Wednesday, June 11, 2008

I'm Platinum!!!!!

THis week I'm stuck in the Thriving Metropolis of South Bend Indiana - Home of Notre Dame University.

its a suprisingly boring town. Apparently the only really cool place to go eat/drink is this place...I had the shepards pie. it was ok.

People in Indiana eat "Dinner" for lunch and "Supper" for dinner

And yeah, this trip marks a milestone for me: I'm now a marriot rewards PLATINUM member. Yep...Thats the highest echelon you can get with the Marriot Rewards system. I'm now an Ultimate preferred guest and get all sorts of perks that you plebeian losers don't get.

Here's some of the highlights of this real ultimate prestige:

-if I want a hotel room anywhere, I can get one. If the hotel is sold out, they make someone else leave.

-THe hotel staff, particularly the front desk people HAVE to learn my name and call me so when they see me. "Good evening, Mr. Gilbert, how's your day?" of course, I reserve the right to ignore them.

-I get free snacks and water and pop from the snack bars they have in the lobby. yeah, that shit that YOU have to pay for? I get it for free.

-I get a free gift box if I check into a hotel...in my room will be a sweet basket of awesome shit that only ultimate royal platinum people get.

-I automatically get the best room available in the place. no additional charge. when I travel, I get the awesome supreme luxury room.

-I get to check out later: like 3 pm or something.

-there's several more ultimate prestige royalty benefits I get, but if I really listed all of them, you'd probably get jealous.

So there you have it. thats a little taste of royalty...maybe if the rest of you try a little harder you could one day reach Platinum status at marriot. Probably not, but never give up on your dreams.


South Bend, Indiana - home of the College Football hall of fame, and occasionally visited by Royalty.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

From the SNL Archives...


via videosift.com

Bought Another Motorcycle.

this one's a bit bigger:

1994 Ducati 900SS CR.



Sad.



pretty much truth though...

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

The Belt Super Group.

There's certain geologic themes that keep coming back to me in life...I think this happens with most geologists: You learn about some rock unit or some fossil, or something, and every 3-10 years or so, you end up re-visiting it in some way or another. This has happened to me at least 5-6 times.

For Example, Consider The Belt Supergroup - an interesting sedimentary sequence of Precambrian rocks that form the spectacular mountains that make up Glacier national park.

Here's my experience with these rocks:

-I learned about these rocks as an undergraduate in college, in my structural geology class. while talking about thrust faulting

-I first visited these rocks as an undergraduate at my field camp, and was blown away by 1. how awesome the scenery of this part of the world is, and 2. by how fucking beautifully exposed these rocks are.

You can actually see full fault-bend folds in the sides of the mountains, folded sedimentary beds, and to top it all off, the color of the rocks is gorgeous. The Sedimentary structures are really awesome too, ball and pillow, flame structures, mudcracks, salt casts, etc...

As you drive north on the Going to the Sun Highway, There's a place where you can see the Mountains on your left, and the start of the plains are on your right. The topographic break near the base of the mountains is the lewis thrust, and everything above it are the glorious rocks of the Belt Supergroup. Don't forget about the rocks beneath the topographic break, they are the footwall rocks and display some terrific footwall deformation (folds and faults!)



Here's some of the rocks of the Mount Shields Formation (I think)... if you look close you'll see my friend Erik in the back of the picture.




Some footwall deformation, my friend Ivan in the picture there has his left hand curled in the shape of a fault bend fold, and his right hand is the fold, just to the left of his hands you can see the same structure in the outcrop. Or I should say, you could see the structure in the outcrop if it wasn't such a shitty old fucking picture.



Geologic Field Camp lecture at St. Mary Lake...awesome.




On a Slightly unrelated note, I was the single best rock-hammer-tree-climber in my field camp group. I excelled at it. Although I really sucked at trundling, the hammer throw, and the cliff drop.


-I forgot about these rocks until about a year after I first visited them, when I went on a backpacking trip with friends. I didn't think about the rocks as much on that trip because 1 week before the trip I broke my ankle skateboarding and hiked much of the waterton international peace park on ibuprofen and vicodin. I stopped only to pretend to take artsy pictures and act like I give a shit about gary snyder's poetry....




My Friend Paul checking out the awesomeness of sedimentary structures in the belt Supergroup...a set of rocks that even attracts english teachers. go figure.



My friend Erik taking a picture of some of the sweet sweet sedimentary structures (mudcracks and salt casts in this case...). If you look at my left ankle (I'm the guy in the red cap), you'll see the brace on my broken ankle.

My roommate at the time told my girlfriend (now wife), that my broken ankle was actually caused by me and him "Wrestling in the tub....again!" He has 2 kids and lives in Houston, TX now...so I guess I won in the end.



-2 days ago at work DK was arguing with me about fossils. Right now I’m doing a Paleontological sensitivity study for a site to determine the potential for any vertebrate or other “highly sensitive” fossils in an area. So I was classifying sedimentary rocks, and he was saying “oh yeah, show me a sedimentary layer that DOESN’T have fossils in it”

So me, in my pompous pretention for lying to maintain my ego, say “hey dude, the fucking belt supergroup…” In reality there have been stromatolites found in the belt supergroup, but I didn’t mention that to DK.


If you ever, EVER have the chance to go to Glacier National Park, or to Waterton, STOP and look at all the rocks. better yet, get a good geology book and read up on them before you get there...no, better yet, take a field geology class that lets you map there. thats how you win the game.

Shit rules. Fuck all the haters of the belt supergroup.

Went To Europe

Posted a Web Album Here.

Stupid Environmental people.

So I had an office lunch today...you know the type, where they hire a new person, and then they take the office out to lunch to introduce you to the new hire.

So we're at our alcohol-free lunch at the Wynkoop, and this woman that works here, she says to the waitress "Yeah, I'd like the Gumbo, and a small side dish to throw the sausage into because I'm not gonna eat it"

Turns out she's vegetarian. Thats cool. I can appreciate that, some people are.

So someone, yeah, that guy asks "So, how come your a vegetarian? do you just hate meat or something?"

To which she replies something like "No, but have you ever seen the amount of energy it takes to grow beef? they have to grow grains, then house and tend the cows, and then the processing, its just a waste of energy"

I choked on my fish and chips.

here's the thing:

1. In all likelihood the sausage is probably pork. who fucking eats beef sausage in a gumbo?

2. She's gonna be eating some of the sausage, because if its any kind of good gumbo, alot of the fat from the sausage will be in the broth.

3. MOST importantly: She already fucking ordered it with meat in it. I mean as a person eating at a restaurant she's the end-user of the meat. she consumed it. she doesn't have to eat it, but as far as the chain-of-wasted-energy is concerned, from the birth of the calf/pig all the way to paying someone to cook and deliver it to her, its already used the maximum amount of energy.

Plus, the fact that she ordered and consumed it will help to ensure that the restaurant orders MORE sausage.

what the FUCK?

I seriously want to punch people like this. they come around from time-to-time with their bullshit half-baked environmentalism, their fucking "I drive a subarau" attitude, their "yeah, I'd love to work for a Non-profit" bullshit.

I eat meat, and I'd be willing to bet that if we really took an energy audit between us, I'd use less energy.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Went to Europe

yeah!

Let me just say this: it was awesome. The French Alps are something that every geologist (and every person visiting europe) should see.

A pic:



Beers in the French alps.

I'm gonna post more pics from time to time, but for now, Just know, that you need to visit the french alps.

Book Review: Evolution of A Cro-magnon

here's a good example of my shitty posting skills...I read Evolution of a Cro-magnon a few months ago (ordered the actual book after downloading some of the audio)...and I have this long ass review:

I didn't choose hardcore and punk, it chose me...

Recently, I downloaded an audio excerpt of the book "Evolution of the CRO-MAGnon man" by John Joseph McGowan.

Its an autobiography, and if you don't know who John Joseph "bloodclot" is, he used to be the lead singer of the seminal New York Hardcore band the Cro-Mags (arguably one of the best NY bands ever formed), and is now the lead singer of bloodclot - go figure.

To be sure, I didn't know much about john joseph personally or the rest of the cro-mags story. When I was in high school up I always had a copy of their album "age of quarrel" and know some of the basic stuff about the band: they got into hare krishna stuff in the mid-to-late 80's the way some other NY bands did, the bass player, harley flannigan and john joseph hate each other for some reason, the new york hardcore scene was awesome, someday I'm going to CBGB's (something that I never got to do...although I received a phone call from there once...), etc...so the book was enlightening as to the band's history, and maybe more so, to John Joseph’s personal history.

John Joseph reveals his early life, how fucked up it was, going from foster home to foster home, joining the navy, going AWOL, doing every kind of drug possible, and generally not caring until he found a outlet and something to give a shit about; his personal spirituality, and punk/hardcore/underground music. A dramatic life, I can't relate personally to what he endured. amazing shit.

The real thing I enjoyed was his descriptions of the hardcore and punk scene's...Personally I could listen to old school punkers and hardcore guys talk about the scene in the mid 80’s to mid 90’s all day long. John Joseph gives some awesome accounts of Ban Brain’s early shows, being stave-dived on, skankin’, creepy crawlin’, going to shows, and just plain old being punk.

He gives awesome descriptions of the state of the hardcore punk scene in the 80's, including an awesome story about the legendary "fear appears on saturday night live and Ian MacKaye yells "fuck new york" on live national TV. ha, Awesome.

He talks about who the old school punk and hardcore kids were:

“…back then, most were individuals, most where unique, some where downright just outta their fucking minds. But a lot of them were serious thinkers who just thought out of the box. And if it wasn’t for punk and hardcore, they’d be fucked, because society wanted nothing to do with them.”

And he talks at length about punk and hardcore: the music, the scene that supports it, the people, and the attitude:

“…There’s something in my nature that forces me even at 44 years of age to go against the grain, to stay under the radar, to rebel and start shit, keep fuckers on their toes and thinkin’….because fallin’ in line is just plain suicide.

I didn’t chose punk and hardcore, it chose me, and for whatever reason I know this: It ain’t about fashion, or even the music for that matter, it’s a state of consciousness, and once you realize that, There’s no way you can ever sellout.”

It sounds kinda ridiculous to people who didn’t immerse themselves into this scene and to compare your personal philosophies of life with a youth culture, but I agree with John Joseph. The underground punk and hardcore scene tends to draw certain types of people; even people who on the outside look very different, but on the inside share similar ideas. The more involved you become in it, especially when you are young, the more it will influence how you think for the rest of your life.

Personally, I would still like to tell myself that I have this same mentality. That I’ve never “sold out” or “given up”: That I approach life with the energy, skepticism, passion, responsiveness, and the pure vulgarity expressed and valued in the punk and hardcore scene. Fuckin'shit.

Of Course, I’m writing this in an office on a laptop computer while I sip coffee. The difference is, I’ll be the guy blasting all flavors of punk/hardcore on my jobsite, and pushing my coworkers, and yelling at fuckers that pull divining rods out.

To: Mr. John Joseph…my personal experience was different from yours, but if you remember back to those shows that were so important to you, and you look at all those other kids in the crowd, I was that one guy, third from the left, next to the monitors. I’m just like all these other hardcore kids. Never sold out, and I still give a fuck.

Great book, read it!

Ressurection!

So Much has happened in life, I haven't been documenting it on Cataclasis...I know all my loyal readers have probably moved on to other more interesting blogs.

I've been looking back at my archives and noticed that most of my posts on this website are really long.

Indeed, right now I have about 4 blog posts saved in microsoft word right now that are longer than 2 pages. I can't seem to ever finish them so...

...in an attempt to revive the blogging, I'm gonna concentrate on short posts. Not worry so much about comprehensive posts.

POST POST POST.