Headed back to The Farm Sunday, as there was no Packers game to keep me away. The fall crops are looking pretty good. Spinach is sprouting:
The first broccoli crop is looking good:
It made a nice recovery from the bug infestation after I applied a little better living through chemistry a couple weeks ago. Lots of nice, healthy new leaves:
The radishes are busting loose, but I should have thinned them more. Took care of that Sunday:
First crop of peas are coming along nicely, as well. Supposed to be bush plants, but I am thinking of putting up a string trellis. They kind of look like they want one:
The second broccoli crop and the cauliflower also are coming along well, a few weeks behind the first crop:
The peppers continue to defy expectations and show no signs of slowing down despite the arrival of fall:
The second pea crop is coming along. No trellis for these guys, though -- too much like work:
Managed to harvest some peppers, beans, carrots, radishes and tomatoes -- probably the last of those:
Need to process the tomatoes and beans, get those frozen for later consumption. Dry the peppers to grind up. That's a day I'm not looking forward to. I have a ton of dried peppers to grind, and all kinds of bad things can happen doing that.
The Packers trounced the Chiefs last night in a game where Aaron Rodgers demonstrated an unreal mastery of the quarterbacking art. Really brilliant performance by Rodgers. Unfortunately, Monday night games get no game food porn, usually, because I am coming straight from work. Last night was a great game, but without game food. On Sunday, the Packers travel to San Francisco for the 4 pm game, and we will have game food then. So you've got that to look forward to.
Mrs. Wolves caught Murder and Mayhem being pretty damn cute yesterday in one of their sleep boxes (Mrs. Wolves has created three or four different baskets and boxes full of snuggly stuff for the cats to sleep in):
Hard to tell there were two of them until Murder looked up:
So, what's missing from these pictures? This:
Mischief was sleeping in a basket right next to where Murder and Mayhem were sleeping. Not sure who was being standoffish.
The current administration seems to be hellbent on making the military "look like America," as progressives are fond of saying. Unfortunately, the America they think the military ought to look like bears little resemblance to the America most folks live in and, more importantly, is not a good recipe for a successful military.
Emperor Barry wants the military to be loaded with gay and lesbian troops, transgender people and whatever. The fact of the matter is gays are a miniscule portion of the general population -- no more than about 3 percent -- and so-called transgendered people (you can't change your chromosomes, people, no matter what you cut off) are a vanishingly small percentage of that already small percentage. Why is it so important to have them serve in the military? Damn few are qualified. Frankly, I have no problem with anyone who is qualified serving in the military in any capacity for which they are qualified. Unfortunately, this administration wants all positions open to all people, and doesn't seem to care what that does to the fighting force's effectiveness.
To me, a person who degrades our military's ability to fight should not be in a combat position. That is not the position of Emperor Barry. The Army, Air Force and Navy have already agreed to open all positions -- known as military operational specialities, or MOS's -- to whoever -- women, gays, transgenders, whatevs. For now, physical requirements won't change. I don't believe that will last, but the Marines apparently are going to ask for exemptions from allowing women to serve in certain combat positions, even if they meet the physical requirements, and they have some good data to back them up:
The Marine Corps is expected to ask that women not be allowed to compete for several front-line combat jobs, inflaming tensions between Navy and Marine leaders, U.S. officials say.
The tentative decision has ignited a debate over whether Navy Secretary Ray Mabus can veto any Marine Corps proposal to prohibit women from serving in certain infantry and reconnaissance positions. And it puts Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Marine Corps commandant who takes over soon as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at odds with the other three military services, who are expected to open all of their combat jobs to women.
No final decisions have been made or forwarded to Pentagon leaders, but officials say Defense Secretary Ash Carter is aware of the dispute and intends to review the Marine plan. The Marine Corps is part of the Navy, so Mabus is secretary of both services.
I am not opposed to women in combat positions as an absolute. Some women can probably meet the physical standards and, if so, then I suppose they should be considered. An oft-cited example is women in the Israeli defense forces. Israel probably is a unique situation, surrounded by enemies and outnumbered as they are. Still, they see,\m to have done OK with women in most combat roles. On the other hand, if the Marines determine that women in combat units are detrimental to the effectiveness of the unit in combat, then you have to give deference to the purpose of the unit, which is to kill people in combat. The other guys' people, not ours. The Marines did a careful study and determined that women in combat units detracted from those units ability to kill people efficiently. No matter what you think about the military and defense spending, never forget that the reason you have a military is to have a group of people who are good at killing people while keeping themselves alive. Anything that impedes their ability to accomplish those two tasks is a bad thing. Fuck a bunch of societal experimentation.
Naturally, Emperor Barry's Secretary of the Navy disagrees. Because the Marines are the senior branch of the naval service, they serve under the Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus. Who is, as you might expect under Emperor Barry, a dick. He doesn't give a fuck what the Marines' carefully conducted research shows:
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus criticized Friday the findings of a new Marine report that all-male combat units perform better on a number of tactical tasks than mixed-gender units. Mr. Mabus, the civilian secretary who leads the Navy Department — including the Marine Corps — has called for the Navy to open combat jobs to women, and said the latest report may have been tainted by negative attitudes from the beginning.
Ray don't care how the study was conducted, he cares about the outcome. And the outcome, dammit, better be that it is hunky fucking dory that women are totes cool in Marine combat units. Mabus, of course, is a total douche and a slave to the libtard agenda, with no experience with the military. Which is, I suppose, why Barry appointed him. He was governor of Mississippi, an ambassador to Saudi Arabia and some other stuff, not military related. But if you wondered why Mabus has his job, think only about ideological reasons, and consider this:
On March 27, 2009, Mabus was nominated by President Obama as Secretary of the Department of the Navy.[16] He was sworn in on May 19, 2009,[17] and held a ceremonial swearing in at Washington Navy Yard on June 18, 2009, where he was re-sworn in by the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.[18][19][20] In April 2010 a furor arose when it was reported that Mabus made the controversial proposal to name a United States Navy warship the USS John P. Murtha (LPD-26) after the late Pennsylvania Democratic congressman, John Murtha. Additional naming controversies occurred due to the naming of auxiliary ship after Cesar Chavez,[21] and acorvette/littoral combat ship after former Arizona Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords following her suffering life-threatening wounds in a 2011 mass shooting in her home district of Tucson, Arizona.[22]
Seriously, John Murtha and Cesar Chavev? A criminal and a communist? Whatevs. Is this how we want to determine what our defense forces should look like?
Let's face it -- I don't want a representative force defending the United States, nor should you. I want a bunch of kick-ass dudes out there defending our country. I don't care if homosexuals, or transexuals or any other fuckedup-sexuals are in our military. I want our military composed of people capable of kicking the shit out of the other guys. If that includes some kick-ass whatever-sexuals, then fine. I just want a military that is prepared to win. Period. Set the standards, let people meet them. If they can't, or if they fuck up unit effectiveness, then I don't want those people in the unit. I don't give a fuck who they are. Guys who can't do the job or fuck up the unit should be gone, too.
It would appear that a bunch of jihadis have put out a hit list of bloggers and that I am not on it. I find this highly disappointing, and not just because I am probably among the few bloggers who might be on such a hit list who is prepared for a visit by the hitters. No, I am disappointed because I can only assume I lack the reach in the area in which these particular jihadis operate. Anyway, CNN is reporting that a bunch of Pakistani jihadis have put out a hit list of bloggers:
(CNN) -- Islamic extremists in Bangladesh appear to be taking their war on secular writers and bloggers beyond the South Asian country's borders. A hit list purporting to be from the militant group Ansarullah Bangla Team has been sent out threatening people in Europe and North America. "Let Bangladesh revoke the citizenship of these enemies of Islam," a statement accompanying the list says. "If not, we will hunt them down in whatever part of God's world we find them and kill them right there." The list contains nine people in the United Kingdom, eight in Germany, two in the United States, one in Canada and one in Sweden. CNN isn't reporting any of the names on the list.
Of course, as CNN makes clear, they are not releasing the names of the bloggers on the list, so I guess it is possible I am on the list. I feel like I should be, given this, and this, and this, among others. I don't think I have given the jihadis any reason to think I'm their buddy, but I suppose they don't know I'm around and hating on them, so they didn't put me on their list. If they had, I 'd like to think someone would let me know, but I'm not real keen on counting on this administration to do anything right, and I'm pretty sure CNN is incompetent, so maybe I'm on the list and no one told me. That would be cool. The jihadi hitters might think I didn't expect them. After all, there is some precedent for that:
But I do expect them. So I've got that going for me.
Yeah, no surprise to me, the privately funded road project is done, the government projects have no end in sight. As predicted, every road in the subdivision has been repaved as of today. Maybe two weeks to complete the job? Nicely done, folks. Why anyone would prefer government to do this shit is beyond me. Argue all you want, but when it is your money on the line if you don't finish on time, you finish on time. Or early. If it isn't your money, incentive disappears. That's the difference between public and private projects.
I get traffic directed my way from all kinds of places. Mostly, it is either people who know about the blog or people who do internet searches for stuff that happens here, among other places. Many of those, of course, are disappointed porn-seekers, since I do food porn and occasionally used phrases like "smoking hot naked Russian babes." Hey, a guy has to drive traffic somehow.
So I understand how a lot of my traffic winds up here. Often, it comes through blogs that list Eff You on their blog roll, such as this guy. This week, though, I had a visitor who has me baffled. Apparently, the hit was directed through this site, which I've never heard of. I went to the site but could find absolutely no way anyone could have come to Eff You as a result of something they found there. Go figure.
I went to The Farm Sunday, just a few days before the official end of summer (the autumnal equinox, when the sun is directly above the Equator, occurs Wednesday at 4:21 am). Not much to do, really -- some watering, some harvesting. The first broccoli crop, saved from insects through judicial use of chemistry, is starting to show signs of bearing fruit:
Hard to see through the glare, but that's a broccoli stem growing in there. Broccoli crop No. 2 and the cauliflower also are doing well:
The fall pea crop No. 1 is thriving:
Almost time to thin the fall pea crop No. 2. These are supposed to be bush peas, but I might have to put up some trellises. We'll se:
I need to thin the radishes:
Managed to harvest some tomatoes and a pretty fair amount of beans, plus some peppers:
All in all, not a bad day for food production on The Farm. Also, Farmer Tom is back from his trek in the wilderness, so I once again have a helping hand. We're already discussing plans for next planting season. There will be corn, damn it.
A few years ago, I read a story by some guy who tried to figure out whether conservative or liberal blogs had more profanity. Turns out that liberal sites at the time -- 2008 -- had 12 times as much profanity as conservative sites. Granted, I was not on the interwebs when this study was conducted, but I feel like I should get some credit, anyway.
The study only looked at the top 10 sites, so I wouldn't have been included anyway, unless they were looking at the top 10 sites that purport to be about contract attorneys, assuming that there are fewer than 10 such sites and this blog is still considered to be such a blog. This blog is, of course, about whatever I say it is about.
In any event, I know for a fact that I use way more profanity than any of the conservative blogs I know of. I feel like I could have given liberals a run for their money on the F-bomb question. Apparently, the leading conservative blogs of the time were not:
The results showed that online liberals tend to use profanity a lot more than online conservatives. (Before I get further into the results, let me say that I am deliberately making a distinction between blogs that do not usually allow readers to make comments and those that do. This means that some sites, such as the popular Instapundit or Newsmax, were not included.) Searching for Mr. Carlin’s seven words and some popular variants at the top 10 conservative Web communities yields about 70,000 results. That is dwarfed in comparison to the 1.9 million instances of profanity on liberal sites. Things aren’t quite that clear-cut, however, since some Web sites have more pages than others. According to Google, the top 10 conservative sites have about 6 million pages, while the top 10 liberal sites have about 13 million. Dividing the number of instances of profanity by the number of pages of the sites on which they appear, then multiplying the result by 100 yields what might be called a “profanity quotient.” The top 10 liberal sites (Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Democratic Underground, Talking Points Memo, Crooks and Liars, Think Progress, Atrios, Greenwald, MyDD and Firedoglake) have a profanity quotient of 14.6. The top 10 conservative sites (Free Republic, Hot Air, Little Green Footballs, Townhall, NewsBusters, Lucianne.com, Wizbang, Ace of Spades, Red State and Volokh Conspiracy) have a quotient of 1.17.
The author noted that Ace of Spades, one of my favorite blogs, accounted for almost all of the conservative cussing. Ace has toned things down in recent years, so there is a good chance that I am now the most foul-mouthed conservative on the interwebs. And yet I toil in obscurity. I demand some fucking recognition, damn it.
A most excellent victory last night. It did not make up for the NFC title game, but I was really getting tired of having to play Seattle in Seattle. Anyway, at Lambeau, we won, they lost, and I hope they rot and burn in Hell. Other than that, I have no feelings one way or the other about the Seahawks.
The game food is another story: I have nothing but good feelings about that. Because this was a night game, I had to make game food that could double as dinner, since Mrs. Wolves would be eating her game food as dinner before the game started. This is not as hard as it sounds, given my game food repertoire. First, I made ribs:
Yeah, I smoked 'em first. Homemade sauce. Pretty damn good, folks. Very tender. I also fixed the potato recipe I used last week, the smushed red potatoes thing. Boiled them longer this time, and they smushed just right. Added a little mozzarella to the Parmesan this time. Worked well:
Added some pigs in a blanket to be game-foodier, and because that's what I wanted to eat during the game:
To round out Mrs. Wolves' dinner, I roasted some corn on the cob and threw in some baked beans (not homemade, alas -- too little time). All in all, and excellent meal and an excellent game. Go Pack!
Turns out, people were dropping the f-bomb way back in 1310. When British Historian Paul Booth of Keele University was flipping through a court document from the city of Chester, he made an entirely unexpected discovery: An outlaw listed by the name of "Roger Fuckebythenavele." Believed to be a nickname, this marks the oldest written use of the f-word in the English language.
"Fuckbythenavele," apparently, was not a complimentary nickname:
The word appears three different times in the 1310 document, suggesting that "Fuckebythenavale" was a nickname and not simply a one-time joke. "I suggest it could either mean an actual attempt at copulation by an inexperienced youth, later reported by a rejected girlfriend," Booth said of the term's likely meaning, "or an equivalent of the word 'dimwit,' i.e. a man who might think that was the correct way to go about it."
I guess this makes "Fuckbythenavele" the 14th-century equivalent of "fucking moron." Poor Roger.
Personally, I am not surprised that "fuck" was in use so much earlier than thought. I bet it was in use even earlier. Think about modern-day advertising. By the time an expression shows up in national ads, it is passe in current slang. Think about "Best. Day. Ever." I've heard it in several different ads lately, for different companies. I think its day in popular culture ended a couple years ago.
Take that back to the 1300s for a second. Communication back then was dramatically slower. It probably took years for things to become part of universal popular culture, including the F-bomb. If there is an F-bomb in print in 1310, I'll bet it was a thing decades before that.
No human could sleep in these positions. I shudder to think of the pain you would suffer upon awakening if you even tried. Nonetheless, our feline friends sleep in like this routinely and seem to enjoy it. Here we have Murder and Mischief sharing a spot on Mrs. Wolves' chair, in which she rarely actually gets to sleep these days:
And here we have Mayhem, who appears to believe she is an armadillo:
Point? No point. I put these up here because Mrs. Wolves likes these pictures she took, and because I can. Don't like it? Refer to the title of the blog. I now return to watching the Chiefs-Broncos, in which Old Man Manning attempts to tell the Chiefs to "get the hell off my lawn," even though technically he is on their lawn, as the game is in Kansas City. One more sign, I suppose, of Peyton's advancing age -- he doesn't even know where he is anymore.
Yeah, I farmed a little this past weekend. Having dusted the broccoli for bugs, I was pleased to see it was working:
I was likewise pleased to see the fall pea crop coming in nicely. These are supposed to be bush plants but I see indications I might need to put up some kind of trellis:
Finally, I harvested some beans, peppers and tomatoes:
Not a very eventful farm trip, but we continue to harvest stuff, so I can't complain.
The first game food porn post of the season brought in some folks from distant places. Both locations I have in mind have visited before, but to the best of my knowledge, the game food porn attracted only my second visitors from Malta and Mauritius. They like them some brown sugar bacon dogs.
Always good to win, especially on Opening Day, which the Packers haven't done in several years. The Packers might have been slow starters in the past, but this year they went to Chicago and sent the hated Bears down to defeat in the longest-running rivalry in the NFL. Well, if the Packers were going to get off to a fast start, then the game food porn would have to, as well.
In honor of the new season, I fixed two new game food dishes. First, I trotted out a new meatballs recipe. The recipe I found billed these as "sweet and sour meatballs," but I think you will all agree that they are more of a barbeque sauce meatballs kind of thing. You can decide.
First, you will need 3/4 pound of ground beef, 3/4 pound of ground turkey, one minced onion, 1-2 eggs, beaten, 1/2 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs, 3/4 cup catsup, 1/3 cup white vinegar, 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce, 3 tbsp sugar, and 2 tsp dry mustard:
That onion ain't gonna mince itself. You can use a food processor or a hand grater, but make sure you get that stuff minced up right:
And I do mean right:
Next, put the hamburger and turkey in a large mixing bowl:
Beat your eggs like a rented mule:
Add them to the mixing bowl:
Toss in the minced onion and the bread crumbs, then mix it up right:
Having mixed it up right, shape the mixture into things that resemble meatballs, maybe an inch or so in diameter:
Blast a skillet with non-stick spray, then brown the meatballs in batches. No need to cook all the way through here, but brown them good:
Perhaps the Dave Clark Five would refer to this as "Brown All Over:"
Yeah, that was a little random. Anyway, pull the meatballs from the skillet:
You will now add the remaining ingredients to the skillet -- catsup, vinegar, Worcestershire, sugar and dry mustard -- mix them up right and bring them to a boil. Then reduce the heat to a simmer, add the meatballs and cook until the meatballs are cooked through. You can cover it and go about your business for 10 or 15 minutes with the meatballs on low heat:
Plate those suckers up, 'cause they gonna be good:
In the midst of all this, I also made a substitute for the stuffed potato skins that have been a mainstay of ever Packers games since the blog began, and well before that. I like this recipe, though, as did Mrs. Wolves, so we'll probably see this and the stuffed skins alternate through the season.
You will need some red potatoes, salt, olive oil, pepper, garlic powder, shredded Parmesan cheese and bacon:
Boil the red potatoes until they are very tender. They have to smash easily:
Drizzle a baking sheet with olive oil and put the potatoes on the sheet. Take a potato masher and, well, mast them. Just press straight down, rotate your masher 90 degrees and do it again:
Drizzle a little olive oil on each potato, season with salt and pepper, sprinkle with garlic powder, top with bacon and Parmesan:
Bake those suckers at 450 for about 20 minutes and plate 'em up:
I also fixed brown sugar bacon dogs, which are always so, so good, and we would up with a good-looking spread:
Combined with a Packers victory, not a bad fall Sunday afternoon. Bon appetit, and Go Pack!
This road construction is being done with private money, by my homeowners association, and so the over/under on completion is measured in weeks, not months. Anyway, the HOA is repaving all the streets in my neighborhood. Currently, the main road leading out of the subdivision is stripped to the dirt, awaiting repaving:
This picture, taken Saturday, includes photographic evidence that we finally got some damn rain, the first meaningful rainfall since June. Please note the puddles just before the curve in the road. So we've got that going for us.
Yeah, that's what I said. Obviously, it is much worse to hit a deer, but getting hit by a deer is not great. Allow me to explain.
As I was driving home Friday night, on a stretch of road where it is unusual to see deer because of the fenced cow pastures on both sides of the road, I saw a doe, a deer, a female deer, crossing the road. I immediately slowed down, because deer are never alone, and sure enough, as I approached where the doe had crossed the road, I saw a young deer on the right shoulder of the road, preparing to follow what I assume was its mother. It seemed to be turning away from the road, and then decided to follow its mother, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. I did not hit the deer. It hit me.
I was too far along for the deer to cross in front of my car. Instead, it ran straight into the side of my car, bounced off, and crossed the road behind me, after I passed.
My damage was light. First, Bambi bent my passenger-side mirror all the way up against the glass. When I looked in that mirror afterward, all I saw was me. Fortunately, the mirror folded right back out with no ill effects:
Second, Bambi managed to put a small dent in my front passenger door. I could probably take it out with suction cups:
And, finally, Bambi left a pretty good amount of deer fur stuck in the chrome surrounding the door handle on the front passenger door:
