Maybe that was cheating

Of course, maybe this is cheating, too. The last two posts were essentially content-free, dealing with traffic and shopping on Amazon. This post discusses only those two posts and so also is content-free. And yet, these posts, together, put me over the one-a-day average I strive to maintain. Is that cheating? Yeah, maybe. Don't like it? Refer to the name of the blog, suckers.

Seriously, I hate to nag, but . . .

Folks, if you want to shop on Amazon, use the gadget to the right there. I get money, it costs you nothing extra, and everybody is happy. Is there something here not to like? Yeah, that's what I thought.

That was odd

Toward the end of the month in April, I was posting less and less, and traffic got better and better, finishing with the third-best month ever or this blog, behind only March and November 2012, the month of the Instalanche. The result is totally counter-intuitive. Only once in the last week of April did I post more than once per day. Normally, you don't post, they don't read. So I don't get it. But thank you.

Danger, Will Robinson!

For the first time since August 2012, I am in serious danger of averaging fewer than one post per day for a month. That, of course, is why I am sacrificing sleep to put up so many posts tonight. That, and traffic the last couple days has been strong even though I have not been posting very often lately. This puzzles me. Sometimes I get strong traffic because a search engine in, say, Latvia is directing a bunch of Latvians to this site who are searching for something along the lines of "Latvian women porn." All three of those terms appear on this site -- in fact, I use the term "porn" as often as possible just to drive traffic.

Nothing like that seems to be in play this time, which might mean I have strong traffic based on real people That's just fucking weird. In any event, I don't really understand what is going on with this site, traffic-wise.

These are the rules. These are not all of the rules.

People say the rules are getting a little confusing. Because I am nothing if not accommodating, this post will clarify the rules as they currently stand. Here we go:

Rule No. 1: They're lying.

Rule No. 2: Take any overtime offered, because They will take it away.

Rule No. 3: Every project ends tomorrow.

Rule No. 4: At some point during every project, They will raise false hope.

First corollary to Rule No. 4: Probably repeatedly.

Second corollary to Rule No. 4:  And your hopes will be dashed.

Third corollary to Rule No. 4: Mercilessly.

Which means that Rule No. 4 in full reads, At some point during every project, They will raise false hope, probably repeatedly, and your hopes will be dashed mercilessly. Got it?

Rule No. 5: Click slow, work long.

Rule No. 6: Remember, They're lying.

There are more rules. I simply haven't articulated them. Or, maybe, even formulated them yet. But these are the rules that I have put out so far.

Looks like we have a new rule

And the rule, which I dub Rule No. 4, is this: "At some point during every project, They will raise false hope." They, of course, includes the agency, the firm and, usually through the agency and/or the firm, the client. They do this with promises of benefits -- more hours, a longer project duration, a pay increase, whatever -- that subsequently prove empty. Sometimes the benefits promised -- or, more often, merely hinted at -- are significant, and sometimes the benefit said to be forthcoming is minor, but both kinds raise false hope.

Today's example was of the less significant variety, but it raised false hopes nonetheless. This is a pizza Friday, and the temp who coordinates the food deliveries for the project managers came around early this afternoon to tell everyone that we might be able to substitute Mexican food from District Taco instead of the pizza -- in honor of Cinco de Mayo, I guess -- and how would everyone feel about that. The overwhelming sentiment was that good Mexican food beats mediocre pizza every time.

Not two hours later, the temp food guy -- normally, this position would go to a butt-kissing, suck-up toady seeking to be a temp partner, but this guy is alright -- came around to scotch the idea. No tacos for you. Not a big deal, really, but typical.

So let's recap:

Rule No. 4: At some point during every project, They will raise false hope.

First corollary to Rule No. 4: Probably repeatedly.

Second corollary to Rule No. 4:  And your hopes will be dashed.

Third corollary to Rule No. 4: Mercilessly.

I think that sums it up nicely.

Food porn denied

I was going to do some food porn this weekend -- I fixed empanadas Saturday night and steak sandwiches on Sunday, either one of which would have made decent food porn -- but the whole weekend was so hectic that there were no pictures. Sorry about that, kids. Perhaps next weekend.

Why would you want to do something that would create more lawyers?

Finnegan Henderson, a fairly large DC firm that specializes in intellectual property law, apparently has a program where they pay for staffers' tuition if they decide to go to law school. They have to work summers at the firm as a "student associate," but considering the cost of law school these days, it sounds like a pretty good deal for the employee. Obviously, Finnegan Henderson has a lot of young associates who are slapping themselves in the forehead as they look at their six-figure student loan debt, wondering why they didn't spend a few months as a paralegal at Finnegan before going to law school. But I'm sure there's no hard feelings there. No way would a Finnegan fifth-year associate be cruel to a first-year associate just because they both graduated from Harvard Law and one of them owes almost $200,000 while the other one has no law school debt at all. Never happen. Not even if the no-debt asshole used to be a paralegal working under the fifth-year. I'm sure everybody will act like mature adults.

Of course, that probably would be a first for attorneys, so don't hold your breath. My real question in all of this, though, is why on Earth would you want to start a program that results in more lawyers? Law school attendance is way down, and Big Law is not hiring in the numbers it used to. So why create more candidates for unemployment? Not getting it.

I demand a recount: Update!

People Magazine has named this year's "Most Beautiful Woman in the World," and the editors of People, in their infinite wisdom, have given us . . .Gwyneth Paltrow. Seriously? First of all, the chick needs a hamburger badly. But put her in context: given the circles she travels in, if she leaves the house, she's not even the most beautiful woman in the room. Sure, she's good looking, but she hangs with movie stars and the gliteratti. They don't call them "the beautiful people" for nothing. She's not even on the list of 10 Women I Would Leave My Wife For, and never was. Face it, her good-lookingness peaked with Shakespeare in Love. 1998, people.

Nothing against Gwyneth Paltrow. She's a good-looking woman. See?

 Are we going to claim she is more beautiful than Mila Kunis?

Or Stacy Keibler?

I'm not going to say that, and I could throw a gazillion more pictures of hot babes up here if all I wanted to do was drive traffic. But that's not me. I'm just saying People Magazine is run by morons.

I got nothin'

I am finding it difficult to post anything lately because a) this project is monu-fucking-mentally boring, with far less temp drama than a guy like me hopes for, and 2) the combination of no internet with long hours limits my ability to even find anything to post about. It's fucking pissing me off. Normally, weekends are my slack posting times, because I post during the week and then relax on weekends. Now, I got nothing all week long and I am supposed to break my no-weekend-posting policy? This is going to take some getting used to.

Don't be shy

Feel free to access Amazon by way of the gadget to the right, there. Anything you buy through Amazon using that access gadget will cost you the same, but it will throw a little cash my way, which I view as a good thing. Your experience may vary. Thanks, kids, and keep coming back.

Time for some food porn

Yeah, food porn isn't just about the high-falutin', complicated stuff. Sometimes, food porn is just the stuff you got at Hooters and want to fix at home. And that's what we have today. We're fixing beer-batter chicken fingers, folks, with home fries on the side. Nothing fancy, just good.

You start with a cup of flour, some salt, pepper, an egg and a can of beer.

Beat the egg, add the flour, salt and pepper that the way you like, then mix in the beer until it looks like batter, whisking all the while. Good news -- it might not take the entire beer, which means you can drink some of that beer. Smart people are already drinking a beer not included in the recipe. After a certain amount of whisking, things should look like this:

Now it's time to think about chicken. You can use chicken tenderloins or you can cut up boneless chicken breasts. I don't really care how you get there. However you get there -- shit, I don't care if you start with chickens in the yard -- you should wind up with about 1-1/2 to 2 pounds of chicken breasts cut into strips, like so:

You need to then dredge those chicken strips in flour, seasoned or unseasoned, it makes no difference to me. That's a matter of taste (we seasoned the batter, remember?). This flour is just to help the batter stick to the chicken.

Now, you should start dipping your floured chicken strips in the beer batter. Make sure they are well-coated, but let the excess batter drip off the chicken before moving it to the plate where you will keep it until we are ready to fry the chicken.

Once all the chicken is battered and on a plate, shove that sucker aside for a minute, because we have other things to do. It should look kind of amorphous,  something like this:

Now you need to grab some potatoes. White, Yukon gold, red potatoes, I don't care. Grab as many as you need, depending on how many people you are feeding. Once you have the number of potatoes you want, slice 'em up. Thin, not thick, people. More like potato chips than fried potatoes.

Time to throw the chicken in the deep fryer that you've been heating up. if you don't have a deep fryer, get one. Otherwise, use a wok or a deep frying pan with at least 1-1/2 inches of oil, heated to medium high or high heat. Don't set the kitchen on fire, but we're trying to fry chicken here, people. Oil temperature should be between 350 and 375, preferably on the high end. Anyway, heat up the oil and in goes the chicken.

Fry those bad boys until they are a lovely shade of golden brown. Count on about 10 minutes, but could be more or less, depending on the thickness of the cuts. Can't be serving raw meat.

Now, throw those thinly sliced potatoes in the fryer.

 Also likely to take about 10 minutes. Because you are human, the slices will be of varying thickness. After about 10 minutes, some will be completely crisp like potato chips, and the thicker ones will be cooked and browned, but still have that soft potato goodness. This is a good thing. Once they're out of the fryer, drain the chips on paper towels and salt.  Throw in the vegetable of your choice, some ketchup, and bon apetit:

Maybe I was too kind

I admit it, I have, upon occasion, suggested that contract attorneys -- at least many of them -- have the emotional maturity of middle-schoolers. I stand by that position, except to the extent that I might have been too kind. I heard a story Friday that indicates to me that I might have been way too kind.

When I was leaving work Friday, a female contract attorney, likewise leaving work, got on the elevator with me. She said she was glad to be out of there, I said something like, "Yeah, really boring." Turns out, that wasn't what she meant.

She was complaining about the "drama" in her room. The person sitting at the desk across from her complained to the project manager that a piece of paper from this woman's desk was protruding onto the complainant's desk. And this woman was called into the project manager's office to hear about this. And this was the second time in two weeks that this had happened.

I'll be fair. Maybe there's more to this, and the woman who rode down in the elevator with me was actually doing far worse things to her neighbor, like shooting flaming arrows at her or something. But I will also be realistic, given my time with temps, and say that I have no fucking doubt that the woman across from her has complained to management -- twice -- about paper intruding on her desk.

The reason I believe it is because temps are shitheads. That is, in many ways unfair and untrue. I think most temps aren't shitheads. But I know that a higher percentage of temps are shitheads than you will find in the general population. I've spent most of my life outside the temp world. This kind of complaint would be laughed at most places. it would be dismissed as kindergarten-level behavior and laughed at.

Not in Temp Town. This goes back to the unwillingness of agencies to take a hard stand on anything. The fact that temps can complain about stupid shit like this and not get laughed at -- or fired -- means that they will. That means the project manager can't ignore the complaint. Instead, the project manager had to "deal with it" and call in the person who had been complained about, tell her to try in the future to keep her papers on her own desk, blah blah blah. This hands power to the person willing to complain about stupid shit. They know there will be no repercussions for a stupid complaint. Agencies -- and firms -- are much more afraid of "offending" someone than they are of doing something stupid or just flat wrong.

If I'm a supervisor and somebody brings a complaint like that to me, I fire them and tell them to grow up. Somewhere else. The fact that this never happens in Temp Town is part of the problem with Temp Town. People can do stupid, kindergarten shit and get away with it.

We absolutely must DO something

It doesn't matter if we do anything that will fix the problem, we just need to do something so people won't say we aren't doing anything or that we don't care about "the children."  Because it's always about the children, right? If we could save just one life . . . unless we're talking about abortion, in which case, nevermind. But I digress.

No, I'm talking about pressure cookers. Al-Quaeda has published instructions on how to make bombs using pressure cookers and they have been used often to make IEDs (improvised explosive devices) in Pakistan, among other places. Plus, domestic terrorist, college professor and Obama chum Bill Ayers, formerly of the Weather Underground and noted bomb-maker, is known to have preferred pressure-cooker based bombs.

Clearly, the only solution is to limit the size of pressure cookers. Wasn't that the answer for firearms magazines? Just make them smaller? OK, you don't need a 16-quart pressure cooker, do you? You could make do with a 4-quart model, right? Oh, but you want the bigger model? Tough shit -- you don't need it, and that's the defining issue, right? Not whether, for instance, there is a constitutionally protected right involved. Which, by the way, when it comes to pressure cookers, there isn't. So not only should we limit the size of available pressure cookers, we should have background checks of pressure cooker purchasers, and we should make them register their pressure cookers, and we should flat-out ban assault pressure cookers, which will be defined as whatever the hell I say they are, because "assault pressure cookers" is a meaningless term. I will choose a couple arbitrary features, and any pressure cooker with those features is -- Voila! -- an assault pressure cooker and is banned. So there.

Does any of this sound familiar yet? Does anyone think anything I just suggested about pressure cookers makes any sense? So why push the same arguments about firearms. Is there a difference? You're damn right there is -- you have a God-given, constitutionally protected right to a firearm. Not so for pressure cookers.

New visitors

Got a couple new countries this week. First of all, clearly in response to the "square-headed Serb" comment I referenced when we first had a visitor from Croatia, we have our first visitor from Serbia. For those of you keeping an unofficial count of visitors from countries we have bombed in the last, say, 20 years (not saying that anybody is doing that, but it might be fun) that makes at least three. Go back 70 years, and the numbers go up. But I digress. In any event, Wikipedia says that Serbia

is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe,covering the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and the central Balkans, lying between theBalkan Mountains and the Carpathian mountains in the east, Dinaric Alps in the west, and the Morava valley - an intersection of land routes which lead southwards, towards Salonica, and eastwards, towards Asia Minor. . . 

Back in the 1990s, when the old Yugoslavia broke up (yeah, Serbia was part of it) the Serbs might have laid into their neighbors a little bit, resulting in most of their neighbors not liking them. Not that they liked them before, as the region is notoriously contentious. But at least one Serb likes Eff You, so while there may be all kinds of hate and discontent there, there is nothing but love for our Serbian visitor. Welcome.

We also got some Malta this week. Because Malta is an island in the middle of the Mediterranean with no neighbors, they don't have a lot of issues with their neighbors the way Serbia does.Big tourist destination, Malta was the site of heroic defense in the face of a nasty German siege during World War II, but it also gave us the Maltese cross and -- who could forget -- "The Maltese Falcon:"

So, welcome Malta and Serbia. Y'all come back now, hear?

The delicate dance behind agency decrees

This is a two-prong post, basically bitching about inartful use of language by agencies and the total ineffectiveness of that inartful use of language in dealing with temps. Gotta bitch about something.

First of all, it is important to remember that temp agencies are very PC places. Speech codes, behavior codes, all kinds of standards to try and keep the temps in line and keep them from offending each other which, left to their own devices, temps would do all the time. Too many lack the regulating sense that keeps many people from simply blurting things out. Because everyone, of course, has The Right to Never Be Offended By Anything, No Matter How Inoffensive, I think fear of workplace lawsuits lies behind most agency actions in attempting to control speech and behavior. I am reasonably certain that somewhere at every agency there is a copy of "HR Management of Lowest-Common Denominator Employees for Dummies." All agencies take the same approach: as if they are dealing with unruly middle-schoolers with thin skins, chips on their shoulders and law degrees. 

This mandates that not only must agencies try to keep the temps from offending each other, they must try to keep from offending the temps in the process. That is no mean feat considering the inherently insulting place temps hold in the legal community hierarchy, but leave that aside.

It gives rise to a vocabulary that might be common in a lot of workplaces but that I had never encountered before coming to Temp Town. A favorite word of agencies -- and I've heard this used at every agency I've ever worked for -- is "mindful." They use it in a "please be mindful of others" every time they issue a directive on speech or behavior.

The problem with this is it tends to turn a directive into a suggestion, or at least something that can be construed as a suggestion. For instance, the agency I'm at is pretty busy right now and has a number of projects in the facility, which has a central kitchen/dining area where, just like at parties in college, people tend to congregate and socialize. It can get pretty boisterous, which led to the posting yesterday of the following notice: "While in the kitchen please be mindful of other projects and keep the volume low. Thank you."

Now, arguably, the use of "keep the volume low" makes this a more forceful statement than we sometimes see when "mindful" is employed, but the problem here is the use of "mindful" in and of itself. The word could mean "keep in mind," as in "be aware of." That is actually the most literal and sensible interpretation. The implication is that if you are aware of the presence of others and the potential impact of your behavior on them, then you will modify your behavior or, in this case, keep the noise down. 

Problem is, a lot of temps don't do "implications." They see no conflict with being aware of and keeping in mind the presence of others and then just not giving a fuck about the others. Being aware of bugs on the ground doesn't mean you won't step on them because there are no deleterious consequences to you if you do. Unlike, say, stepping in dogshit. So "mindful" used to mean "be aware of" does not necessarily dictate caution with respect to what you are doing.

Another possible meaning for "mindful" incorporates the implications discussed above: to be "mindful" is to show consideration and act according. Like implications, though, lots of temps don't do consideration. If an action of theirs, like stepping on bugs, has no real impact on them, unlike stepping in dogshit, then they see no need to alter their behavior. Asking them to be "mindful" won't change that.

Unfortunately, far too many temps need a more direct approach. Things are better than they use to be in that respect -- in the last four years or so, a lot of good people have lost jobs and found themselves in Temp Town, which tends to squeeze out the bottom-tier folks who used to make up the bulk of Temp Town's residents. But way too many temps still require a two-by-four between the eyes to get their attention. Thus, my sign in the kitchen would read more like, "Be quiet in this kitchen or be fired." Simple, direct, with explicit consequences. And I don't give a fuck whether you are mindful of anything other than the risk to your continuted employment posed by your unacceptable behavior.

Now we know why I'm not an HR director.

You gotta like this. Update!

Sure, they;re Army so they have more facial hair and longer hair than you'll see on Marines, but you have to respect the effort and balls it took to do this. Apparently, I am late to the party, but the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders did a video to "Call Me Maybe" last fall, and some soldiers in Afghanistan did a reply video juxtaposed on the cheerleaders' video. All in all, pretty good. Hats off to the Army folks -- wish I could credit them by the unit involved, but I have no clue.

Anyway, hat tip to Hot Air.

UPDATE: The Military Times explains the facial hair and long hair on these guys, and probably also the shirtlessness: They are Special Forces, either Green Berets or Delta Force, both of whom tend to be far shaggier than regular Army, as the rules are suspended for them. (Looking like American military often is a good way for these guys to get killed.) So there you have it.

I got some food porn for ya

It's a little low-key -- not very high on the food porn scale. Did another batch of soup this week, after the navy bean soup got sucked up so fast, figured I would toss another favorite out there. This one comes from my mother-in-law, and we call it Jean's soup. It's a beef and vegetable soup, basically, so you start with a nice beef soup bone:

Throw a little water in with the soup bone. You probably can't buy just the bone, so brown the meat on the bone (I inadvertently deleted the photo of the meat-on soup bone, so use your imagination), then trim the meat, cube it, and start broth with the bone itself. Brown the meat, trim the bone then put water in, only about two cups at this point, and boil the bone.

Meanwhile, you have about two pounds of stew beef that you cut up into smaller chunks, and you're going to brown that in a pan, along with the meat that you trimmed off the soup bone:

Once you have boiled the soup bone for about an hour, take the bone out of the broth and add the cubed, browned stew beef. Also add about 4 cups of water, maybe even 6, and bring to a boil.  Bring the temperature down and let that simmer at a low boil for about 30 minutes.With a little luck, you have made good use of your time while the soup bone was boiling and you cut up two large onions, about six carrots and four or five ribs of celery:

You also can cut up four or five white potatoes, peeled or unpeeled as you prefer, and add them to the mix. This is optional, but delicious. Once the broth and stew beef have been simmering for about 30 minutes, you can toss in the carrots, onions, celery and, if you choose, potatoes. Season with Worcestershire sauce (maybe three tablespoons, maybe more or less, depending on how you like it). Add one cup of white rice and a half cup of broken up spaghetti. Continue at a low boil.

Let that simmer for 45 minutes or so and toss in two cans of Margaret Holmes Triple Succotash and one can of Margaret Holmes Tomatoes, Okra and Corn. if you don't have Margaret Holmes products where you are, fake it. Triple succotash is just corn, limas and tomatoes, and tomatoes, okra and corn is exactly what it sounds like. Figure it out. Toss in salt and pepper to taste and continue to simmer. If the rice and spaghetti have sucked up too much water, add a cup or two. Or three. This is soup, after all, and it should be liquid.

You don't want the vegetables to get too limp (especially the canned ones you just tossed in) so after about 15 minutes of simmer, you should pull the pot off the heat. You can then serve up a bowl that looks like this:

If it doesn't taste great, I refuse to be held responsible. It probably means you fucked up.  Bon appetit.

I guess spring is here

This post has nothing to do with anything except the fact that I think winter is finally done. We had a very cold March, and even the first few days of April were kind on nasty, but now things are looking up. My jonquils and daffodils are up and, in many cases done, and tulips are coming up now. The garden is getting colorful. Like this:

and  this:

and this:

and this:

Just put in some summer bulbs today, so we should have more blooming all season long.

Romeo Alpha Foxtrot has been hiking through some cool territory

There are a bunch of pictures here. He has not yet put up captions to explain what you're looking at, but I'm not sure that's necessary. I am sure RAF will explain the lack of snow:

Looks good, and I look forward to reading about it.

Update: He has captions up, and the travelogue is pretty good. I recommend it.

By the way

Feel free to support this blog by doing your Amazon shopping through the gadget over on the right-hand side of your screen. It won't cost you any extra, and it directs a little cash for each purchase top the impoverished Wolves family, who will be eternally grateful.

Too good to last

I've spoken previously about the project-crushing development known variously as technology-assisted review, computer assisted review or predictive coding. I have previously been part of projects that were brought to a conclusion in short order was TAR was put to use. I think it often doesn't work particularly well -- it depends on who sets up the parameters for the software to base decisions on. Garbage in, garbage out. But it sure as shit works fast. It can turn a 4-6 week project into 2 weeks. Not a temp attorney's friend.

Well, TAR has come to my project. Up until now, official estimates have been that the project likely would last at least until the first of the year, and probably beyond. Oddly enough, there are no new estimates on project lifespan. When they announced today that they were going to be introducing what they're calling "computer-assisted review," the project managers were quick to say "No one is losing their job." Which brings us to Rule No. 1, of course: they're lying. Or maybe they're just playing semantics: after all, it isn't "no one" losing a job, it's "everyone." But that's why you front-end load the overtime every week of every project with overtime, because of Rule No. 3 (or so): Every project ends tomorrow. This one isn't ending tomorrow, but there are some folks in the room today who have already been on this project more than a year who had forgotten all about Rule No. 2. Not sure when "tomorrow" comes for this project, but it will come a lot sooner now.

R.I.P., Maggie

Margaret Thatcher is dead, and the world is poorer for her loss. Libtards hate her because she pointed out that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money. It is a truth that burns liberals to their core, witness the vitriol poured upon her at that respected news organization, MSNBC. Oddly enough, residents of the Falkland Islands don't feel that way.

Margaret Thatcher saved Great Britain if only because she kept them out of the Euro, correctly predicting that a nation that could not control its own currency was doomed by the irresponsibility of the nations that shared that currency. Even the Europhiles in Great Britain today are quietly glad they are not part of the Euro clusterfuck. Godspeed, Maggie, and God bless.

Could they be this devious?

I'm pretty sure there's a plot afoot at work to keep us from using even approved means of accessing the internet. As is usually the case on a project where internet access is not allowed at individual terminals, there is a computer for the project that has internet access. On this project -- although there are three internet terminals in the agency's "internet cafe," which does not serve pastries and really doesn't deserve the name --there is only one internet terminal in the project work rooms. Naturally, if you use that terminal, the project managers know you're fucking off. Nobody minds fucking off, but even temps don't want the boss men to know flat out that they're fucking off, and for how long. So that tends to discourage use all by itself.

 

But the project managers won't rely on pressure alone to keep people away from the internet terminal. I can't prove this was intentional, but it seems too diabolical to be a coincidence. The woman who sits next to the internet terminal wears a powerful perfume that I am pretty sure is called "Human Repellent by Chanel" or some such shit. It might be bear repellent. I don't know what it would smell like dissolved in water, but I'll bet it would be a great shark repellent, too. The point is, fucking nobody can sit at that terminal for more than a minute or two without becoming light-headed and nauseous.  Believe me, I've tried.

Food porn, y'all

I was going to do something last night, but I forgot to take pictures in the early stages of the meal I was preparing, so I figured I'd wait. Tonight, we have food porn that will help you get rid of that  Easter ham bone. Can't lie -- I did this last week, but didn't have the energy to put it up until now. No doubt, most of you no longer have an Easter ham to deal with. So file this away.

First off, get yourself a pound of navy beans or great northern beans, and put them in a pan covered by at least two inches of water, thusly:

You can now go away for about 24 hours, because that's how long those should soak. Of course, you can always start the broth now, although that can wait. I will assume you want to start the broth now. Fine. Get your ham bone out and strip all the meat off it.

Put the meat aside in a bowl or something. If you are an eager beaver and are doing this whole your beans still have a day to soak, for God's sake, put the meat in the refrigerator. Face it, you don't need it until tomorrow. Now, if you are an eager beaver, you can boil the ham bone now. Bring it to a rapid boil over high heat, then turn it down to a slow rolling boil for an hour or two. When the broth looks like dishwater and smells like ham, strainout the bone and whatever else might be floating in there. If you did this the day before, refrigerate the broth. If not, proceed. If your prepare the broth the day before and refrigerate, the fat will solidify on top of the broth and it is easy to skim off. If you're a heart-health conscious person and all. Which, if you were, you would not be fixing this soup, so fuck that. Anyway, when the broth is ready, it should look something like this:

OK, so it's the next day. Cut up some onions, maybe three small ones or two medium ones.

And cut up some carrots. Not much color if you don't (white beans, white onions, pink ham -- pretty bland looking). I like to use baby carrots (which aren't really baby carrots, ask me later) because they are already peeled. Takes about four baby carrot pieces to equal one real carrot, and you want four or five real carrots.

More color. Chop up three or four ribs of celery.

Cut up the meat you stripped off the bone yesterday, throw the onions, carrots, celery and meat into the broth, drain the beans that have been soaking and throw them in, too. Hang onto the water they've been soaking in, just in case you need to add water to the soup. Bring that sucker to a boil, then tone it down and simmer for a couple hours. When it's done, it should look something like this:

Not real exciting to look at, but it tastes great. Salt and pepper to your personal level of satisfaction, and bon appetit.

I got food porn coming

Have some patience, people, we got food porn coming.

Wasn't a big Nebraska fan before this

Apparently, the some members of the University of Nebraska football fan have sort of adopted a 7-year-old boy who has a rare form of brain cancer. The kid, like many young boys, especially in Nebraska likes football and so the guys on the team decided that they could do better than just a sideline pass for the Nebraska spring game. They suited him up.  And put him in the game on 4th and 1 from the Nebraska Red 31. Kid couldn't even see the goal posts, 69 yards away. Now, this is Nebraska spring football -- there were 60,000 people there screaming their heads off. Just watch. I am not responsible for short-circuited keyboards. You've been warned.

Hat tip to Hot Air.

Georgia on my mind

Not that Georgia, the one that used to be part of the Soviet Union. You know, the guys who gave us Stalin. Somebody from there came by. Anyway, the Black Sea state of 4.7 million people is a representative democracy that Russia maybe wants to stomp the shit out of. We hope more folks from there visit Eff You before that happens.

Syria? Seriously?

It's not like there's nothing going on in Syria that might interfere with them visiting this site. People are getting killed left and right, Assad is apparently willing to fuck up anybody to stay in power -- remember when Hillary said he was a reformer? Yeah, good times, good times -- and the guys who are trying to throw him out apparently are dominated by a bunch of Islamist Jihadis who will be even worse. Despite all this, somebody in Syria had the time, inclination and ability to become the first Syrian visitor to Eff You. Welcome, and we hope nobody rains chemical weapons on you anytime soon.

Wonder why Big Law is dying? Wonder no more

Apparently, DLA Piper -- a worldwide legal giant -- got hired to prepare a bankruptcy filing for a company owned by Adam H. Victor, the head of  TransGas Development Systems. Victor seems to be a guy who owns a lot of companies, and he hired DLA Piper, and they jacked up his bill, and he said "fuck you" and wouldn't pay all of  it. DLA Piper sued him. he said "fuck you" again and sued back. And discovery has given rise to documents that show he had a point the first time.

Mr. Victor’s feud with DLA Piper began after he retained the firm in April 2010 to prepare a bankruptcy filing for one of his companies. A month after the filing, a lawyer at the firm warned colleagues that the businessman’s bill was mounting.

“I hear we are already 200k over our estimate — that’s Team DLA Piper!” wrote Erich P. Eisenegger, a lawyer at the firm.

Another DLA Piper lawyer, Christopher Thomson, replied, noting that a third colleague, Vincent J. Roldan, had been enlisted to work on the matter.

“Now Vince has random people working full time on random research projects in standard ‘churn that bill, baby!’ mode,” Mr. Thomson wrote. “That bill shall know no limits.”

A DLA Piper spokesman said the firm did not comment on pending litigation.

Legal ethics scholars said that it was highly unusual to find documentary evidence of possible churning — the creation of unnecessary work to drive up a client’s bill.

Actually, this kind of shit, while long talked about and not all that rare (it is rare to get emails produced in discovery proving it, of course) is not why Big Law is dying. There are a lot of reasons, most of them systemic, that we can talk about later, but this doesn't help, does it?

Yeah, it's a traffic post. I'm tired, what can I say?

It's only Monday and my ass is already ragged. Long day today, buncha stupid jokes that weren't funny. Anyway, March was the second-best month ever on Eff You, so thank you all very much for coming by. Yeah, even the spambots. Spambots are people too. Or at least they're programmed by people so that if I say naked Latvian women, I get hits. Or porn. Even if it's food porn. Which I will try to do next weekend. Maybe I'll put up a poll to see what folks would like to see get the porn treatment. I'll think about it. But now I'll go to bed.