and obviously said "like the ones at Hardees" because she knows that's the sort of thing she's expected to say.
Also, I now want cheezy grits.
36: Yeah, looks like that site basically just reprinted a Hardee's press release from 2007.
34: Maybe she's talking about Husband X?
That occurred to me, but I didn't think alameida would write so possessively of her husband's organ.
I'm just wondering what "cheezy grits" can mean.
I regularly eat biscuits and vegan sausage gravy from a food truck for breakfast, because I feel someone needs to live up to Austin stereotypes: biscuit porn.
Scones aren't ever very good, IMO
Them's fighting words.
41: Grits that have very much cheese? The z just makes me happy, Moby. Let me have it.
I'm just wondering what "cheezy grits" can mean.
"Oh no, urple got cheezy grits on my biscuits!"
My brother moved south and now raves about grits with cheese.
Also, 45 was more the kind of point I was trying to make.
Grits are the same exact thing as polenta. You can make polenta with cheese, right?
Ooooh. Oh.
What were we supposed to imagine grits were, when Flo told Mel to kiss them?
vegan sausage gravy
How does this work?
50: Soy milk, seitan, vegan margarine, flour? (Guessing.)
It's supposed to be "vegan-sausage gravy."
This is the kind of topic which re-affirms that I am not southern whatsoever, even having lived in the south almost my whole life. (Ie fraudulent everywhere.)
Did you know that my mom had lived in north Florida for thirty years before discovering that gravy is sometimes white? Oftentimes it goes that the second generation to a region is native, but it my case I was raised a proper foreigner.
I think the most regional food NJ has is pork roll and cheese on a hard roll. (Oh, how I loved those as a kid. And it's still a family joke that I'm "a vegetarian except for pork roll.")
52: Or possibly: Vegan? Sausage gravy!
I've never been able to eat biscuits and gravy, but damn, just any old kind of biscuits with butter is heavenly.
At least it doesn't take much thought to figure out what a "pork roll" is.
"vegan-sausage gravy."
Made from the blood and fat of the vegan sausage, dripping into the pan as it turns gently on its spit.
52 is correct. They do have a vegan gravy but it's some brown ale thing, not your traditional white gravy.
As mass produced industrial biscuits go (and I can't believe I'm about to type this), McDonald's actually does a pretty decent job.
I've said before that if you find a good McDonald's in a location where people know what a good biscuit is, the McDonald's biscuit (especially the chicken biscuit) can be sublime, and it is easily the best thing on their menu.
Real scones (which they used to sell at Teader Joe's) are delicious. The diamond-shaped hard things at places like Starbucks and Au Bon Pain are not.
Oh man, I love all scones. The fresh bakery ones, but even the hard over-sugared Starbucks kind too.
Clotted cream is also delicious.
Trader Joe's used to make a scone (not a proper one but not the horrible hard kind, pace heebie) with lemon and ginger pieces.
I made my first fresh-baked biscuits just the other day. Baked them correctly and everything and they were, if I do say so myself, damn good. (My trenchermates also said so, and I am forty-six percent certain that it wasn't because I was giving them a fixed, anxious stare and asking how the biscuits were.)
Thing is, they did not look like vulvas (vulvae?). I totally want in on this biscuits-that-look-like-punani deal.
Maybe you should try to make scones?
Scones are fucking great. That said, some people making shitey ones. But I, qua Scot, do not.
I don't quite see it myself -- is the idea that the layered look of the side of a properly made biscuit looks sort of lip-like? This is the first picture I found that sort of shows the effect, but it's not great, and I have to say that the comparison would not have occurred to me.
We should get alameida and ttaM together for the first annual Unfoggedeca-scone-vs-biscuit bake-off.
re: 69
I'm not sure what you mean. Unless you are remembering personal information divulged in the past? Viz, that I was born in London,* and learned to make scones from my Mum (who was also born in London).
* albeit moved to Scotland at age 2 weeks.
71: How about a NSFW notice on that kind of thing?
I'M THE ONE WHO SAID JUST GRAB 'EM IN THE BISCUITS
73: People often refer to the saying, "No true Scotsman" and I was merely riffing on it. Philosophers use "No true Scotsman" and "qua," so it seemed to fit.
I am concerned about the fact that The Learning Channel thinks redneck-gawping is "learning," but I will confess to having been baffled and fascinated by HBBC's mother yelling at Alana during competition to "show your belly! show the judges your belly!" I felt like this is a strategy I had not seen before.
As Megan told us in another thread, she won a blue ribbon in the state fair for her cheezy scones.
this is a strategy I had not seen before
Questionable strategy for winning a pageant, but apparently an excellent one for landing a TV contract.
(a) My scones are good.
(b) I wish I could get my hands on some leaf lard. I swear the last time I asked at a butcher's if they had any I got some uncomprehending looks in return. "It's, uh, from around the kidneys?" Nothing.
Excuse me—my scones are good, laydeez.
Also, agreed about biscuits. In my family, biscuits are semi-sacred, and only made for meals that can really feature those biscuits--you don't want to eat anything else anyway, except for gravy.
One time when my brattiest cousin, who walks around with one of two facial expressions at all times (one looks like he's taking a painful shit but is supposed to be smug, and the other is exaggerated horror and disgust), was visiting, and my mother made the most incredible breakfast spread. There were eggs, bacon, sausage, waffles, fruits, whipped cream, hash browns, and so forth. The awful cousin looks at it with disgust and horror and yells, "Ain't you got no biscuits?"
This is a catchphrase in our family--has been for 20 years. Whenever someone displays ingratitude and insatiability, we chastise one another with [cousin face] "Ain't you got no biscuits?" Then we laugh and laugh.
||
Oh, this one is really, really sad. NMM to David Rakoff.
|>
It sounds like biscuits serve the same functional role as Yorkshire puddings. Carrier for gravy, and as a starch element.
I have a friend who was close with him. I had always hoped an occasion would come up when we just all happened to hang out together, no big whoop.
35: And it's lovely to see y'all! Turns out summer has kicked my ass even harder than the school year.
83 is possibly the best thing ever. I am immediately stealing this phrase for my own use.
Scones are the food of the gods, especially those made by my mother, or ttaM's mother.(I am hoping these are two different people. If one of my brothers is wasting his time at work pretending to be a high-kicking philosopher from Falkirk, I would be somewhat alarmed.)
87: I'd always hoped I'd hear that he was going on a speaking tour. He just seemed like he'd be so extra-great in person.
high-kicking philosopher
This instantly turned into Socrates in a can-can outfit in my head, an image which I expect to haunt me. I hope you're happy.
Also Neb and David Rakoff have the same voice.
re: 91
That image to be actually found _in_ Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, iirc.
34, 40: don't talk trash about husband X like that! I'll come over and smack you upside the head with the rolling pin.
scones are indeed delicious and are made just like biscuits, but with butter for crisco, and cream for buttermilk, and about 2T of fine sugar. they are vehicles for clotted cream.
88: not entirely right because you can save some for dessert. in our family we always save the last two biscuits we're eating and put homemade jam on them, or honey.
I think all the biscuits I ate prior to attaining the age of majority I ate with honey or jam.
I can't think of scones without recalling a sign outside some little NYC bakery asking -- nay, commanding -- me to "get [my] scone on."
I like muffins, though.
You can tell from the sign that they were mispronouncing "scone".
What pronunciation did the sign suggest? [I presume it's referencing some well-known phrase I don't know]
I think all the biscuits I ate prior to attaining the age of majority I ate with honey or jam.
"Real thing?" he asked.
FWIW, in northern Knifecrimia, 'scone' is normally pronounced to rhyme with 'on'.
re: 101
Yeah, that's the minority option here, but some people pronounce it that way.
Longer 99: neb has inadvertently reminded me of one of my favorite pages or so of prose and now I'm going to go walk around mumbling to myself for a while. Thanks, neb.
Ada, part 1, end of chapter 12, pages 80-82 in my copy.
....
The classical beauty of clover honey, smooth, pale, translucent, freely flowing from the spoon and soaking my love's bread and butter in liquid brass. The crumb steeped in nectar.
"Real thing?" he asked.
"Tower," she answered.
And the wasp.
The wasp was investigating her plate. Its body was throbbing.
"We shall try to eat one later," she observed, "but it must be gorged to taste good. Of course, it can't sting your tongue. No animal will touch a person's tongue. When a lion has finished a traveler, bones and all, he always leaves the man's tongue lying like that in the desert" (making a negligent gesture).
....
And so on. Something else about butter and honey and a "cool crock" a few paragraphs later.
Biscuits were vehicles for butter or for homemade apple jelly when I was a kid; occasionally for sausage or the like but as an exception. These days I still reserve them for jelly or jam far more often than not. I get the idea of biscuits and gravy and have loved more than my share of plates covered in them in the past, yes, and my father is a huge fan of gravy on a biscuit also, but for me they are the savory foundation to what is ultimately a sweetness experience.
Better that than Nietzsche in an Emma Peel catsuit, I think you will agree.
89: I in fact make scones in the manner taught me by CA's mum. Once CA, noticing she corrected him for pronouncing scone like own but not me asked her about it: "I don't care what she says, but you should know better!" OK, then!
108 seemed relevant at the time. Possibly to 91? Damn my inadequate refresh rate.
106: I have had a few experiences that made me think "Tower."
Holy Christ do I hate Ada. Nabo should have been seriously embarrassed by that book.
100: As heard in the venerable lyric: "On Wednesdays I go shopping, and have buttered scones for tea!"
112: Can I ask why? When I was 19, it was definitely my favorite book, and when I revisited it recently I was not disappointed.
re: 108
MMmmmm. [Emma Peel, not Nietzsche]
neb is very wrong on the pronunciation of "scone." It does indeed rhyme with "on."
We should have Southern threads more often! I haven't had this much fun since the night the hogs ate my little brother!
You may want to re-read that sequence of comments, BG.
neb is very wrong
This should be a clue to read more closely.
Although there were places where it drags, mostly the weird maundering 'philosophical' bits about time, which I could have done without.
Next you'll be giving in and saying, yeah, maybe carbs are poison.
I haven't had this much fun since the night the hogs ate my little brother!
If his family didn't teach him to climb a tree to evade wild boar, is that out fault? No. It isn't.
Isn't that how he would say "pancake"?
My blue ribbon-winning cheesy scones are adapted from a biscuit recipe, so I'm not entirely sure which to vote for here. My guess is that biscuit purists wouldn't consider those biscuits. Also, some fucker won Best in Show with some blueberry-oatmeal scones, and I very much wish I had tasted some oatmeal scones that were better than my cheddar-onion ones.
I've been making scones for my English in-laws when we have a particularly Southern meal, and they always seemed baffled at why I'm giving them scones at dinner. (I generally am lazy and make cream biscuits, which are about 3 tablespoons of sugar away from being scones, so it's a fair point, really.) But I also feel like there's far fewer dinner rolls and the like here, or at least in my particular 'here,' than in the US.
Argh. That first scones is clearly supposed to read biscuits.
No time to comment in detail, but I read Ada in my 30s and found it incredibly self-indulgent and ponderous also like a kind of unintentional parody of an exponent of European aristocratic culture bending over backwards to impress. I personally find that Nabokov often walks a line between great and insufferable and in Ada he just decided to camp out in insufferable land and wave at us.
Was I the only person who couldn't make head or tails of Ada? I generally love Nabakov but I would have needed a tutor to understand anything in that book. I was probably 22 when I "read" it.
(so maybe I should revisit it.)
132: i stole Ada from my parent's shelf when I was like 10 or 11 and it was one of my first literary exposures to sex. I remember the prose being incredibly beautiful, romantic, and arousing. I couldn't make sense of the plot but I didn't care about that, it put me instantly into a beautiful impressionistic daydream.
I also got hold of "The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B" (by the underrated JP Donleavy) at around the same time and it had a similar effect.
Someone needs to rise in defense of Hardee's biscuits, so it might as well be me. Hardee's biscuits are actually quite good -- not as good as homemade, obviously, but genuinely good, and superior to any other fast food offering (McDonalds, Popeyes, Bojangles, and Chick-Fil-A).
Biscuits hold a special place in family lore for me as well. My father's version of "walked to school in the snow five miles uphill both ways" includes the claim that his lunch during his school years consisted of nothing but biscuits smeared with bacon grease.
I don't think I even understood that the sex in Ada was incestuous, but I got the intimacy of it. I think "Beastly Beatitudes" has the hero losing his virginity at 12 to his nanny and that struck home with me at that age as well. I did not object to the un-PC underage sex.
I read Ada for the first time when I was in high school. I remember very little about it except a part where Van visits a brothel and is persuaded to try the catamite, whose bowels had been obliterated due to overuse, leaving his lover's shaft unappetizingly coated with mustard and blood; he eventually had to be destroyed.
I closed the book and put my head down. I think maybe I never got around to finishing it.
81.b - neb, Avedano's on Cortland in Bernal has leaf lard. They also have artisanally crafted Snickers bars. (I sneered, but I bought one, and it was really good.)
137: Wow, I must have forgotten that part. Otherwise I would have become celibate.
They also have artisanally crafted Snickers bars
Are they allowed to call them that? Any trademark lawyers in the house?
There are equally disgusting parts in Gravity's Rainbow, but I've never heard anyone seriously make the case that it's a worse book for exploring those things.
142. I'm not contending it's a bad book for discussing something gross, I'm just commenting that it upset me when I was a kid.
Oh sure sure sure. I thought we were still debating whether it was good or not. It's pretty upsetting on a lot of fronts.
(I have certainly made claims that American Psycho is just too gross and upsetting in a way that I found to be pointless.)
I got stuck at the part of Gravity's Rainbow where the guy crawls into the toilet. The furthest I've ever gotten into Moby Dick is the chapter about sperm.
146: That's... pretty far into Moby Dick, really.
I never got very far into Gravity's Rainbow at all. Barely past the banana part.
I stopped reading Robert Coover's Gerald's Party at the part where the guy is very carefully cleaning the woman's anus after she's had explosive diarrhea.
This passage (which, OK, is from Martin Amis) I think is pretty much my response to Ada, put more articulately:
I have read at least half a dozen Nabokov novels at least half a dozen times. And at least half a dozen times I have tried, and promptly failed, to read Ada ("Or Ardor: A Family Chronicle"). My first attempt took place about three decades ago. I put it down after the first chapter, with a curious sensation, a kind of negative tingle. Every five years or so (this became the pattern), I picked it up again; and after a while I began to articulate the difficulty: "But this is dead," I said to myself. The curious sensation, the negative tingle, is of course miserably familiar to me now: it is the reader's response to what seems to happen to all writers as they overstep the biblical span. The radiance, the life-giving power, begins to fade. Last summer I went away with Ada and locked myself up with it. And I was right. At 600 pages, two or three times Nabokov's usual fighting-weight, the novel is what homicide detectives call "a burster". It is a waterlogged corpse at the stage of maximal bloat. . . .
There is a weakness in Nabokov for "partricianism", as Saul Bellow called it (Nabokov the classic émigré, Bellow the classic immigrant). In the former's purely "Russian" novels (I mean the novels written in Russian that Nabokov did not himself translate), the male characters, in particular, have a self-magnifying quality: they are larger and louder than life. They don't walk - they "march" or "stride"; they don't eat and drink - they "munch" and "gulp"; they don't laugh - they "roar". They are very far from being the furtive, hesitant neurasthenics of mainstream anglophone fiction: they are brawny (and gifted) heart-throbs, who win all the fights and win all the girls. Pride, for them, is not a deadly sin but a cardinal virtue. Of course, we cannot do without this vein in Nabokov: it gives us, elsewhere, his magnificently comic hauteur. In Lolita, the superbity is meant to be funny; elsewhere, it is a trait that irony does not protect.
In Ada nabobism disastrously combines with a nympholepsy that is lavishly, monotonously, and frictionlessly gratified. Ada herself, at the outset, is 12; and Van Veen, her cousin (and half-sibling) is 14. As Ada starts to age, in adolescence, her tiny sister Lucette is also on hand to enliven their "strenuous trysts". On top of this, there is a running quasi-fantasy about an international chain of elite bordellos where girls as young as 11 can be "fondled and fouled". And Van's 60-year-old father (incidentally but typically) has a mistress who is barely out of single figures: she is 10. This interminable book is written in dense, erudite, alliterative, punsome, pore-clogging prose; and every character, without exception, sounds like late Henry James . . . ., with Ada, there is something altogether alien - a sense of monstrous entitlement, of unbridled, head-in-air seigneurism. Morally, this is the world for which the twisted Humbert thirsts: a world where "nothing matters", and "everything is allowed".
I got stuck at the part of Gravity's Rainbow where the guy crawls into the toilet.
Coincidentally, that's where a number of people walked out on Trainspotting when I saw it in the theater.
I wish I could recover the Translation Party translation of the Moby Dick sperm passage that I linked to here years ago. They changed their software or Google Translate changed its algorithm or something and it's much less amusing now.
151 is not exactly inaccurate, but a lot of those qualities are things I enjoy about Ada. It's a book that makes direct references to almost all of his earlier novels, but instead of turning those characters into condescending jokes, he tries to see what happens if we take them seriously--their pomposity, perversity, and inconsistency intact. I can see where another reader would prefer these things as jokes.
152: Maybe it's not entirely a coincidence.
74: How about a NSFW notice on that kind of thing?
In fairness, it did say "apostropher" right there.
It's speculative fiction; it doesn't happen in our universe but in a slightly other one--yes, the one Humbert wants. I forget where Nabokov wrote about the origins of Lolita. It started off as a very short story about a man who marries the mother of the young girl he wants to fuck, and then, in the story, he dies. Nabokov realized that this was actually a huge cop-out. What if he does get what he wants? What then? Ada is like an even greater extension of that. What if the forbidden is achieved... and reciprocated? And it lasts for decades, drawing dozens of other people to their doom? I love Ada because it's Nabokov with all constraints removed--no morality, no worry about the reader's limitations, no realism, no cleverly complete structure.
||
Perhaps the stupidest goddamn thing I have seen in the last ten years:
http://www.exhalepremiumbeverages.com/products/Pear-of-Ladies.html#.UCVVRKMV3ct
Sigh. The brochure is even stupider.
||>
How about a fucking sound warning, man? Jesus.
Finding out that there people who still click on apo links is like finding out there are adults who still believe in Santa Claus.
it's Nabokov with all constraints removed--no morality, no worry about the reader's limitations, no realism, no cleverly complete structure
I guess, but to me that just read as "incredibly self indulgent," eventually leading me to simply not care at all about the book or its characters; we always knew that Nabokov was kind of an asshole/genius, but that doesn't mean that I want to spend 700-odd pages in in his most unbridled fantasies. But this is just a difference in personal taste; I can see the counterargument, but the book itself seemed ponderous and dead.
The night the hogs ate Alyosha, Mama died when she heard what Papa did with Sister.
159: Oh, sorry, my computer here at work doesn't have sound.
158: I enjoy the contrast between the description and the list of ingredients immediately below it:
The subtle, light and clean flavor of a fresh pear is captured in this drink, giving you a delicious beverage flavor rarely seen
Ingredients: Carbonated Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Vitamins Blend (taurine, D-glucuronolactone, caffeine, nicacinamide, D-calcium pantothenate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, cyanocobalamin), Natural Flavor, Citric Acid, Sodium Benzoate ,Yellow No. 5, Yellow No. 6.
156, 160: Now, come on. It's been at least a couple of years since I linked to anything horrible here.
For the record, 71 was just a picture of a non-euphemistic biscuit and I was joking in 74.
the stupidest goddamn thing I have seen in the last ten years
You need to get out more often.
For the record, the link in 158 is LOUD.
I don't understand "self-indulgent" above. All Nabokov is self-indulgent, I think, but in an unrepeatably great way.
165: I know. I always figured you were just trying to lull us into a false sense of security, though.
169 -- put it this way. Ada, Pnin, and Lolita. One of these is more bloated, less funny, and less humble than the others.
I always feel like an unsophisticate for loving Pnin the very best, but I just do.
Loving Pnin, that is, though of course I love Pnin himself too.
173 -- me too. Team unsophisticated, activate!
I've never read a word of Pnin or Ada. Am I even more unsophisticated?
I've never read Ada. Love Pnin, though.
I saw my dad reading "Ada", and asked him what it was about. He said he had been trying to figure that out for a week, and instantly stopped reading it.
My dad just came to town, took one look at my bookshelf, pointed at Ada, and said, "Oh, your grandmother loves that book." This happened 20 minutes ago. I have about 1200 books.
Plate of shrimp? Sort of?
I have about 1200 books.
How did you estimate this?
181. If you buy them by the foot, you can count them with a yardstick.
but in an unrepeatably great way.
Give enough bonobos with word processors enough time and Bob's your uncle (and your dad).
Avedano's on Cortland in Bernal has leaf lard
I believe that, but I bet they sell unrendered leaf lard for more than many places would sell rendered duck fat.
I have about 1200 books.
How did you estimate this?
Ten books, eleven books, um, twelvety hundred books.
Since AWB just moved, I'm guessing she has a pretty good idea how many books she has, and wishes she had about 1190 fewer.
I love Despair so much. Is that one less sophisticated than Pnin? Which I haven't read but now think I will?
Huh, I just realized I've started Pnin before, quite possibly on recommendation here. And failed to finish it. Hmm.
I had to use wikipedia to figure out Pnin wasn't an acronym.
How did you estimate this?
Librarything?
I've never read any (Vladimir) Nabokov at all.
I've read The Song of Igor's Campaign and that's it.
187: I think it's more sophisticated than Pnin.
I think it's more sophisticated than Pnin.
That's just your 'pni'n'.
I have neither read Nabokov nor (I think*) heard Call Me Maybe.
*Maybe ambiently. I haven't checked to see if I recognize it.
You mean you haven't clicked through any of the times various versions of it have been linked here?
||
Sources indicated Romney to pick Paul Ryan for VP. Ryan Lizza must be pumped. Allow me to be the first to parrot the conventional wisdom that this will be a polarizing choice. My own sense, which is also pretty conventional, is that this makes Romney easier to beat but worse if elected.
It also strikes me as odd that I'm the first person to pause-play it up here, seeing as someone first told me about it more than three hours ago. So maybe it's a big fat hoax.
|>
It also strikes me as odd that I'm the first person to pause-play it up here, seeing as someone first told me about it more than three hours ago.
Three hours ago being 1 am Eastern time on a Saturday.
200: Not here and not in the many, many places elsewhere versions have been linked.
In the west coast broadcast, NBC news broke into their amateurish coverage of the Olympics with an amateurish report that something would happen saturday morning blah blah blah Ryan blah blah back to London where it's actually already Saturday already but we aren't acknowledging blah blah
That's a really remarkable level of either indifference or self-control.
205 to 203. I haven't watched any of NBC's Olympics coverage, really, but I wouldn't want to accuse them of self-control.
I just clicked on a WP link that said (approximately) "Romney announces Ryan as VP via text." The headline on the article I arrived at was "Romney rumored to pick Ryan as VP" and the body of the article was all in the hypothetical voice, (If Romney picks Ryan...).
207: Yes, I'm looking for a post, because I'm slightly gobsmacked. I can't tell whether I should be elated, because this means that Romney can't win or terrified because Ryan could be second in line to the presidency.
So Romney is worried about his right flank. He could hardly have made a better pick to shore it up. My reaction is pretty much 208.
He just lost the old people vote as far as I can tell. Florida residents can look forward to 3 months of 'round the clock "he wants to end Medicare" ads.
Florida residents can look forward to 3 months of 'round the clock "he wants to end Medicare" ads.
I assume the Dems have those ads already story boarded, if not recorded and in the can ready to go.
This is a sign that the election will be about ideology, and not the current state of the economy, which is good for our side, I think.
I would be terrified. This guy would be a much worse president than Sarah Palin.
The problem is Romney also has ads in the can saying Obama wants to end Medicare by cutting $500 million and it will be rated half true, while "Ryan wants to end Medicare" has already been rated lie of the year. You're really counting on the public understanding policy proposals?
214: Romney just this second made a speech saying "700 billion" and one should vote Romnyan in order to presever Medicare and SocSec.
Negative 12 pinnichios! Pants of liquid nitrogen!
The toilet scene in Gravity's Rainbow is fine (and I appreciated knowing what Trainspotting was riffing on), but the Hansel and Gretel stuff stuff with Blicero was a stopping point for me the first time.
I assume the Ryan choice indicates that Romney's people have a better sense of the fact that they're losing than, say, the commenters at NBC. Also that the Dems now have a better chance of holding the Senate.
"Romney says that Democrats may disagree with Ryan's policies, but he doesn't know anyone who doesn't respect his character and judgment."
Ryan is a slimy douchebag who couldn't judge his way out of a paper bag. Ah wait, Romney doesn't know me.
This mostly feels like good news, but now I'm even more annoyed than I was at the time about the months in which every news source had headlines about Paul Ryan, The Very Serious Expert on Our Nation's Fiscal Health. I'm worried about low-information voters thinking this guy is some kind of genius at fixing the economy, since that's essentially how every major newspaper was branding him for quite a while. But, probably low-information voters didn't pay attention at the time...
218.2: Yes, I think it is somewhat similar to Palin in being a bit of a Hail Mary in the face of otherwise dim prospects.
But never mind all that. Olé the United Mexican States!
My guess: The people funding Romney want a real (ie remotely colorable) mandate to loot SS should he win. Bush's 2004 win wasn't enough for that, only for continuing to kill brown people. Which is good as far as it goes, but isn't going to fund any third house/mistress combinations.
I just talked to my Mom who is getting more liberal but is pro life and always voted conservative. (She comes by it honestly, since her grandparents opposed the New Deal and the income tax etc.) I explained to her that I was going to be able to help them get into a nice assisted living facility because of a Medicaid program of inclusive care for the elderly and that Paul Ryan wanted to destroy Medicaid. She said, "Oh, that's not good." There's hope.
222: That was a quick start. Even more off topic: I really dislike Marcelo as a player. He's quite skilled but also a huge douche.
She said, "Oh, that's not good." There's hope
No offense, but that's not "hope." That's just self-interest.
Ha, the Obama campaign has subtly changed their message on the "Lie of the Year": His plan also would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting thousands of dollars in health care costs to seniors. How will Politifact cope with such nuance*? Already out with their scorecard on Ryan
PolitiFact and PolitiFact Wisconsin have evaluated 14 statements by Ryan, a native of Janesville. Two were rated True and two Mostly True; four were Half True and four Mostly False; none were False and two were Pants on Fire.*Correct answer; Who cares?
Choosing Ryan wins him the support of a crucial demographic: inside-the-beltway media bloviators. Romney must be hoping that the bloviators will convince the old people not to defect. Hopefully, though, the AARP will counter the message. Old people listen to the AARP, for some reason.
227: has anyone started a website that fact checks the fact checkers?
"Politifact's most recent rating of Pants on Fire receives a rating of half true."
Choosing Ryan wins him the support of a crucial demographic: inside-the-beltway media bloviators.
This. For once the media's high school mentality was working for the Democrats, as they dislike Romney.
225: Yes, I was in another room on the phone saying, "Hey Brazil-Mexico is starting, I've got to go." So I missed it (Caught the replay. Literally the opening sequence I assume?) From the play since, they're going to need more unless their defensive luck holds, which I doubt.
Andres Cantor's "Goooooooooaaaaaaal!" calls lasted longer than the ball had been in play.
The picture on the Washington Post home page right now is... interesting. Romney is grinning like a wolf and Ryan is leaning backwards and cackling.
226: No offense, but that's not "hope." That's just self-interest.
So what? One person's self-interest can be many people's hope. I'd categorize almost every vote I've ever made as being motivated by my self-interest--and relatively narrowly construed from my perspective.
209: So Romney is worried about his right flank. He could hardly have made a better pick to shore it up.
Yeah, worried about his right flank and apparently undergoing quite a bit of pressure from that flank to go with a hyper fiscal conservative. I'd have expected Pawlenty to fit the bill well enough, but he's kind of shifty-eyed, and (a) Ryan's from Wisconsin and they're trying to turn Wisconsin; (b) Ryan's almost as personally dynamic as Obama, and is a very smoove talker (might be able to show up Biden in debates); (c) they really want to go full-bore with an alternative to Obama's welfare state, and Mitt's doing kind of a crappy job defending himself. They want to throw down and cut it out with the mincing.
It could be sort of a genius move, much as I hate to say it. Per comments above, the public can't judge jack shit about the actual merits of the Ryan budget plan.
Here's the way it looks like the Romney campaign is going to try to play it (from talking points they distributed):
Does this mean Mitt Romney is adopting the Paul Ryan plan? • Gov. Romney applauds Paul Ryan for going in the right direction with his budget, and as president he will be putting together his own plan for cutting the deficit and putting the budget on a path to balance. • Romney's administration will go through the budget line by line and ask two questions: Can we afford it? And, if not, should we borrow money from China to pay for it? • Mitt Romney will start with the easiest cut of all: Obamacare, a trillion-dollar entitlement we don't want and can't afford.Remember, proles, access to healthcare for you and your kids is an entitlement.
218.last: Also that the Dems now have a better chance of holding the Senate.
How so?
What Obama Wants ...FDL
[Obama] particularly believes that Democrats do not receive enough credit for their willingness to accept cuts in Medicare and Social Security, while Republicans oppose almost any tax increase to reduce the deficit....NYT
What Obama wants is the campaign to be about cutting entitlements, with Obama being the sensible moderate, only willing to slash them rather than kill them. Fuck him.
(The key is probably youth turnout in swing states, much worse for Obama than 2008 (unemployed and in debt), and I am not yet betting on the winner)
Lee Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" -- that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me -- because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger.And in 2012 you pick Paul Ryan as your running mate.
227: has anyone started a website that fact checks the fact checkers?
I dunno. Coast Guard?
It could be sort of a genius move
...if VP picks made any difference. But in my experience, the potential effects of running-mates only runs from negative to neutral.
241: That's usually true, and is the way I'd bet this time, but this one might change how the Romney campaign is treated.
Debates in October:
Ryan: Slash Social Security! Slash Medicare and Medicaid! Cut wasteful gov't!
Biden: Me too, me too, just not as much as him
Romney:Tax cuts! Lost of tax cuts!
Obama:Me too, me too! Tax cuts for everybody except the 1%. Lots of tax cuts!
After a couple months of that, we'll see how much turnout is depressed, which is what Repubs want. I mean, really, why fucking bother, except to wave your anti-racist banner.
226: Turgid-- Yes, it's her self-interest. But for many years she actively opposed policies which were in her interest because of vestigial loyalty to a party which was different from what she and her father grew up with and when it was no longer in her interest. The hope I have is that it may be possible to change people's minds. My mother's mind has been changed on a lot of issues.
241: I know that's the wisdom, but in this case Romney *really* needs some help, it seems to me. The problem with a milquetoast like Rob Portman would be that Romney would have to continue to stand on his own feet, which he's not doing very well at; now he doesn't have to. Ryan can be his translator.
I don't know -- maybe Ryan's voucherization of Medicare really will sink them, but the alarm bells have been ringing for long enough about the need to do something (anything, apparently) about Medicare that Ryan may just come across to that elusive swing voter as he's mostly been billed: bold, visionary, just what the doctor ordered.
It'll be pretty crucial to destroy Ryan's Medicare plan in the minds of voters.
I don't get this pick at all. Mitt's "strength" was already that he is a ruthless capitalist, and he's already sewn up the ruthless capitalist vote. Who does this get him?
(I agree with Apo that it doesn't matter. But they put a lot of thought into him and I don't get it.)
246: It is a win in the Village, I'd think. And the Village beat Gore -- hell, there are probably people in R land who think Village ridicule of Palin beat McCain.
Romney *really* needs some help
Romney will need an act of God to win this election. There isn't anybody sitting in the wings that would have changed the ugly math of the electoral map. To me, the more interesting calculation behind this pick is what it means for 2016 positioning. That is, whether this pre-positions him as the frontrunner or ties him to an utterly inept losing campaign, clearing the decks for a Christie-Rubio showdown for the big money support.
I think this is only likely to hurt Romney somewhat in the general election. Not enough to save Obama if the economic factors end up bad enough, so the real risk is what having a VP Ryan would communicate to the Congressional Democrats.
248: Huh. True about the electoral map. I hadn't thought that far yet, though I did wonder whether, if Romney-Ryan loses, Ryan will continue as House Budget Committee chairman. He's not up for Congressional reelection, right? I'd like to see him out of there.
What about the Senate? I'm still puzzled about what snarkout meant in 218.last.
He's not up for Congressional reelection, right?
Why wouldn't he be?
He is still running for Congress and will win that easily.
Charles Pierce as entertaining on the pick as you might expect: "Paul Ryan: Murderer of Opportunity, Political Coward, Candidate for Vice President of the United States". He does acknowledge the "Village" problem.:And Gloria Borger ran a pre-taped interview in which she seemed to be struggling with the issue of whether it would be unprofessional to ask Paul Ryan to prom.
251: I don't know -- I just didn't think he was running for reelection this year, for some reason. I could have just checked. So he's dropping out of that, I guess? Why don't I just check on how that works, eh?
The Olympic village? Smurf village?
253: Hint: What is a salient characteristic of the House of Representatives?
254 If you have to ask, you're not in it.
255: Other than being full of fucking asshats.
Paul Ryan is a dishonest person's idea of what they hope a stupid person's idea of a smart person is.
Paul Ryan reminds me of Ryan from The Office.
Lord Saletan's having starbursts!
I know someone who knows someone who knows someone who gave Paul Ryan a blowjob in college. Finally, some new information.
I know someone who knows someone who knows someone who gave Paul Ryan a blowjob in college. Finally, some new information.
255: What? They run for office concurrently with running for other offices? That just seems so weird to me.
Although I suppose by the time you get to the end of 262 it's no longer new.
Are these invocations of the electoral map factoring in the various disenfranchisement bills that have been created in the last two years? Because, for example, an estimated 20% of Philadelphia residents who were eligible to vote in 2008 will be not allowed to vote in 2012. Ohio has changed early voting so you can't do it if you have a 9-to-5 job (presumably some will suggest this benefits the loafers and layabouts who vote Democratic). And so on.
260: i hate you for making offering me an opportunity, which, because I'm so weak-willed a person, is the same as forcing me read that.
263: That's common, though not the norm. Lieberman did it in 2000, remember.
...if VP picks made any difference. But in my experience, the potential effects of running-mates only runs from negative to neutral.
Well, I think this avoids being a negative with "high-information, undecided swing voters." I know this is supposedly an electorally insignificant demographic, but it includes my sister and mother. They are not consistently ideological on size-of-government issues, but they are very quick to judge a candidates on a superficial "exudes managerial competence" metric. They both didn't vote for McCain because of Palin.
270: I thought the recipient was Cheney during the VP debate.
I like this Frank Conniff tweet: Paul Ryan's not a bad guy. He just wants poor and sick people to pay for the huge debt he voted for during the Bush years.
For the moment, I think this was a pretty good pick for Romney, who was in big trouble, big enough that he needed to shore up his base or risk being embarrassed* in the election.
Now the question becomes, how hard this will be to resolve for the punditocracy, which really hates Romney but loves Ryan with a fierce, fierce passion? My guess? Easy. The pundts' love for Ryan -- and for seriousness more broadly -- will overwhelm their hatred for Mitt. They'll treat Ryan rather than Romney like the nominee and will paint him as the most serious, most important Republican candidate in a very long time. In other words, the press will pretend that this pick isn't what it is: a sop to the base. And that will be helpful for Romney. Meanwhile, Ryan isn't stupid (for a Republican) or a crazy person (for a resident of Bellevue's locked ward), so he'll do pretty well on tv and might actually help in that regard as well. On the other hand, his policies are toxic, but I can't remember the last time that really hurt a Republican.
* Assuming the economy doesn't worsen.
Also, this guarantees that Andrew Sullivan will moderate his tone about Mitt.
274: Oh my god. Sullivan will suffer my wrath if he does that. Yelling will ensue.
I was on Sullivan yesterday. Substitute Sullivan, anyway.
I was on Sullivan yesterday. Substitute Sullivan, anyway.
And yet when I—also posting a Tuesday Hatred at The Weblog—argued in similar wise years earlier, did anyone from a big blog pick me up? No.
277 Life is hard, and then you die, and you don't even get an obituary in the Times that begins with odd word choices.
My dog was on Sullivan*. But not neB.
*This is true.
It's true, oud's dog has never been on me.
280: You should have been so luck, sir.
250.2 - I don't know why this is particularly difficult -- Ryan's budget plan, including its Politifact Lie of the Year-endorsed ritual disembowelment of Medicare is incredibly unpopular, to the extent that many people literally cannot believe that it proposes what it proposes. (Including the brain trust at Politifact, obviously.) Kathy Hochul got a year-long rental of a very Republican seat in upstate New York primarily based on running perfectly true boogeyman ads about what it does to Medicare. To the extent this means more people hear about Ryan's budget plan, it's a good thing for some Senate candidates in somewhat tenuous seats. I'd say it particularly helps Bill Nelson in Florida, Shelley Berkeley in Nevada (her opponent, Sen. Dean Heller, voted for Ryan's budget twice!), Claire McCaskill in Missouri, and Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota.
I think this will prove to be a damaging pick for Romney, though not nearly as damaging as Palin was. Obama has a straight shot at making the election a referendum on entitlements. Ryan is the modern era's Adlai Stevenson -- a candidate who's style appeals inside the Beltway, but not elsewhere. (And it's a sign of our fallen era that it's Ryan in the role, but the media bloviators have been gunning for entitlements for 25 years now.)
Romney will need an act of God to win this election.
I don't know where you're getting this confidence. Nate Sil/ver estimates Obama's chances at 70%, but admits that his estimate is higher than most. I mean, okay, if you want to call "the economy getting noticeably worse, and voter disenfranchisement costing Democrats a percentage point or two where it matters," which combined could pretty easily hand things to Romney, acts of God, go ahead--but both, should they occur, will be pretty directly traceable to human decisions (the ECB, state-level Republicans).
Hyperbole for effect. But the map is hella daunting for Romney: he'd have to win absolutely every remotely close state. Sure, it's possible in an any-given-Sunday sense, but this has been the most static electorate I've ever seen. I just don't think there are enough undecided voters this year to break the basic contours of the contest.
a candidate who's style appeals inside the Beltway, but not elsewhere
7-term congressman. His appeal works at least one other place.
285: why in the world would you googleproof his name?
287: Like Stevenson, except less so -- Stevenson at least managed to get elected governor.
285 - But that 70% chance is designed to bake in the possibility of the economy or the Middle East blowing up; the RCP poll aggregator (which is not designed to be friendly to Democrats) has Romney down almost five points to Obama, the biggest gap since Super Tuesday.
I'm surprised at how surprised a lot of people are by the Ryan pick. This is exactly the kind of VP pick I've been expecting Romney to make since he secured the nomination. Romney's biggest weakness (of many) is that the GOP base doesn't trust his conservatism, so for a running mate he needed to shore up his right flank with someone really conservative and really popular with the base, and Ryan fits the bill perfectly.
290: yeah but I was hoping for Bachmann.
290: I haven't read anything about this yet. Has anybody said it is reminiscent of Dole choosing Kemp in 1996?
292: my old political theory mentor made that exact comparison on Facebook about 10 hours ago, yes--'This is uncannily a repeat of Dole, inauthentic and untrusted by conservatives, picking Kemp, beloved hero of the supply-side fiscal right, in the effort to complete his "I'll be Ronald Reagan if you want me to be" ideological self-effacement. Ryan even worked for Kemp, IIRC. But someone forgot to tell Mitt how that story ended...'
292: Yup
But there is a parallel between the dilemma he now faces and the one Bob Dole confronted before the GOP's 1996 convention. And as he mulls his running-mate options, it suddenly seems possible that Romney will go down the same road Dole did.
283: Got it. Thanks. I imagine I'd lost faith in the capacity of the gutting-Medicare message to actually sway voters.
Just because it's the drum I like to pound let me point out that Ryan was an enthusiastic supporter of the GWB plan to stick social security in the stock market right before the biggest collapse in history.
296: That's a good one. We need to repeat it places that aren't just populated with the converted.
I'd say it's up to the media and the Obama campaign to see to it that Romney is asked, pointedly and repeatedly, whether he too supports privatization of Medicare and Social Security.
I've heard or seen a frightening number of on-the-street interviews with voters in which they seem complacent about the policy differences between a Romney and an Obama presidency. They kvetch that Obama hasn't put forward a *plan*, or that he's all over the place, trying to be all things to all people. They complain that Romney hasn't really put forward a plan either, and if one or the other of them would just do that, that guy would have [the speaker's] vote. This is such pure cluelessness on said speakers' parts that it's difficult to know how to reach them. At least Paul Ryan has a plan, yo!
So, P90X (Paul Ryan's favorite fitness program) or Crossfit?
As I recall (though the archives fail to provide me with documentation), my reaction to Palin was to point out her many obvious ways of being stupid (she'd been interviewed on CNBC or someplace saying she didn't know what the VP did, for instance) and to predict that there would be a flurry of media adoration for a few days or weeks before she gave a couple of interviews and people settled into what the fuck was he thinking picking her territory and then eventually she would be blamed for his loss.
My reaction to Ryan is that it feels like a pick intended to make the candidate sexier by association. Other examples of this I've heard in conversation over the weekend were Kemp and Edwards and Palin, none of whom joined winning tickets. I don't see any special reason to believe picking Ryan makes things look any better for Romney on www.electoral-vote.com. If a pick is powerful enough to gain him a state then surely it must be powerful enough to lose him a state as well in which case he traded Wisconsin for Florida, not exactly a winning strategy. I think Ryan took it because he's pathologically ambitious and thinks it will elevate his station in the party and that if they lose it won't be seen as his fault by the people whose support matters most to him. I think they chose him because he was another way for Romney to make it clear that he would absolutely bend over backwards and touch his nose to wet ground if that's what it takes to make fundies accept him. Eventually the historical consensus will be that two boring white guys got beaten because they scared old people too much.
299: I saw a "two tickets to the gun show!" type pic of him with his "fitness guru." They were only standing on top of a homeless dude metaphorically.
Man alive! This is messed up! I'm surprised they were able to find an un-detourned example though, Bay Area anarchists are slacking!
||
This is a fun toy. I simulated 50 years of Powerball, spent $10,396 on tickets, and won $877, for an 8% return.
|>
Some influential opinion-makers read this website, right? SEK, at least? There were jokes on twitter a few days ago about which Transformer should be added to the Republican ticket. Being more of a GI Joe person as a child, it took me about one second to decide that it should be Paul Ryan, because he and Romney are Tomax and Xamot. And now that has come to pass. Someone run with this!
So many hearts are floating over my head right now, ned. You have no idea. So many of them!
Wikipedia:
Unhappy with the world of corporate finance, the brothers found the opportunities available in international terrorism far more suited to their abilities, and joined Cobra. Their specialties are in infiltration, espionage, sabotage, propaganda and corporate law.
Like the Crimson Guard that they lead, Xamot and Tomax also lead the "respectable" corporate face of Cobra as the founders, owners, and CEOs of Extensive Enterprises. When not engaged in terrorism, they efficiently manage Cobra's business affairs in shirt and tie. Their preferred mode of attack is through brains over brawn, using the law to serve the purposes of Cobra. They have covered their paper trail and connection to Cobra so well, that it is thought to be impossible to prove a connection between them and the terrorist organization.
My fondest wish is for Jonathan Chait to start referring to "the Corsican Syndrome".
Tomax and Xamot are not seen again in the DiC-produced third season. Their old headquarters, the Extensive Enterprises building, is seen, however, and General Hawk mentions that they closed them down. The building itself has been abandoned and is being used as a secret Cobra base. Also in the DiC third and fourth seasons, their troops, the Crimson Guard, are shown in the form of the Crimson Guard Immortals. However, they are used more as a grunt force, as opposed to an elite group.
The downsizers have become the downsized.
Republicans! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of Cobra, Dude, at least it's an ethos.
