You just never know who will drop by

So, today I got a comment on this post from this guy. I have no idea how or why he came here -- the post is a year old, so he must have been cruising a little bit. Anyway, I went to his blog, and I liked it. Alaska guy, which explains the name of his blog. Check it out. Adding it to the blogroll.

Damn it, Jack Ely died

Of course you have no idea who I'm talking about. But you know why I'm talking about him -- Jack Ely, who died Tuesday at age 71 at his home in Redmond, Oregon, was the lead singer for The Kingsmen, one of about a bazillion groups to cover "Louie, Louie." The one-hit wonders did the definitive version, though -- everyone, but everyone who knows "Louie, Louie" -- or thinks they do, as the lyrics are fabulously obscure, especially the third verse  -- knows it because of The Kingsmen. Oddly enough, Ely had a falling out with the band shortly after the song was recorded in 1963 and they parted ways. But Ely and The Kingsmen made their mark forever.

The song, reputedly recorded at a cost of $36, was so hard to understand that the FBI investigated, only contributing to the fame of The Kingsmen's version:

“Louie Louie” has been covered hundreds of times, a three-chord, garage-band classic anybody could play soon after picking up an electric guitar.
Ely and the Kingsmen picked it up along with other Northwest figures such as Rockin’ Robin Roberts and Paul Revere. The Kingsmen’s version was recorded in 1963 and is the definitive version, going from cult classic to rock-and-roll standard. It has inspired more than a thousand cover versions and there’s no reliable estimate for how many times it’s been drunkenly sung at parties.
In addition to the song’s fame, Ely’s incoherent singing also made it one of the most misunderstood. The FBI was so mystified by the hard-to-understand lyrics that it conducted an investigation into whether the song was obscene. They found it to be “unintelligible at any speed.”
Over the years, Ely and other band members attributed the indistinct lyrics to the microphone suspended from the ceiling, forcing Ely to shout up at it. Sean Ely said his father got “quite the kick” out the FBI’s 455-page investigative report. He said his father certainly knew the words, and wasn’t just slurring nonsense.
“Right of his mouth, my father would say: ‘We were initially just going to record the song as an instrumental and at the last minute I decided I’d sing it. It’s all of this is in a 10-by-10 room with one microphone. I’m standing on my tippy toes yelling into the microphone: Louie Louie! Louie Louie! We gotta go!’”

The end result, of course, is pure magic:

It is, of course, no surprise that the FBI just didn't get it. RIP, Jack.Your contribution to American culture is secure.

Holy fuck, I'm a heretic

Apparently, noted physicist and current Pope Francis is teaming up with renowned scientist Ban Ki-Moon, better known as general secretary of the most useless organization on Earth, to brand me a heretic.

The two of them, with their keen understanding of science, might not be targeting me personally, but the pope is coming out against "climate change" as a moral imperative, and Ban, who is just a meddling peckerhead with no discernible expertise in anything -- at least Francis is a theologian of some note -- is backing Francis in hopes that the UN can actually get a little world-government clout going. Neither one knows a fucking thing about the issues involved, nor could either explain the theory with a gun to his head. I think Francis better talk to his boss about climate change, which has been happening since Earth formed as a planet. Naturally, they are doing this as the whole man-made climate change myth is unravelling:

Last month, we are told, the world enjoyed “its hottest March since records began in 1880”. This year, according to “US government scientists”, already bids to outrank 2014 as “the hottest ever”. The figures from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were based, like all the other three official surface temperature records on which the world’s scientists and politicians rely, on data compiled from a network of weather stations by NOAA’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN).

But here there is a puzzle. These temperature records are not the only ones with official status. The other two, Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama (UAH), are based on a quite different method of measuring temperature data, by satellites. And these, as they have increasingly done in recent years, give a strikingly different picture. Neither shows last month as anything like the hottest March on record, any more than they showed 2014 as “the hottest year ever”.

NOAA and its allies have been fucking with temperature data for decades, applying algorithms to "correct" temperature measurements to account for various, vaguely identified factors. The result is always that temperatures in the past are revised down, current temperatures are revised up. None of the surface temperatures reported by NOAA reflect actual measurements.

Further, the theory of anthropogenic climate change -- man-made global warming, as they used to call it before global warming stopped 18 years ago and hit a plateau -- does not rely upon surface temperatures for proof. The so-called signature of man-made global warming is warming in the mid-troposphere over the tropics -- in other words, exactly what the RSS and UAH satellites measure and show no change in nearly two decades.

The reason is simple. The climate alarmists know that carbon dioxide alone lacks the temperature forcing effect to cause runaway warming. CO2 has a logorithmic warming effect. The first doubling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere forces X amount of warming. Each subsequent doubling forces 1/2 of the previous forcing. In other words, CO2 can never produce more than twice the amount of initial warming. Estimates of that forcing range from less than 2 degrees F to 4 degrees F or so. So much for settle science when they can't even determine reliably such a basic figure. The real problem for the alarmists is that such an upper limit on forcing by CO2, which no one argues with, does not yield runaway warming. So what is the basis of the alarmists' claims that CO2 will turn the planet into a furnace?

Simple -- it won't be CO2. Water vapor provides 95 percent of the so-called greenhouse effect and is the only gas or substance capable of causing runaway warming. The theory, then is that the CO2 forcing will cause enough warming to create a much thicker band of water vapor around the planet, particularly in the tropics, which will trap more heat, lead to more water vapor and Bingo! runaway warming. This warming will be signalled by warming in the troposphere and a much thicker band of water vapor around Earth.

The problem with this theory is two-fold: the water vapor layer in Earth's lower atmosphere is not reaching higher, and the troposphere is not warming, according to the RSS and UAH data. This is what is known in scientific circles as falsification -- the theory has been disproven by the data.

Undeterred, the grant-hungry warmists instead try to scare us with surface temperatures, which have no bearing on the theory and probably are not warming anyway. But to scare us, they fuck with the data because Science!

Yeah, I could have provided more links, but I encourage you to do what I did and research it for yourself. You'll find you are being lied to as long as your research is honest (don't just go to alarmist sites, y'all.)

This guy is my hero

I once tackled a car, but I did it from behind. This guy stepped in front of a motorcycle to stop a high-speed chase because he was worried about kids getting hurt. My motives were less pure. On top of all that, he apologized for using rough language, something I have never fucking done.

Hat tip to Hot Air:

Spring has sprung

So, Mrs. Wolves has been dog-sitting over at Farmer Tom's place for a couple days. Naturally, this means I get pictures sent to me. I have two choices: post the pictures on the blog, or flush 29 years of wedded bliss (or something) down the toilet. Naturally, I choose the path of least resistance. Don't like it? Refer to the title of the blog.

So, Farmer Tom has a big fucking yard, with lots of nice, flowering trees, and pretty clouds:

Mrs. Wolves, of course, likes to get close to the flowering trees:

A lot:

No, really:

So, anyway, having preserved my marriage, I hope I also have provided a little pleasure into your lives with photos of nature's beauty. For those of you who do not appreciate the simpler things in life, like flowering trees, beautiful clouds and such, you know what to refer to.

Back on The Farm

Most of the hard work is done. Still some planting to do, then weeding and such, but most stuff is in the ground or about to go there. We're looking good for the coming growing season. Might need to build one more bed, but when I arrived Sunday, I found Farmer Tom had already finished installing the irrigation system and the deer protectors. He even buried the hose for the deer protectors:

Once we add a final hose, we will have both sets of beds irrigated, the deer protectors fired up and  -- the final hose -- a hose for hand-watering:

Looking around, we already have asparagus harvest-ready, and in fact the Farmer Tom household has munched down on asparagus a couple times already:

I put in some green beans:

And the irrigation system will need a few tweeks to get full coverage, but it works pretty well:

The beans and carrots are being watered here. As you can see, we need to make a couple adjustments to get full coverage:

We have a plan, of course. We'll see how it works out. Next week, I need to put up a string trellis for the peas, which are coming in nicely. We also need to till the squash bed, plant peppers and create a bed for the cucumbers. I'll probably be pickling dills and sweet gherkins this year if we can get a good harvest. Moving the cuke bed to better sun should ensure that, but we're a few weeks away from planting that.  And never forget the tomatoes. Peppers, tomatoes and squash will have to wait a few weeks until it is warmer.

Do a little dance, mow a little lawn . . .

Wait a minute -- that is not how that song goes. I did only a half day today so I could come home and do some chores and errands. Among them was mowing the lawn -- yes, it already needed it again -- which I did. That is not, however, what KC was talking about:

Ah, disco balls. Yeah, my old band used to do this one. Loved it. Still do.

More kit-tays, because she keeps taking the pictures

Mrs. Wolves will undoubtedly go into a coma or something when the kit-tays leave in June. Until then, she keeps taking pictures of them. They are relentlessly cute, of course:

They snuggle a lot:

Really, it could give you diabetes:

Freaking ridiculous, really:

They are quite cute. I don't know what Mrs. Wolves will do without them. She insists she doesn't want different kitties. I suspect I better find some.

Yeah, we still do food porn here

It would appear that I am going to cater the rehearsal dinner for Cpl. Wolves' wedding. Someone, somewhere decided the the food theme would be Cajun. In that vein, I recently prepared a chicken andouille dish that turned out nicely. Best part? It is done in the crock pot, which is mondo convenient.

You start with 1-1/2 pounds of boneless chicken thighs, cut into chunks, 12-16 ounces of andouille sausage, cut into 1-inch chunks, 1 chopped onion, 3/4 cup of chicken broth, a 14-.5 oz. can of diced tomatoes, a 6-oz. can of tomato paste, a chopped green bell pepper, some kind of Creole seasoning (I use Tony Chachere) to taste, about a tablespoon, and salt and pepper, also to taste:

OK, so first, cut up the chicken and sausage:

Chop that onion:

You should also chop that bell pepper, although apparently I forgot to take a picture of that. Do it anyway. Toss the cut-up meat into the crock pot:

Add the onions and peppers, the tomatoes, the tomato paste and the seasonings:

Mix it up right, people:

 Cook it on low for 6-8 hours. You serve it over rice. Mrs. Wolves did not take a picture of the finished product for me (I was at work), but it looks like this when done:

Just imagine it over rice. Tastes real good. Bon appetit, y'all.

Administrative bullshit haikus

Got an email tonight that apparently went to everyone on the project, trying to put the fear of God in them.

Good Evening,
Thank you for your continued hard work on your current project. Due to some timekeeping issues that have been popping up we felt it prudent to send a reminder email regarding breaks. Please note that this email is being sent to all reviewers on your current project and may not be applicable to you if your timekeeping is indeed accurate.
Please ensure that you are properly accounting for your breaks. Failure to accurately account for breaks, which therefore causes improper billing, will result in dismissal.

Specifically, if you state that you took zero breaks and worked 7.75 hours in a day (which many of you do because you don’t want to work 8 hours which triggers the requirement to take a 30 minute break) you must actually work those 7.75 hours and not take a break. Meaning, if you put 7.75 hours down that means you actually worked 7.75 hours and, except for quick trips to the restroom/break room, you did nothing but work for those 7.75 hours.

As a reminder, a break would be considered any time, beyond a quick restroom/water/coffee trip that you are not actively working. For example stepping away for 5 or so minutes to use the restroom, grabbing a cup of water/coffee/etc. from the break room and then returning to your work station would not be considered a break (assuming you are not doing so multiple times an hour). Stepping away for anything beyond a brief absence is considered a break and must be noted as such when tallying your time.

Again, we appreciate your hard work and look forward to continuing to work with you on this project.

Best regards,

[Some corporate peckerhead]

God help you if you have to take a dump, apparently. Anyway, I have a response or two, Japanese-style:

Don't take a lunch break
Agency wants to know why
Eat at fucking desk

Bring my food from home
Don't go out to get my lunch
So suck it, bitches

I figure that about covers it, right?

I guess it depends on what you're looking for

Mrs. Wolves took some pictures the other day. She was taking pictures of clouds, like so:

And like so:

They are nice pictures of clouds. My first reaction, though, was "Huh, Farmer John planted wheat this year." Farmer John, who almost undoubtedly is not named John, owns the field next to our house and rotates his crops religiously. Last year he did corn, the year before I think he did wheat and then soybeans. Perhaps after the winter wheat is harvested, we'll see soybeans. But Mrs. Wolves was a little put out that I didn't see clouds -- I saw wheat.

The times, they are a' changin'

Cpl. Wolves, who is getting married at the end of next month, made an offer on a condo yesterday that was accepted. He won't be far, but he won't be here. It will be a big change, especially for Mrs. Wolves, since the kit-tays will be going with Cpl. Wolves. Time marches on, does it not?

Oh, I know what she was saying

Murder launches daily attempts to get outside. I think she just wants to kill things, but who knows? Occasionally, she succeeds. Like today. Mrs. Wolves managed to capture the escape on film (bytes? fuck, I don't know):

Murder was able to tiptoe through the tulips. What does that mean? Guess you're not old enough to remember this:

I think Murder was thinking something more along these lines, though:

Damn, y'all, it's like I'm a modern-day Rene Descartes

Come on, you guys know Rene Descartes -- Cogito, ergo sum? Je pense, dans je suis? I think, therefore I am? None of this ringing a bell? Damn, I thought my readership was better educated than that.  Anyway, I, too, have a founding principle: Je plante graines, dans il pleu. I plant seeds, therefore it rains. Yesterday, down on The Farm, I once again proved this to be true. I might be the most reliable rainmaker in the Western Hemisphere. Within hours of putting carrot seeds in the ground, it rained. Damn, I'm good.

So, yeah, I was down on The Farm yesterday. We were working mostly on the irrigation system, but I did a little planting, and it rained that night -- all night -- and it is raining again tonight. Feeling good about my magic touch.

But first things first. Checking on the progress of the crops already in the ground, we can see that the lettuce and radishes are sprouting nicely:

Ditto for the peas:

And the spinach:

And the garlic, which we hope will truly thrive in the full sun:

Yeah, all those beds look a little dry, but the sub-surface soil moisture was not bad, and it did rain, so I'm not worried.

Having checked boxes on what we did last week, it is time to cover what we did Sunday. Lots o' physical labor, I'm afraid. First off, we had new beds in place that needed dirt. The dirt was in, but not distributed. Which means I had to shovel and rake the dirt around to get it evenly distributed:

Not so bad, really:

Once the soil was distributed, it was time to plant. I put in carrots:

Used a method I never have before -- seed tapes. Seeds are embedded in long paper strips that quickly biodegrade, giving even spacing. It's a whole lot easier than planting tiny little seeds like carrots by hand:

Put them in, buried them, dropped the microphone:

Move on, y'all. After that, time to put up some irrigation equipment. We're using sprinkle hoses this year instead of soak hoses (soak hoses go on the ground and trickle water out -- sprinkle hoses spray water from pinholes in the hose). We are putting the sprinkle hoses on trellises, facing down so that the hoses spray into the bed, minimizing water loss:

I'll let you know how well it works. Naturally, for it to work at all, there has to be a water supply. Farmer Tom ran a hose from the house, then established a distribution station down by the beds. He sank a post and mounted a hose splitter. Here's the post:

And part one of the hose-splitter process -- a plate to mount the splitter on:

Then comes the splitter:

With all that in place, we strung the hose from the house:

Then we mounted a digger bar on the tractor and dug a trench for the hose (can't have it getting chewed up when mowing the lawn, now can we?):

We buried the hose in the trench, and life is good:

Yeah, it does seem like a lot of work, but it is so we can keep the crops watered and protected from deer, using these bad boys:

We hook them up to a water supply. The deer protectors have motion sensors and start shooting out water when deer or other animals come by, scaring the animals off. Or drenching them if the animals are humans down to tend the garden who forgot to turn off the deer protectors. But that's a story for another day. Next week, we'll get these bad boys in the ground, and who knows what else? Stay tuned.

I think I don't understand my neighbors

So I was out walking Jeb the Wonder Dog yesterday, and I ran across something I really had trouble comprehending. In fact, I still don't understand what was going on there. A large, old-school tube TV is sitting out back of a row of townhouses with a hand-written sign saying "Don't touch" and a half-empty orange juice container on top of it. What the fuck?

I'm open to theories on what this means.

Working man springtime blues

This is what your lawn looks like if you are working six days a week and miss the first really nice weekend of good weather:

Yeah, looks a lot like a wheat field, doesn't it?

Mow that bitch, though, and it looks like this:

Look at the huge piles of cut grass lying all over the place. Now I have to fertilize and water to get the yellow out. Poot.

I will never understand why members of Congress think they know anything

The Marines, who know a little bit about amphibious assault against hostile shores, are being forced to defend to Congress the Marines' preference in a new amphibious assault vehicle. The problem? The Marines want one with wheels, not tracks. Congress, of course, knows better and is skeptical of the Marines' choice in this matter. I've been sitting on this for a few weeks, as the testimony occurred in March, but the stupidity of Congress never ceases to amaze:

Marine Corps leaders testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee's Subcomittee on Seapower to discuss modernization efforts in the proposed Fiscal 2016 budget request.
The Corps has identified its new Amphibious Combat Vehicle as its top modernization priority. The effort is set to replace most of Marine Amphibious Assault Vehicles that are well over 40 years old.
"Those vehicles are old, and they need to be replaced," Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth J. Glueck, Jr., deputy commandant for Combat Development and Integration and commanding general of Marine Corps Combat Development Command.
. . .
Senators were more concerned, however, with the service's decision to choose wheeled technology over the more time-tested tracked design.

Don't worry about the part where the guys who have to drive these things around and get shot at in them think this is a better design. And never mind that this same Congress thought the Stryker wheeled infantry assault vehicle was a great choice for the Army because it fit better in an urban environment while providing open-country mobility. Congress knows better.

Tracked vehicles, as we learned in urban combat in Iraq, don't do real well in confined, narrow-street old cities -- the kind of places we are likely to be fighting. We aren't going to be doing a lot of open-country armored engagements against similarly equipped armies (we hope), but for that we still have the Bradley Fighting Vehicle and the Abrahms M1-A1 tank should we ever, God help us, have to face off against the Russians or Chinese. The Marines aren't supposed to be getting ready for that particular fight, however. They are an expeditionary force, intended to go wherever, whenever and fight whoever -- places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Mobility and survivability are important to them:

Marine leaders said the service has identified ground mobility as a high priority for the new AAV.
Wheeled-vehicle capability has advanced significantly over the past decade with technologies such as independent suspension, armor and variable inflatable tires, according to Thomas P. Dee, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for Expeditionary Programs and Logistics Management.
Tests involving an eight-wheeled demonstrator vehicle at the Nevada Automotive Test Center have been very encouraging, Dee said.
"Performance was very good and for a medium-weight vehicle; it was equivalent to what we would get out of a tracked vehicle," Dee said. "It may not be as maneuverable or as mobile in off-road conditions in certain cases as an M1 tank, but is it certainly as maneuverable as we are going to get in that class of vehicle."

Congress seems to be skeptical of the proposed design, which makes me tend to favor that design. Remember, these are the same people who want to get rid of the A-10, even though they have no replacement.

Yes, I've been down on The Farm

I figured I better get this post up before I return to The Farm, which happens in less than 48 hours. Anyway, I spent a few hours at The Farm last Sunday, with mixed results. Jeb the Wonder Dog apparently has accepted that he still cannot drive a stick, and so he took his place in the passenger seat:

Where he promptly stuck his head out the window for the entire trip to The Farm (all five minutes):

When we got there, imagine my surprise to find that Tom the Farmer had completely undone my onion planting of the week before, despite our decision to leave the onions there for this season. Note the leveled ground to his right:

I guess he wanted to move the onions, because he knew I put them in. Fortunately, he retrieved enough of the seed crop (proving he knew it was there) for me to plant in another, sunnier spot. None of this bothered Jeb the Wonder Dog in the least. He was far too busy dominating Willie, the Golden Lab With His Nuts Cut Off. Jeb, proudly unneutered. enjoys asserting his dominance:

We worked on rebuilding some bed boxes, salvaging pieces from rotten boxes and recutting things to fit. We also had to rework some of our trellis stands to fit the new boxes:

Fortunately, Farmer Tom is quite a woodworker, and I take instructions well:

I am, of course, good mostly for strong back, weak mind. I had to till the areas where we intended to re-plant the onions and plant the left-over potatoes, as Farmer Tom had put about half of the spuds in the spot we usually use. Out came the tiller:

I tilled, we planted, and Farmer Tom watered the newly planted onions and spuds:

I'll be back at The Farm Sunday. I have no damn idea what we're doing, but I will report. Probably squash, beans and cucumbers. We also have to figure out what to do about watermelons, which Farmer Tom's daughter wants to plant. Stay tuned.