Try it!

Friday, October 30, 2015

Why I love country music, reasons No. 1,245 and No. 1,246

Chris Janson released his debut album today, and it sounds pretty good. People lament that country music has been overrun by "bro country," where every song is about pickup trucks and back roads and girls in vanishingly small cut-off jeans. Janson doesn't do that. Very old school country. Looks like this -- "The Power of Positive Drinking" -- will be the next single off his new album:


Justin Moore premiered his new single today, too -- also old school country, called "You Look Like I Need a Drink." Don't have the audio on that yet, as it was only released this morning, but I'll get it up. Great song. Since I don't have it, here's another Justin Moore song:


I love all kinds of stuff, but these guys remind me why I love country, too.

Monday, October 26, 2015

Can we please retire this term?

I'm not sure where I read it, but years ago I saw a reference that contended that once a slang term appeared in advertising, it was hopelessly out of date and definitely not cool. I have no reason to doubt this, and I have recent support for this theory. The term I am hoping that advertisers will stop using is "the fam." I've heard it recently in advertisements for two different companies, which shall remain nameless. They should be embarrassed.

I suppose I understand the use of "the fam." After all, it is slang shorthand for "people to whom I am related by marriage or blood, including people to whom I am related because they are the offspring of myself and the person to whom I am wed as well as other people to whom I am related by marriage or blood through more distant relationships." I mean, who wants to say that every time they are attempting to reference "the fam?"

Oh, wait, that isn't what it is short for? You're saying that "the fam" is short for "the family," and is intended to refer to the people related to you living under your roof, such as your spouse and children? Well, that makes it a really stupid slang term. The fact that advertising firms think it is still cool slang should be all the evidence anyone needs that it is even stupider than that. It is a pointless abreviation of an already-brief word. So shut the fuck up already. The companies using it in their advertising know who they are. And no, I won't use your services. So shut it.

Sunday, October 25, 2015

I like rap battles

I kinda like this site. You should check it out. A taste of what they do:



Nothing quite like a good rap battle.

Maureen O'Hara, RIP

I am sorry to say that Maureen O'Hara died Saturday at the age of 95.  Lord, this woman was beautiful, and she made some great movies. The fact that she did so often with the great John Wayne only makes her more magnificent in my memory. She and Wayne made five movies together, including "The Quiet Man" and "Big Jake," both among my favorites, but her star turn as the mother of Natalie Wood's character in "Miracle on 34th Street" remains my favorite, and is a movie we watch every year at Christmas in the Wolves household. I don't know about you, but she was one of my favorites and I will miss her.


I could add a million pictures, all of which would show she was stupid hot, and none of them would show how talented she was and how she simply dominated when she was on screen. RIP, Maureen.

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Just a victim of circumstance

Yeah, everybody's tired of kitty posts. Well, almost everybody. Frankly, there's probably more coming. As a side note, I have to confess that I have been really busy and Mrs. Wolves has taken a lot of kitty pictures. I have not abdicated my responsibilities, but the project remains boring, The Farm is winding down (for that matter, so is the project) and the Packers are on the bye this week, so no game food porn. Politics depresses me right now, and my car is in the shop. I expect at least one of my dogs to bite me sometime soon. And since I am claiming to be a victim of circumstance, try this on for size:


Love me some Joan Jett. Got a guitar pick from her during a show in a bar in Rochester, N.Y., the day after Thanksgiving in 1981. Hitch-hiked up from Blacksburg, Va. to visit my little sister at college for Thanksgiving, so I just happened to be in town for the show. She wasn't huge yet, but I worked at a New Wave radio station at the time and jumped at the chance to see her. But I digress.

Does this mean they're friends now?

When Mischief first came to the house, Murder and Mayhem were somewhat less than welcoming. They didn't want her here and made that sentiment clear. Just the other day, Mayhem and Mischief were doing one of those things that cats do -- wrestling:


And chewing on each other:


Obviously, these are things cats do when they like each other. Who among us does not chew on his or her friends? Yeah, that's cats for you. In any event, it would appear that Mischief is fully welcome into the Wolves cat household.


Sleepy or evil?

You decide. Murder and Mayhem, caught recently sleeping together in one of the thousands of cat beds set up around the Wolves household, gave off some fairly ambiguous looks. Were they just sleepy:


Or evil, plotting kitty havoc:


You decide.

Friday, October 23, 2015

The climate bullshit continues and probably is about to make your electricity a lot more expensive for no reason

The nations of the world are preparing to meet in Paris to discuss how they can really, truly fuck the economies of the developed world while simultaneously convincing the undeveloped world that they can go ahead and develop while attempting to institute rules that will prevent the developing world from doing that. Got it?

Yeah, it's every bit as stupid as it sounds. There's another conference coming up on how to "deal with"  climate change, ignoring the fact that change is what climate does and that man-made impacts have very little to do with long-term climate trends. At this point, I refuse to provide links to the basics. I think you should look it up yourselves. But the basic theory is moronic, ignores the laws of thermodynamics, is unsupported by the data and even the climate models that are scaring everyone so badly don't even come close to agreeing with one another. Further, none of those models can predict the past, much less the future. All of the models use fudge factors to get past the climate elements the modelers don't understand -- and there are a lot of them -- and those same models are essentially linear, attempting to predict events in a non-linear chaotic environment. While you climate alarmists go ahead and google every sentence I just wrote, I will proceed to demonstrate how scientifically bereft the alarmists have become.

Surface temperatures have little to nothing to do with the theory of anthropogenic global warming. Look it up. The key lies in water vapor and mid-tropospheric temperatures in the tropics. Look it up. I'm getting tired of telling you this. But the alarmists, in attempting to alarm you, rely almost entirely on surface temperatures, although they love to talk about Arctic sea ice (although less so lately, since Arctic sea ice has been increasing since the low point in 2007, and reliable records only go back to 1979, when weather satellites became common -- hardly enough time to establish trends on a geologic, climatic scale, not that alarmists would mention that). Once again, look it up or shut up. Seriously, you know fuck all, and I'm tired of it.

And what you think you know is wrong. Bad news, kids -- they're lying to you. Back in August, the U.S. federal government announced that July was the hottest month since people started measuring temperatures. They do so even though the bureaucrats know their numbers are meaningless:
But government spokespeople rarely mention the inconvenient fact that these records are being set by less than the uncertainty in the statistics. NOAA claims an uncertainty of 14 one-hundredths of a degree in its temperature averages, or near twice the amount by which they say the record was set. NASA says that their data is typically accurate to one tenth of a degree, five times the amount by which their new record was set.
So, the new temperature records are meaningless. Neither agency knows whether a record was set.
Such misrepresentations are now commonplace in NOAA and NASAannouncements. They are regularly proclaiming monthly and yearly records set by less than the uncertainties in the measurements. Scientists within the agencies know that this is dishonest.
They also know that calculating so-called global average temperatures to hundredths of a degree is irrational. After all, there is very little data for the 70 percent of Earth’s surface that is ocean. There is also little data for mountainous and desert regions, not to mention the Antarctic. Much of the coverage is so sparse that NASA is forced to make the ridiculous claim that regions are adequately covered if there is a temperature-sensing station within nearly 750 miles. This is the distance between Ottawa, Canada, and Myrtle Beach, S.C. cities with very different climates. Yet, according to NASA, only one temperature sensing station is necessary for the two cities and the vast area between them to be adequately represented in their network.
Even if the new "hottest month ever" claims were actually statistically significant -- and they aren't -- the claims are based on numbers that have little to do with reality:
New climate data by NOAA scientists doubles the warming trend since the late 1990s by adjusting pre-hiatus temperatures downward and inflating temperatures in more recent years.
“Newly corrected and updated global surface temperature data from NOAA’s [National Centers for Environmental Information] do not support the notion of a global warming ‘hiatus,'” wrote NOAA scientists in their study presenting newly adjusted climate data.
"Newly adjusted climate data." Do you understand what they are doing? The numbers don't support their theory, so they change the numbers. They aren't even shy about admitting what they are doing:
NOAA says for the years 1998 to 2012, the “new analysis exhibits more than twice as much warming as the old analysis at the global scale,” at 0.086 degrees Celsius per decade compared to 0.039 degrees per decade.
“This is clearly attributable to the new [Sea Surface Temperature] analysis, which itself has much higher trends,” scientists noted in their study. “In contrast, trends in the new [land surface temperature] analysis are only slightly higher.”
Keep in mind, they take actual temperatures. Then they change them. Oddly enough, the changes always fit in nicely with the currently popular theory about global warming. Also keep in mind, the data actually relevant to the theory, mid-tropospheric temperatures, do not support the theory. So quit ignoring pesky facts and please pay attention to the horseshit sandwich we would like to feed you, mmmm'kay? And in case you still think surface data is accurate and matters, try this:
The US accounts for 6.62% of the land area on Earth, but accounts for 39% of the data in the GHCN network. Overall, from 1880 to the present, approximately 99% of the temperature data in the USHCN homogenized output has been estimated (differs from the original raw data). Approximately 92% of the temperature data in the USHCN TOB output has been estimated. The GHCN adjustment models estimate approximately 92% of the US temperatures, but those estimates do not match either the USHCN TOB or homogenized estimates.
The homogenization estimate introduces a positive temperature trend of approximately 0.34 C per century relative to the USHCN raw data. The TOBs estimate introduces a positive temperature trend of approximately 0.16 C per century. These are not additive. The homogenization trend already accounts for the TOBs trend.
 Face it. If they don't like the data, they change it. This is not a conspiracy theory. The data routinely gets changed. NOAA changes the data from the past, as well. Why? If your department isn't doing something vital to the survival of mankind, might you lose funding to a department that is? Bureaucracy in action.




Thursday, October 22, 2015

The end is nigh?

This project, which has been so good to me, might be getting toward the end. I'm not saying the swordfish is on the deck, but it might not be the healthiest swordfish you ever saw. The firm added about 10 new temps Wednesday, and told them that the project would last until mid-November. They suggested it might not go longer, but mid-November is a shitty time to get dumped into the market. There basically are no projects starting between the week before Thanksgiving and New Year's, at least normally. So what does this mean for us and the swordfish?



Hope I'm wrong.

Too much kitties in this bed

Once upon a time, when Cpl. Wolves was but a toddler, he once climbed in bed with me and Mrs. Wolves and, unhappy with the crowded situation, declared, "Too much people in this bed." Well, Mrs. Wolves apparently reached the same conclusion the other morning. She woke up to this:


Naturally, she tried to shoo the kitties away. Good luck:


I think the kitties triumphed:


OK, I got cats. Problem?

Look, when in doubt, put up some cat pictures. Cats rule the internet, right? Mischief took over a chair the other afternoon, and Mrs. Wolves documented the event. Mischief, apparently, had a hard time getting comfortable. Or, maybe she just couldn't choose between multiple comfortable positions. I don't know, you'd have to ask her. She went this way:


And this way:


Not to mention this way:


Sup if dat?

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

So, we have requests

A reader has asked for a post on a particular topic. To maintain the suspense, I will not say what the topic is, but it is near and dear to my heart. It will take some work, so it won't be up right away, but I am working on it. It reminds me, though, of my days in a cover band, when we would get a request for a particular artist and try to figure out if there was a song by that artist we could fake our way through. We usually could. We were a freaking human jukebox. In that vein, here is a song we used to do:


Hey, sorry I didn't have a nifty picture to go with it. I'll work on that. Maybe I'll put up other tracks from the band, as well. Anyway, enjoy.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

It wasn't pretty, but it was a win

The Packers staggered into the bye week with an ugly win. We'll take ugly ever time, though. Ty Montgomery went out with an injury early, meaning three of the Packers' top four receivers were out. Still, they won. So eat it. Which we did. The game food was excellent.

Naturally, we had stuffed potato skins:


We also had the always-popular potato balls:


Lots of potatoes there, but we put in some meatballs, as well:



Looked pretty good together, didn't it?


Didn't like the way the offence played, but at least the defense stepped up at the end and preserved the win. Nice to be going into the bye, get some guys healthy. Go Pack!

This fuckin' guy

I can't believe what an incredible douchebag Emperor Barry is. Palestinian terrorists, at the urging of the so-called Palestinian government, are going apeshit in Jerusalem, attacking Jews, mostly with knives, killing many. So what does Barry's State Department do? They act like the Israelis are asking for it:
As Palestinians assailants continue to murder Jews across Israel, the Obama administration on Wednesday accused the Jewish state of committing acts of “terrorism,” drawing outrage from many observers.
As the number of Israelis murdered during a streak of Palestinian terrorism continues to rise, the Obama administration sought to equate the sides and told reporters that, in its view, Israel is guilty of terrorism.
“Individuals on both sides of this divide are—have proven capable of, and in our view, are guilty of acts of terrorism,” State Department Spokesman John Kirby told reporters following questions about the spike in violence.
Seriously? I guess there's no doubt anymore where Barry stands on how he feels about the only democracy in the Middle East.

I suppose I owe an explanation

I haven't been posting much late. Frankly, I've been too tired most nights, but it also is a direct result of this job being really boring. There are no real pyrotechnics or great Temp Town behavior to write about. Dullsville, kids. Since that is supposedly the theme of the blog, I have been hard-put to find post material. I hate to just load up with kitties, military stuff and politics. On the other hand, with no Temp Town material to speak of, not sure what else to do. I guess you'll see what happens, right? Thanks for hanging in there.

We been busy down on The Farm

There was a freeze warning on for last night, and again for tonight, so I had to get busy on The Farm. I figured I better harvest at least all the peppers. First I had to survey what is going on. The second-crop peas are doing OK, but might not make it to peahood if the weather turns cold early:


The habaneros and other peppers have been pumping it out all summer, and they continue:


Also true for the banana peppers:


 These are called "garden salsa hot peppers," so I guess that's what they are, but they've been doing well:


These are sweet peppers called Cubanelles, and they also have produced well:


The late crop spinach is really close to harvest:


Some of the first-crop broccoli is ready:


And the second-crop broccoli is getting there:


First-crop peas are putting out flowers and pods:


With a freeze warning, though, it was time to harvest everything I could. I brought in the radishes, but left the carrots -- they're in the ground and should be OK. Same was true for the radishes, I guess, but they were ready for harvest. I brought in the serranos and the habaneros:


I brought in the Cubanelles:


Harvested some broccoli:


Saw that the first-crop peas are starting to put out pods, but left them on the vine:


The harvest bin was getting full:


It got fuller:


These are hot peppers that I don't even know the name of:


So many banana peppers, which are sweet and probably won't go into the hot sauce in the numbers they produced, so I have to find something else to do with them:


A few bell peppers, even this late in the season:


Yeah, Cubanelles:


Even this late in the season, you can see that the serranos are still flowering and putting out peppers. I left the little ones on the vine:


Farmer Tom got home while I was harvesting, and we put tarps over the beds to help keep them from freezing. Today, we replaced the tarps with translucent plastic, so the plants could get some sun. Once the temperature is back up -- probably after Monday -- I will go ahead and free the beds, see what we get going forward. Fingers crossed.

Saturday, October 17, 2015

I think I missed my chance to get rich

Somewhere, in the offices of a major manufacturer of eyewear -- glasses, people, the kind that help you see better, not the kind that you drink out of -- there is a guy in the marketing department laughing his ass off. He also is cashing major bonus checks.

Why? Because somebody, somewhere decided it would be a great idea to market black frame glasses as cool, and because the urban hipsters were stupid enough to jump on that bandwagon in a big way. Hell, I see a bazillion people every day wearing the black frame glasses -- we're talking about the 18-35 demographic here -- because they think they have to to be cool. Hell, I'll bet half the black-frame glasses out there aren't prescription -- they're just clear lenses so the wearer will look hip.

The irony here, of course, is that for decades the military-issue glasses for anyone who needed vision correction were, of course, nice, sturdy black frame glasses. Folks in the military referred to these glasses as "government issue birth control." Think the hipsters know that?

Stealth kitty

Cpl. Wolves came by the other day, and naturally he spent some time snuggling with his animals. Here he is with Sadie the Ball-Warming Dog and Mischief:


I'm sorry, whose disembodied tail is that in the picture above? Yeah, she stuck her head out a little later -- it was Murder, who didn't want to be left out:


Mrs. Wolves has given me a bazillion kitty pictures in the last day or two. I'll probably be posting a lot of them because I haven't been posting much lately and cheap posts are better than none. I haven't been posting much lately because Temp Town is giving me no material, and I am in a quandary about how much I should just give up on Temp Town as a source of blog material. I'll let you know how that internal argument comes out. In the meantime, enjoy the kitty posts.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

This is why no one reads the New York Times.

I refuse to link to the original New York Times piece because it is such an incredible piece of douchery that it is hard to believe that it is serious. I give a hat tip to Ace for alerting me to this, and I apologize for taking so long to get to it. I also thank Ace for referring to this piece as "hate bait," intended to draw views from people who can't believe how stupid the piece is but still provide links to the piece, thus accomplishing the goal of publishing something so stupid in the first place.

Rather than deal with the moronicness of this post myself, I leave it to someone who is clearly far more capable than I at dissecting  liberal stupidity. I pass you over to Monster Hunter Nation to deal with the idiocy that is this post:
More like modern pajama boy man-child. This New York Times article is so remarkably stupid that it has already been mocked across the entire internet. However, as a manly man of manliness, it is my responsibility to address this piece of fuckwittery. The same way that as a professional working writer I am compelled to respond to stupid writing advice that might otherwise screw up aspiring authors, I have to Fisk this.
See, I have two sons. As a father, it is my duty to point out really stupid shit, so they can avoid becoming goony hipster douche balloons. So boys, this Fisk was written for you.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/fashion/mens-style/27-ways-to-be-a-modern-man.html
As usual, the original is italics and my comments are in bold.
SELF-HELP
Even the header is wrong. This article is the opposite of self-help. This is like the instruction guide for how to live life as a sex-free eunuch. 27 Ways to Be a Modern ManAlternate Title: Does the Touch of a Woman Confuse and Frighten You? 27 Ways to Avoid Girl Cooties.
By BRIAN LOMBARDI
Who took time off from his busy schedule at the nail salon to write this.
SEPTEMBER 29, 2015
What follows is one dude’s bizarrely specific pronouncements, which range from preachy but passable, to full turnip. Now, if this jackass had just lived his life according to his own code, real men wouldn’t give a shit, but of course not… This is the New York Times, bastion of bullshit, which will not be content unless it is telling you how you’re living your life wrong.
As for knowing sizes, no. As children, your mother buys clothes for you. Right now your requests for her seem to be “Get a shirt with Deadpool on it” and that is good. But as men large of stature you will eventually purchase your own clothing from the Extra Large Casual Male Outlet or the Cabella’s Catalog.

Being a modern man today is no different than it was a century ago. It’s all about adhering to principle. Sure, fashion, technology and architecture change over time, as do standards of etiquette, not to mention ways of carrying oneself in the public sphere. But the modern man will take the bits from the past that strike him as relevant and blend them with the stuff of today.
My sons, as you go through life you will learn that libprog rags like the NYT, Slate, and HuffPo usually start their bullshit articles with a paragraph that sounds all sorts of reasonable. Beware. It is a trick.
When the modern man buys shoes for his spouse, he doesn’t have to ask her sister for the size. And he knows which brands run big or small.
Who the hell buys shoes for their wife? As you grow older you will learn that many women like to shop for clothing and shoes. No. I don’t understand it either. But as a manly man, your duty is to work and provide money to your woman, so that she may go and do this sort of thing if she wants.


Dear God, the rest of this post is stupid funny. You have to go there and read the whole thing. It's worth the trip.

Sunday, October 11, 2015

The game was a victory, and so was the game food

The game might have had a few tense moments, but the Packers ultimately prevailed.  The game food was championship-caliber from start to finish.

We had a new dish, bacon-cheese pull-aparts. You start with milk, cheese, green onions, one egg, bacon and a package of large dinner biscuits, such as Pillsbury Grands (which I did not use):


Fist, beat one egg into two tablespoons of milk until smooth:


Take your biscuits, separate them into individual biscuits, then cut them into quarters:


Chop a quarter-cup of green onions -- about two stalks -- and add them to the egg mixture:


Put the biscuit quarters into the egg mixture, stir them until coated, adding the cheese and a quarter-pound of cooked bacon as you go. I'm sorry, I thought this recipe called for bacon. Of course I doubled the amount of bacon called for:


Once everybody is stirred up nice, take those coated biscuit chunks and put them in a greased dish. The recipe said 11 x 7, which I don't have, but I used a 13 x 9 dish that worked just fine:


Bake that shit at 350 for 23-28 minutes until golden brown:


Plate 'em up:


And that is some good eatin' there. We also served stuffed potato skins:


And some pigs in a blanket:


All in all, it made a nice spread:


Victory always makes the food taste better, of course.

Against all odds, The Farm continues to produce

Some of the summer crops are still producing, and the winter crops are starting to put out, as well. Farmer and Mrs. Tom invited Mrs. Wolves by for dinner Friday night, and served up a meal that consisted largely of produce from The Farm, including this broccoli:


They steamed the broccoli and stir-fried some other vegetables, including the bell pepper here:


Well, I went by the next day, Saturday, and the peppers were doing quite well:


Despite a deer-protector failure, caused primarily by my forgetting to turn them back on last weekend, the peas survived a deer attack:


The carrots, also munched on a little by the deer, also survived:


Radishes still doing well:


As is the spinach, which we continue to harvest:


More broccoli is on the way. Next weekend, we should get several heads:


As it is, this week I harvested the last of the beans, a bunch of peppers, some carrots and some radishes:


All in all, pretty pleased with the produce production this year.