Missed it by that much

Traffic last month fell short of 2,500 by three visits. I was sure I was going to hit 2,500. As it is, 2,497 for January 2013 was about 250 over December 2012. Nothing will ever touch the more than 25,000 we had in November from the Instalanche, but traffic is up sharply over the pre-Instalanche history of this blog. Anyway, thanks for coming by.  Also worth noting, this is the first week in a long time that I have posted at least once every single day of the week, and it is the fifth straight month that I have averaged at least one post per day for the month. That is harder than it sounds. Try it sometime.

Why yes, it is a traffic post

Got a couple newcomers to Eff You: Belarus and Malaysia. Not sure what either one is doing here, but we aim to please, so we'll give them a big Eff You welcome.

Malaysia, of course, is a two-piece nation in Southeast Asia. Half the country is on the Malay Peninsula, half is on the island of Borneo. It's a federal constitutional monarchy, about 28 million people, capital is Kuala Lumpur. Eff You, Malaysia.

Belarus is formerly one of the Soviet Socialist Republics, wedged between Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. The capital is Minsk, same president since 1994, basically still a socialist country. Population a little under 10 million, used to be part of the Prinicpality of Polotsk, which I have never heard of. Not likely to get a visit from there, I guess. Anyway, Eff You, Belarus.

Who knew this was a geography blog?

I hope he got his money back

Sports media outlets are going crazy over reports that Yankees star Alex Rodriquez was buying performance-enhancing drugs from some Florida clinic last year. Seriously? A-Rod played like shit last year. What kind of performance were these drugs enhancing?

Does anybody even say "ruffles and flourishes" anymore?

Probably not, I guess, but that certainly describes the typing of the guy who sits to my right. Mercifully, there is an empty desk between us, but Plugs is sitting to my right. I am too lazy to provide a link, but I have previously referred to Plugs, his horrific hair transplant failure and his typing excesses. Basically, Plugs is very theatrical when he types. He looks like he is listening to the "1812 Overture" when he types and employs the ruffles and flourishes one would expect under such circumstances. I could be wrong. It could be the "William Tell Overture," or maybe something from "The Student Prince," or even "Ode to Joy." But it's something lively, and he's into it. So I call it "Performance Typing."

The barking chick across from me is definitely not a performance typer. No ruffles and flourishes here: she is a 100 percent grudge typer. To her, the keyboard is somebody who pissed her off, fucked her over or stood her up for prom, and she treats it accordingly. She beats the living fuck out of that keyboard. She probably goes through three, four keyboards a year at home. Serious anger issues there. Naturally, I have no intention of questioning her on this. She'd probably beat my ass.

Like I said, could be this:

Where else you gonna get culture like this?

While we're doing petty complaints . . .

The woman who sits across from me coughs a lot, and sounds like a German shepherd barking every damn time she does. I'm thinking of buying her some Robitussin.

Planes, trains and automobiles

Tuesdays are my "Planes, trains and automobiles" day. They don't actually involve planes, but on Tuesdays Mrs. Wolves has to drive me to the commuter bus stop at the butt crack of dawn because she needs the car. I then take a bus to the Metro station at the end of the line, take the train to work. Later, I take the train back to the end of the line, get on a commuter bus and get picked up at the commuter bus stop by Mrs. Wolves.

I share this because today, on the bus ride from the Metro to the hinterlands (the wolf lair is far, far from the city) I sat next to someone who was lucky to survive the ride. If I had to guess his occupation, my answer would be either federal employee, contract attorney or computer dude, not necessarily in that order. He was doing a crossword puzzle from the daily free paper (having brought a clipboard to make it easier to write in his answers), he was unable to finish the puzzle in the half-hour or so it took to get to the hinterlands, and he was snuffing snot like a fucking five-year-old with a cold who has not yet learned to blow his nose. Seriously, every 45 seconds -- by my calculations, roughly every third breath -- this asswipe did a long, hard, sssssssssssssssssnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiifffffffffffffffffffffffff of snot. By the end of the ride, I just wanted to scream at him, "Blow your mother fucking nose!"

Does this make me petty? Sure. Easily irritated? Damn fucking straight. Sick? Probably not -- I almost never get sick, no matter what kind of virus this cocksucker was packing. Oh, you meant sick, like, SICK? No. It doesn't. I think it is important to recognize when you are alone and when you are surrounded by people affected by your behavior. This guy clearly couldn't tell the difference. Hard to believe he isn't a temp. Federal employee is a good bet, though. Did I mention the ID badge on a cord around his neck? Yeah, dagger.

Super Bowl food porn preview

We got some pretty good food porn coming Sunday. Planning to post in more-or-less real time, to the extent that cooking and my guests allow. Large enough crowd expected that the Super Bowl menu will exceed the usual three items. So far, locked in stone, we have stuffed potato skins, steamed shrimp, stuffed shrimp, onion straws and steak sandwiches. Likely additions are wings, pigs in a blanket, and brie and baguette. That should do it. Oh yeah, plus lots of fucking beer.

Actual Temp Conversation Number Eff You you know I'm not counting anymore

Yeah, let's face it, I gave up on accurate numbering on these a long time ago. So quit asking. Don't like it? Refer to the name of the blog. In any event, here is an actual temp conversation"

Temp 1: Hey, how's it going?

Temp 2: OK, I guess. I just can't remember who I am.

Temp 1: Don't worry about it. I remember who you are and, trust me, you're better off not knowing.

I'm sorry, Pro Bowl?

Somebody asked me if I was going to have game food porn for the Pro Bowl. I looked at them kind of askance and asked, "Pro Bowl game food? I only do game food for football games." The Pro Bowl is not a football game. It's not even a good All-Star game, as most of the best guys stay away to avoid getting hurt or to get over being banged up from the real season. Also, the rules changes and short prep time make it impossible for it to resemble a football game: they're just playing pitch-and-catch, with no defense allowed. If that were pro football, Steve Spurrier would still be the coach of the Redskins and nto at the University of South Carolina. Just sayin'.

Blogging behind enemy lines

Long hours (which my new project has) are bad for blogging. By the time I get home, I'm running out of energy. Hence the lack of a new post all week, or at least since Monday. Makes it even more difficult to post if the project has no internet, which also is the case for this project. On the other hand, a crafty blogger finds ways to restore internet access and get around the restrictions. Naturally, I have sworn to use this power only for good.

You just never know what people will like

As any good manager does, I review my business periodically to see what is popular and what is not. Of course, my business makes no money, but it is still important to give the people what they want. I am constantly fascinated by what that turns out to be. Oddly enough, at a blog about temporary attorneys, only one of the top five posts all-time is actually about temporary attorneys.

The number one post is totally understandable. Instapundit linked to Time to realize what you voted for, giving it  25,506 hits and counting. At a distant number two is the only temp-related post in the top five, They never fail to disappoint. It is the post immediately preceeding the number one post, so I guess spillover helped it to hit 301 views.

Number three is The fuck's a durecho? which for a long time was the number one post for this blog. With 241 hits, it remains a favorite, apparently.

Number four, Legislation won't stop crazy, clocks in at 117 hits. A friend of a friend linked to it on Facebook with the comment

OMG this is AWESOME! I've seriously considered writing such an article due to WIDE spread dis and misinformation about firearms, their function, definition, and laws! Someone did my work for me! Warning this guy does not pull punches and drops a lot of 4 letter words etc.....but to this is the most accurate description I've seen! Hope you read it!

I feel like I should send him money.

Which brings us to the fifth-most popular post in the history of this blog, short as that may be. For whatever reason, with 111 hits, the number five spot belongs to I got all the Moldova you can handle. A silly comment on our first visitor from Moldova apparently struck a chord. It also drew one of the smartest comments ever posted on this blog. TMLutas wrote:

Fun Moldova fact. The old kingdom of Moldova includes the Romanian province of Moldova and the territory of the country of Moldova. In 1877, Russia got itself in a war with the Ottoman empire (russo-turkish war of 1877-1878) and got its nose bloodied doing it. Russia raised the christian banner and Moldova and Wallachia (both under the thumb of the sultan at the time) answered the call. After providing troops and support, the Russians won their war and, as part of their war spoils, took half of the kingdom of Moldova (yes, their wartime ally who bled for them). In 1918 they bolted back to Romania in the distraction of Russia's civil war and were taken over again as Hitler sold the area to Stalin as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that started WW II. 

Wonderful place, the Balkans, such history!

 OK, seriously, if that dude is not from Moldova, he lives right next door. Awesome comment.

So anyway, that's the top five. Temp attorney posts, political posts, traffic posts, weather posts. I'll keep throwing stuff up there to see what sticks. At heart, this is a blog about temp attorneys. Unless I want it to be about something else. It kind of looks to me like that is working. If you don't like it, you may, of course, refer to the title of the blog.

The "Still Gotta Eat" edition of game food porn

AFC and NFC title games yesterday, both games were good, food was great. Atlanta, having inexplicably managed last week to both choke away a lead and still win, this week managed to just do what they do best and choke, period. Maybe getting a little tired of being 9-point underdogs for the second straight week, the Ravens took what the Patriots freely offered and moved on. Overall, good football-watching.

But that's not why we're here. No Packers? No problem. Still gotta eat. And eat we did. For the early game, we started with ribs:

Cooked for a gazillion hours until the meat is falling off the bone, slathered with sauce from King's Barbecue in Petersburg, VA. Best ever. Man cannot live on ribs alone, however (although I wouldn't mind trying). We also had chicken wings:

Not a game without stuffed potato skins, of course:

With a double-header, three is not enough. As the Patriots-Ravens tilt got under way, we trotted out some baguette and brie:

Granted, not that manly, but there were ladies present. As you can see, I almost forgot to take a picture before those vixens demolished the entire plate. Finally, threw in some pigs in a blanket:

So, basically, we gorged on shit that is bad for you and watched a lot of good football. Stay tuned for Super Bowl game food porn, just 13 days from now. Bon appetit!

Take away her right to bear arms, not mine

Seldom do you hear such an incredible plea for the nanny state to take away your rights as you hear in this piece from the New York Times, which is exactly where you would expect to find something like this. The author wants you to take away her Second Amendment rights because she suffers from depression and worries that if she exercised her Second Amendment rights to own a firearm, she might then at some point use the firearm to kill herself. Take away her rights, take away the temptation to kill herself with a gun, problem solved, right?

At no point in the article does she consider whether somebody else's rights might be implicated by her desire to give up her own rights, but that's a typical libtard. And even though the personal story she relates as the basis for her desire to give up her rights to a firearm involves an attempted home invasion, she apparently would rather be a sheep left to the wolves than risk giving in to the temptation to use the gun on herself. Never mind that far more suicides each year do not involve a firearm of any kind. People who want to kill themselves just do it. They don't need a gun. While a gun makes it easier, so do sleeping pills, rope, razor blades, knives, carbon monoxide, and God knows what else. I don't hear anybody calling for a ban on cars so they can't kill themselves with the exhaust.

I'm always the last to know

About a month after everybody else got this, I finally get the Marine Corps Birthday Ball photo taken by the professional photographer.

Nice chest bling. I'm talking about his medals, you perverts.

What a difference a year makes

I wanted to post this earlier, but had technical difficulties. Having surmounted those problems, I now present two dramatically different scenarios. First, Christmas in 2011 looked like this for my family:

This is my son's unit last Christmas posing around an old Soviet tank  in Now Zad, Afghanistan. Probably a T-62, but that's neither here nor there. In any event, that was then. This was what Christmas 2012 looked like:

No longer under fire, he got engaged. I refuse to draw any parallels between combat and marriage.

Didn't see that coming

This is just a stupid traffic post, but with a twist. We have a new country represented among our visitors: Reunion. Technically, it is part of France, but don't burden me with details. Reunion (there's supposed to be an accent mark over the "e," but I am too lazy to figure out how to put it there) according to Wikipedia "is a French island with a population of about 800,000 located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, about 200 kilometres (120 mi) south west of Mauritius, the nearest island. Administratively, Réunion is one of the overseas departments of France. Like the other overseas departments, Réunion is also one of the 27 regions of France (being an overseas region) and an integral part of the Republic with the same status as those situated on the European mainland."


Big deal, you say -- Eff You gets visitors from lots of strange places. But this time is different. In nearly two years of Eff You, never has anyone from Reunion visited the blog. Today, we got 4 visitors from Reunion. I don't know what it means, but I think I can now tell people that I am just huge in the Indian Ocean. Just a matter of time until the rest of the world catches on. In any event, bonjour to our new friends from Reunion.

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . .

In the last post, I referenced Jabba the Hutt, in particular as a nickname for a guy on the project. I had not previously referred to this guy because there was a chance other folks on the project read this blog and would know who I am and who I was talking about. Since Jabba was evil, and the guy I'm calling Jabba was actually an OK dude, I didn't want to have to deal with that kind of fallout, so I simply didn't bring it up. I'm gone now, so I can discuss Jabba. Naturally, if I am ever on a project with any of these folks again and somebody puts two and two together and thinks I'm a dick for calling this guy Jabba, I will deny any knowledge of Jabba, this blog and ever having been on that project.

Temp Town has several kinds of people you really just don't want to sit next to or, if you must, that really make you want to put in the headphones and listen to something really fucking loud so you can tune those folks out. Among these undesirables are, of course, the peckerheads, the social misfits and the crazies that pervade Temp Town. No one blames you for wanting to avoid or ignore these folks. Sometimes, though, there are nice folks in Temp Town that you nonetheless really don't want to sit next to. Enter Jabba.

Jabba is, as the nickname implies, immense. He is damn near spherical. However, it is not his appearance that makes him undesirable as a neighbor. Jabba is the only person I've ever met who might just have sleep apnea while he is awake. He doesn't breathe -- he snores, and that's while he is awake. When he falls asleep -- which is often -- it is worse. He has some kind of serious respiratory problem that makes me want to have sympathy for him but mostly just makes me want him to be somewhere else. If he were a dick, I would be OK with wanting him to be somewhere else, but he isn't -- he's a nice guy. He just has physical issues. Naturally, this makes me feel kind of like a dick myself for having negative thoughts about him.

On the other hand, you try sitting next to that shit for 10 or 12 hours a day. Mother fucking Theresa would slip arsenic in his lunch before the first week was out. So I don't feel so bad. And I feel great about being out of there, especially since I have a fabulous fucking seat location on my new project. End of the row, against the wall, the two seats to my right empty. Temp Town heaven. It's not much, but you take what you can.

Like a rolling stone

I jumped projects today, and, frankly, I feel pretty good about it. The awful project had actually added 10 hours of overtime, which made it at least financially tolerable. The freak show was still a little tough to live with (Stevie Nicks to my left, Jabba the Hutt behind me, and the child of Jabba and Stevie also behind me) but at least there was overtime. I've moved on to a project where I can get 20 hours of overtime, which makes a lot of shortcomings easier to bear. It is, for instance, a no-internet project. This could be tough. But it might last two years, and it has lots of overtime, so I guess it's a wash. Money, not love, conquers all. At least in Temp Town.

Only one day left to vote!

Super Bowl game food poll only has one day left! Make your voice heard. Otherwise, how can I ignore it?

Legislation won't stop crazy

It is astounding to me how uninformed the "debate" over gun control has been so far. Even ignoring whether the Second Amendment is implicated by the proposed "solutions" to gun violence (yeah, I'm using a lot of quotation marks to indicate that I think this is all bullshit), no one seems to be discussing whether any of these "solutions" would actually solve anything.  The fact is, they won't.

The reason for this is simple: criminals don't obey laws. That's what makes them criminals. Ban magazines with a capacity over 10 rounds? There are millions if not billions of 30-round magazines already out there, legally owned. A couple dozen are in my house. Not to mention that these things are just sheet metal and springs -- there are probably only a couple million guys in this country who could make the damn things in their garage.

Ban "assault weapons," however you  moronically decide to define that term? There are millions of them out there. Criminals will find them. They will steal them, buy them illegally or do whatever they have to do to get them if they decide they need them for their crime. Ironically, they usually will want a handgun. Fucking nobody commits a crime with a rifle. More people are killed with hammers and clubs than with rifles. Oh hells bells, you're twice as likely to be beaten to death with someone's bare hands than to be killed with a rifle of any kind, much less a so-called assault rifle. So enough already with the "assault weapon" ban.

But hey, shouldn't we ban really big magazines? No one has explained how having to reload after firing 10 rounds instead of after 30 would prevent some nutbag from shooting up a school, mall, bar mitzvah or whatever. And anyone who has ever switched out magazines on a semi-automatic rifle knows that the time delay involved in using 10-round versus 30-round magazines is negligible. Besides, the guy who shot up the movie theater in Colorado started out with an AR 15 with a double-drum 100-round magazine. It jammed a few rounds in, and he had to switch to the other weapons he had. (I'm not providing a link because I'm getting tired of doing research for libtards who won't believe it anyway.)  That's what huge magazines do -- they jam. Too many bullets, not enough spring strength. It happens with 30-round magazines, too -- my son is a Marine who told me that, in Afghanistan, nobody put 30 rounds in a magazine because they would jam. About 25 or so was the limit to avoid jams. Anybody who has fired one of these weapons knows this.

As for the "assault weapons" ban being proposed -- this article about "assault weapons" generally makes it pretty clear that the term "assault weapons" is meaningless. It did not exist until the 1994 ban was put into place, and the definition turned out to be mostly cosmetic. The ban, called the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, prohibited the sale and manufacture of weapons that met the following description:

(B) a semiautomatic rifle that has an ability to accept a detachable magazine and has at least 2 of–
(i) a folding or telescoping stock;
(ii) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon;
(iii) a bayonet mount;
(iv) a flash suppressor or threaded barrel designed to accommodate a flash suppressor; and
(v) a grenade launcher;

(C) a semiautomatic pistol that has an ability to accept a detachable magazine and has at least 2 of–
(i) an ammunition magazine that attaches to the pistol outside of the pistol grip;
(ii) a threaded barrel capable of accepting a barrel extender, flash suppressor, forward handgrip, or silencer;
(iii) a shroud that is attached to, or partially or completely encircles, the barrel and that permits the shooter to hold the firearm with the nontrigger hand without being burned;
(iv) a manufactured weight of 50 ounces or more when the pistol is unloaded; and
(v) a semiautomatic version of an automatic firearm; and

(D) a semiautomatic shotgun that has at least 2 of–
(i) a folding or telescoping stock;
(ii) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon;
(iii) a fixed magazine capacity in excess of 5 rounds; and
(iv) an ability to accept a detachable magazine.

 The ban did not really stop the manufacture of any of the targeted weapons. It simply meant that weapons that had a pistol grip, bayonet lug, flash suppressor, detachable magazine and folding stock -- such as the AR15 -- ceased to have some of those features. In the case of the AR15 -- one of the weapons used at the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting -- the weapon continued to be manufactured with a pistol grip and detachable magazine, but lost the flash suppressor, bayonet lug and folding stock. Big deal. Connecticut has a ban on "assault weapons" and that did fuck-all to stop whats-his-face from killing his mom, stealing her weapons and killing lots of kids. What law would stop that?

Certainly not the "assault weapon" ban being discussed.  Look at the original version, in 1994. Two years in, a government study concluded the ban had not delivered any measurable impact, stating "public safety benefits of the 1994 ban have not yet been demonstrated."

An update of the 1996 study in 2004 found that the benefits were mixed at best, and analyses of the data in the report, such as this one,  showed that the use of so-called assault weapons in crimes was so rare that it was impossible to tell if the ban had any impact.

So where does this leave us? A ban on particular kinds of weapons is extraordinarily unlikely to pass, and less likely to withstand Constitutional review. It is worth noting that the ban described above -- the one that used to be the law of the land -- left at large the nasty, nasty, evil Winchester 73, which has a fixed magazine capacity of 15 rounds but is a lever-action rifle, not semi-automatic and so not covered. And that is the Winchester 1873, by the way.  This means, of course, you could still put a shit-load of lead into people with a century-old weapon with more rounds than a modern weapon "ought to have" under the law. So fuck off. Nothing in these kind of laws does anything to protect anyone.

Playoff food porn

OK, so that really sucked. Basically, the Packers got their asses handed to them. On the other hand, the food was fucking fabulous. I guess if you're not a team owner, that makes it a wash. As a team owner, I am still seeking a strong rafter over which to throw my rope, but I will, in the meantime, share the game food with you. No, I didn't ask if you wanted me to. If you don't like that, please refer to the title of the blog. In any event, we had pizza rolls:

Looks sloppy tastes great. Threw in some wings, with beer batter. Yeah, pretty fucking good:

Using onion straws later, so went with cheese straws this week. For those of you who want recipes, please feel free to contact me at raised.by.a.wolf@gmail.com:

And, as always, we had stuffed potato skins:

The game wasn't a total loss, then, as the food was excellent. Even with the Packers out, I'll be doing game food for the NFC title game and the Super Bowl, so stay tuned.

Justice denied!

We have already discussed briefly the federal employee who was being officially reprimanded for farting too much. Well, displaying the courage that government is so well known for, it turns out that the guy's managers who were pursuing the reprimand process have thrown the Serial Farter's co-workers under the bus and dropped the reprimand. The publicity the reprimand drew led to the rescinding of the reprimand, apparently.

Personally, I think this is even worse than it sounds. The Serial Farter claimed medical conditions that interfered with his ability to work full days all the time, but apparently none of these conditions would cause him to fart. Further, it seems apparent that the Serial Farter was using his emissions as weapons of mass destruction, intentionally endangering his co-workers' lives:

The man told a supervisor in July that he would start turning on a fan after releasing bodily odors in his work space, but the manager explained that such action would only “cause the smell to spread and worsen the air quality in the module,” according to the reprimand letter.

He was trying to gas his co-workers to death! How can you let this kind of thing pass?  I still can't believe he isn't a temp. He'd fit right in.

One week to vote

Only a week left to vote in the Super Bowl Game Food Poll. A couple menu slots remain open, and I can always expand to suit the number of guests (which continues to grow).  Feel free to vote, early and often.

I just hope they don't become temps

 Via The Tax Prof, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that being a partner in Big Law is an increasingly precarious position. Apparently, firms are cutting partners who aren't producing as much revenue as they used to. This isn't totally new -- my first year at The Firm That Must Not Be Named (let's call it Voldemort) the powers that be whacked a half-dozen of what we used to call service partners. They didn't have their own business, but they had always done all the daily schlepping for the partners who actually had the client in their book of business. Now those guys don't make partner, but Voldemort spent my years there weeding them out until all partners had at least some business of their own.

Now, apparently, that is no guarantee of remaining with a firm. I just hope none of the partners getting whacked these days end up as temps. I'm pretty sure there are damn few of them I'd want to sit next to.

Gotta protect your house

A bunch of new people were added to the project today. There were seven of us, and they just added eight or so -- I didn't really pay very much attention. I have seen one of them before, I actually know one of them and the rest could be anybody for all I know. The layout of seats on this project led to an interesting moment when the new folks came in. Until yesterday, the seven of us were in a section in the back corner of the review room, separated from another relatively small project area by a pair of dividers. The folks from the firm removed the two dividers yesterday, so suddenly our review area doubled in size. Instead of looking at a divider, I am now looking at a couple rows of desks and computers, with a divider between those two rows and the larger review area beyond.

The original review area has about six unused seats, the newly added area has about 12 or 14 seats. After their orientation today, the FNGs (Google it) came streaming in. Not a single one came over into the original review area, despite the fact that there are a couple vacant seats that would be considered prime on most review projects (facing the direction anyone from the firm would come from -- as Wild Bill Hickock learned the hard way, never sit with your back to the door). I don't know if they sensed the unspoken hostility coming from our side (more people means the project will be over faster, and we just got overtime added, suddenly making this project a little more desirable), but they clearly got the message that crossing over into our section was not a good idea.

Good.

Time's running out

Just under two weeks left to vote in our Super Bowl game food poll. Make your voice heard, so that I can then do whatever the fuck I'm going to do anyway.

Delayed game food porn

Yeah, the Redskins were a disappointment last night, and my nephew, a lifelong Skins fan, was shattered. He wandered around the house for hours with a rope, looking for a strong rafter. Despite the on-field letdown, however, no one at the Wolves household for the game denied that the spread was excellent. There may have been some service pressure and adult beverage consumption that interfered with full game-food photography, but I did my best. First of all, because my meatball recipe produces a lot of meatballs, I cooked the rest of them for the Skins game:

They're apparently on the menu for the Super Bowl, as everyone there last night insisted. We also had bacon-wrapped wienies, which had already been hit hard before I got the camera out:

The stuffed shrimp recipe also produces a lot of shrimp, so I cooked the rest of those, too. They also got hit hard before the camera came out:

Naturally, we had stuffed potato skins:

Finally, a full-spread shot:

You can see the boiled peanuts at the top of the frame between the stuffed skins and the shrimp. You can't see the brie and baguette because we already fucking ate it. It was good.

Clay Matthews rules

Clay Matthews is a monster. Last night, he was haunting the dreams of the Vikings, and Joe Webb in particular. Why? Well, Clay sacks Webb with a savage hit:

Clay forces Webb to fumble and recovers it:

Hell, Clay is so good, he got a sack while lying on the ground:

Hat tip to SB Nation for the .gif, Packers.com for the fumble photo and the Green Bay Press Gazette for the top sack photo.

I'm sorry, did I say cue up Barry White? Here you go

Didn't mean to tease you.

Ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, baby.

Cue up the Barry White music

Seriously, this game food porn needs a soundtrack. How often do you see John Kuhn, a fullback, score two touchdowns? That was my kind of game -- not close, and the ViQueens lose. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

So what did we serve? Funny you should ask. First, we had shrimp stuffed with crabmeat and wrapped in bacon:

Then, we threw in some meatballs:

Some onion straws sounded like a good idea, so we did that, too:

Finally, we threw in the old reliable, stuffed potato skins:

Oh, wait! Somebody gave me a chef's torch for Christmas, so I had to make creme brulee:

This picture is kind of fuzzy and is before I used the torch to carmelize the sugar topping, but hey. Can't have everything. In any event, between the ass-whipping laid on the Vikings and the most excellent food, it was a good day. Tune in tomorrow for Redskins game food porn. Bon appetit!

Game food double-dipping

We'll be hitting the game food both days for the NFL Wildcard Weekend, so we'll be aiming to double your pleasure, double your fun as the commercial used to say. Packers' game Saturday night will be a dinner-like menu, with stuffed shrimp, potato skins and onion rings. Sunday, the Skins are the late game. Not sure what the menu for that one will be just yet. Probably bacon-wrapped wienies, stuffed potato skins and something else, but it's very fluid at the moment.

What is truth, really?

I'm not trying to get existential here, I'm just trying to let you know what it means to be a temporary attorney. No matter what project your are on, the possibility exists that a better project will come along. This presents contact attorneys with the classic bird-in-the-hand problem: Do I jump to a project full of unknowns, or do I stick with a shitty project where I know the parameters of what is going to happen? Last week, I was offered a one-week project with lots of overtime, while I was working on a project with at least a month to go but no overtime. Classic dilemma, as set up by The Clash. Should I Stay or Should I Go?:

Well, naturally I took the overtime project. As a precautionary measure, I did not quit the other project, but merely suggested that I was taking New Year's week off. I implied there was a family travel related reason, but did not explicitly state that such was the case. As it happened, the big overtime was a myth. I am heading back to the no-overtime project tomorrow, loving the fact that in my absence, the project has added 10 hours per week of overtime. Sounds good to me. While I am certain that the agency knew I was not being completely honest about my absence, I think they didn't know for sure and were perfectly happy being lied to. Now they can put me back on the project without explanations. Raising the question: Would I lie to you?

December traffic

Obviously cannot compare to November's Instalanche, but for this blog, 2,259 visits in December is not bad. Second best month ever, clocking in about 23,000 less than November but more than 300 better than No. 3, which was the first full month of this blog. All in all, I'll take it.

Happy New Year

Watched the ball drop with Mrs. Wolves, the Young Wolf and his fiance last night, and toasted the New Year with some champagne. All very traditional, I supposed. Just wanted to wish the Eff You audience a Happy New Year. I hope the year brings only the best for all of you and your loved ones.