Cataclasis

New Addition - 2011

2012-01-06T15:41:00.000-08:00

Alot has gone on since 2009.....

H100's - Dismantle 7"

2009-08-06T18:27:00.001-07:00

I'm pretty sure this 7" fucking rules with lyrics like this:

when your runnin' from the pigs, one thing thats on your mind, this is to get the fuck outta here, destroy all mankind!

awesome

Iceburn - Burn/Fall 7"

2009-08-06T18:11:00.000-07:00

Just as a usb turntable bonus:

the iceburn - burn/fall 7" on an extremely shitty record that I traded for from a guy who hates records apparently.

enjoy

USB turntable? YES!

2009-08-06T17:50:00.000-07:00

I was on woot.com the other day and they had one of those USB turntables that allows you to rip your records to mp3, so I fucking bought one.

so awesome.

so so so awesome...as I type this I'm listening to Iceburn's first 7" - a clear record first press....so sweet.

so fun.

The entire motivation for buying this comes not only from my overwhelming music snobbish record collection of shitty punk and hardcore music, but to get a single record on mp3 that I've had now for years.

the Fugazi - 3 songs 7".

and not just any 7", the 7" that I have. When I was in high school I borrowed this 7" to my friend who promptly never played it but put it on his dresser next to his window in his bedroom for a summer.

I assume that it was the sun, and not the overwhelming stench of teen-age dude room that warped this record slightly, leaving a whispy noise in the audio when it played.

the thing is, I think it added the perfect character to the song "Joe #1". the song starts with just an overwhelmingly spectacular bass riff and drumming, and then there are a few pauses in the song, where you can hear the whisp of the warped record.

I think it sounds awesome, and here it is, download it, add it, love it.

I love fugazi, I love this record, I love this goddamn turntable.

Leadville drama

2009-08-05T15:51:00.001-07:00

SO I'm working on a field project up near leadville, colorado. I decided to be a hard-ass this week and CAMP while working, rather than stay in a hotel.

Of course, in my life, if I ever want to try out a new adventure, I have an extremely strong desire to make sure it goes smoothly. of course since I'm writing about it, it never does.

Since I was camping:

1. I wanted to make sure that I got a good campsite
2. I would have everything to keep me warm and comfortable - it gets fucking cold up here
3. I wanted to make sure that I had all the shit I needed so that I would wake up on time and be able to make it to work.

I arrived here and began working on monday. During the lunch hour I thought that I could take care of #1 by getting to the campsite early. Of course, when I got to the campsite, I didn't have any cash, and I realized I left my checkbook at the field trailer where we are working. (the national forest service doesn't take debit cards, apparently).

I met the camp host there, an older guy who looked exactly like a national forest service camp host should look:

-straw sweat-stained cowboy hat
-grizzled beard
-fingernails just a bit too long
-pull-on flat-soled boots
-leather vest/flannel shirt combo
-had some weird androgynous name that reminded you of a johnny cash song
-had busted old chevy conversion van rv from the late 1970's
-sold cowboy art on the site
-was cooking bacon for lunch

he seemed nice so I shook his hand and he was all "whatcha doin' out here?" we talked briefly and then I realized I couldn't pay him.

He looked a bit pissed, but then said "well go on...git'cher money".

Of course I only had my lunch hour to pay up before I had to get back to work, I sped out of there, grabbed my checkbook from the trailer, and was on my way back when an ambulance showed up in the rearview mirror.

I was like "of course, I'm trying to get this to run smoothly, so far I can't pay up, I'm running out of time, and now I gotta pull over and let this fucking ambulance pass over....with my luck, its probably going to the same fucking campsite"

...so I pull up to the campsite, and there is a firetruck, the sheriff, and the ambulance not only at the same camp area, but actually at the camp host's RV.

What the FUCK?!

Obviously I couldn't pay him up so I threw my tent down on site #6, paid the honor box at the campground sign, and bolted back to work.

That night I went and got groceries and who was in the pasta isle, but the fucking camp host.

now there's two ways to play this one:

1. ignore the dude, go to another part of the store, and then return and hope he didn't see you.
2. say "hey there, pardon my reach...see you later!"

so I did #1, but the guy was just hovering around the pizza-squirt and I had to get some or my smooth camping plans would have to be changed again. So I finally said "well how's it going...pardon my reach"

he talked to me for a minute, and while I was contemplating the non-refrigerated parmizan cheese, I found out that his wife had a pelvic problem. fine. fuck it. whatever dude, if she's fine, I'm gonna go back to the camp and hang out.

One thing about smooth camping, is that you don't have to deal with ANYONE, just sit there, read your book, eat camp food, drink beer.

so I pay up, get to the camp, and assume thats the end of it...

the next day I return to camp after work and the camp host is sitting in a golf cart by my camp wearing a wax-canvas duster jacket and stroking his beard like I just stole his cattle. Turns out I overpaid. so I talked him, figured out the payment, and then he mentioned his wife.

I said "yeah, how is she"
he said "she got real dehydrated, they don't know if she's gonna make it"
me: "really? shit man, you seem like a fighter, if she's like you, she'll be fine"
him: "well she has had 2 strokes"
me: "thats terrible"
him: "we've been married 46 years, and she's over at the hosiptal, I can't be there, I couldn't handle watching her die"

at this point his eyes get kinda watery, and he had those old man eyes: kinda yellow-red all the time.

fuck.

we talked a little more, I engaged him, listened to him talk about how they traveled in their RV all over, from Idaho, down to arizona, through colorado, up here to the leadville area.

I said "well shit man...she'll be ok, she's in colorado now they have good doctors up here, and I'm sure she's gettin' the best care"
He said: "they might ship her to denver, if they do, I gotta go..."

the conversation finally ended, but I spent all of last night all thinking and worried about that guy and his wife. here's the thing:

he said he couldn't be with her and watch her die. Far be it from me to judge a man who has been married 46 years...I'm sure that would be the single hardest thing any one person can ever have to do in their life. but I thought, "what about her?" what if she's in that fucking hospital right now wondering where he is? wondering who will be there with her. what if she does die, will she die with no one around but fucking doctors?

which lead me to wonder what he would be thinking...and then that made me think about how much pain he must be feeling. this fucking old man in a yellow chevy van by himself. The only way he knows how to handle this situation is to just sit there and do nothing, maybe he's even delusional, maybe he's so scared he can't move, who fucking knows. I can't imagine that burden. I really fucking can't even come close to that.

I sat there while the sun went down, built a little fire, and thought about all that shit. I could see his RV through the trees and just thought to myself "He'll stay here if she's ok, if she gets transferred to denver, he'll have to leave, and if she dies...he'll also leave...if that RV just stays here all night, that means she's ok...she's not dead"

The RV was gone this morning when I woke up.

A night at the museum.

2009-06-05T14:04:00.001-07:00

So I took a position volunteering at the Denver Museum of natural history, in the “prehistoric journey” exhibit (that’s the dinosaur and fossil hall).

Its surprisingly pretty fun. I kinda just stand/sit around and talk to people about my favorite fossils. Sometimes if they hang around me a bit too long I start telling them all the random bits of trivia that I know (about fossils).

I mainly talk with kids and the occasional adult.

Here’s a few observations:

1. This position has renewed my faith in humanity. Its actually interesting the cross-section of America that not only knows something about science, but in their free time they pay to come and learn more. I’ve talked with real-tree-hat wearing good-ole-boys that really wanted to hear some cool stuff about Paleozoic sea transgressions. There’ve been old crusty people that really want to know what’s with the suture patterns on ammonites. I’ve talked with soccer moms and suburban Nike-sport-polo wearing dad’s who are genuinely interested in Eocene placental radiation.

2. I’ve learned a bit of patience. I’ve only had 2 creationists come and talk to me, and since they were both fucking retarded, they crumble when presented with real data. You want to just lay into them, but in a hall of fossils you just point at any wall and they are confronted with overwhelming evidence to the contrary of their shitty claims. No need to get argumentative, no need to even be confrontational…just say “that’s an interesting point, check out the fossils in case 3 over there, I think you might find them to be enlightening.”

I don’t really have any complaints about the whole gig….ok I do…

I really can’t stand over-achieving kids. For real.

There’s 2 kids that I volunteer with: one is like 10 years old and he knows everything about anything in the exhibit…very smart, but also an annoying fucking tool…More about this shithead later.

Then there’s this other kid, he’s gotta be like 15-16 years old or so. He comes in and volunteers with his mom and dad, but since he’s going through puberty he doesn’t want to hang with his parents because it “cramps his style”. He’s also too much of a chickenshit to hang out in the exhibit alone, so what does he do?

Yeah, he tries to roll with me. He’s asks stupid shit like “how awesome is it to get a master’s degree?”

I like to work the “ancient seas” cart, it’s a bunch of fossils from the Paleozoic, and the point of the cart is to demonstrate Paleozoic ecology and to allow people to check out some cool fossils. I add finesse, humor, and I make it a little sexy.

I got the fossils going, I’m talking to people, we’re all stoked on Cambrian fish plates, and this fucking douchebag kid always chimes in with the dumbest shit:

Me: “Check this out what do you think this might be?”
Parent and child at the museum: “hmm. Looks kinda spiral patterned, and its very smooth….”
Douchebag volunteer kid: “oh that’s an ammonite fossil from morocco, they lived in the Permian ocean…they were benthic”
Parent and child at the museum: “uh..great, thanks”

One of the things we’re supposed to be doing at the museum is engaging people, not just spewing facts and shit, but asking people questions gets them more interested in thinking about the fossils. No young kid is gonna understand the concept of Permian time, know where morocco is or why it might be important to this fossil…

I think its better to have them discover that there is a fossil in the rock, and the fossil represents the remains of a living organism, and as they go through the exhibit to check out and see all the shit that lived in the past. From there, they can formulate their own concept of the fossil record. They aren’t gonna be college graduates after the museum, but maybe by the end, they’ve constructed a framework with which to consider this science…so when they do get to college they can go “oh yeah, ammonites, ocean fossils, big spirals, Paleozoic…cool!”

If the kids are older or adults, you can throw some more facts at them, but come on douchebag kid, stop fucking up my game here. He’s just trying to showboat all the fucking crap he’s rammed into his orange-round head.

That fucking kid also farts all the time. I’ve seen him clear the Ancient Seas area of people in seconds after letting some silent, nervous, kid-fart spread over the Brachiopod specimens. I HATE kid-farts.

Fuck that kid.

So back to this 10 year old kid….he’s another asshole. I get an email this morning from the Museum saying that last Sunday one of the carts got put back all messy. The 10 year old kid said specifically that he handed me the key to the cart room and that was it.

Funny thing was, I didn’t work last Sunday since I was out traveling.

That little bitch. Naturally I ratted him out, and blamed him for everything in the exhibit that was in disarray.

In short, if your gonna volunteer on my shift, get ready to get steamrolled if you’re an over-achieving, farty, lame 10 year old.

if you come to work sick

2009-06-05T14:00:00.001-07:00

you are MONUMENTALLY inconsiderate.

that is all.

Take Care of your Health...

2009-05-14T06:40:00.000-07:00

it takes care of your spirit.

its true.

What I really wanted to say....

2009-01-26T14:50:00.001-08:00

I resigned today.

moving on to bigger and better.

YES!

Get out of your cars....

2008-12-02T09:06:00.001-08:00

Sad.

I don't know what's sadder, the fact that there are fat fucks in America perpetuating the situation that this article is about...

..or the fact that I routinely have to avoid being dragged under the front tire of these pieces of shit on my way to work.

So I gotta rant again...

2008-12-02T07:33:00.000-08:00

I ride a bicycle to work every day. I love riding bikes, I have a mountain bike and a road bike, I ride every day and try to ride for fun on most weekends.

I've ridden my mountain bike in Moab, Utah, Fruita, Colorado, Winter Park anbd Crested Butte, Colorado, most all of the Colorado front range trails, in Mississippi, in Minnesota, Nevada, etc...I've fallen off my bike a number of times. I've been a bit hesitant about some rides, been damn scared on a few of them.

but nothing, absolutely NOTHING on a bicycle is scarier than riding to work in the mornings.

Denver is easily one of the most bike friendly cities in the US, there's so much to do on a bike here, and yet there isn't a single east-bound bike lane in the Downtown Denver area...but there are 2 west-bound lanes: one on 15th street, and one on 18th street.

that means you commute like me, you have to use 17th street (or some other over-crowded street), which is a one-way gauntlet of shitheads, assholes, buses, retards, fuckfaces, and pinheads...and I don't necessarily exclude myself from those categories.

Here's what I would do with Denver:

1. BAN ALL CARS FROM THE DOWNTOWN AREA. Seriously. I know it sounds dramatic and unworkable, but think of this: A. it costs alot of money to park a car downtown, B. in rush hour traffic a person on a bicycle - er, a person WALKING - can get around downtown faster than you can in your car. This is the biggest thing that I don't understand. Even if you can get your car up to about 30 mph, you will just be stopped at the next block for a red light.

There is absolutely NO FUCKING REASON why you need to bring a personal car into the downtown area EVER. There exists already a shitty mass transit system that you can exploit if you get the fuck out of your shitty goddamn toyota and stop threatening people on bicycles.

I'm standing firm on that point, so I'll say it again: THERE IS NO FUCKING REASON YOU NEED TO BRING A PERSONAL CAR INTO THE DOWNTOWN AREA, EVER!

There are other ways that are better for you, and better for the people around you.

2. EXPAND THE LIGHT RAIL. Right now there's not nearly enough light-rail service to keep cars out of downtown. There could be a huge park and ride to the north, and the park and ride at broadway and alameda could be expanded with a nice big-ass parking garage. Park your car, take the light rail into downtown...then do some walking!

and yeah, what the fuck is up with the light rail? we should have that shit all over the place out here.

I know what your saying, "WALK! but downtown is almost a mile long, OMG!!!! on a bad day it may take me up to 20 minutes to walk from one end of downtown to the other~!!!!!" don't walk then, bring your bike with you. without traffic on a sunday a bike ride from confluence park to 17th and grant streets is literally under 5 minutes...or it might take as long as 25 minutes if you are on a cruiser bike and stop for a latte.

and don't give me that weather is bad bullshit...we have maybe 2 days of really bad weather for walking around downtown...its after thanksgiving here and its almost 70 degrees and sunny today! put on a coat and stop being such a fat-fuck up.

3. OVERHAUL THE BUS SYSTEM - it should be considered a serious problem that I can frequently WALK to work and out-run the 28B and the 32 and the 48 cross-town buses into downtown. I've posted about this before, my bus, the 28B literally has more than 12 stops between my house and downtown. Thats 12 stops in a little over a 2 mile distance. Its literally stopping every fucking 500 feet...and that doesn't even include all the red lights and traffic that it has to stop for.

and its not just my bus, I have friends/coworkers that ride the crosstown buses into downtown from the east, and they say the same thing "yeah, you can pretty much walk faster than the buses go".

of course if you banned personal vehicles going into the downtown area, you could immediately improve the speed of the cross-town buses.

4. NO MORE 16th STREET MALL SHUTTLE BUSES. You need a place to put some awesome bike lanes? 16th street would be PERFECT! There's no need for the 16th street mall shuttle buses, they are slow, full of puke and BO and SHIT, and also the unwashed overweight...the very people that should be getting out into the sunshine and walking around ride the free shuttlebus in Denver. And during rush hour they run asshole-to-elbow, literally 2 buses in a row driving fat people down a street that they can easily walk down.

The shuttle buses stop on EVERY BLOCK. and I'm sorry, but downtown is not that big, 16th street mall takes minutes to traverse on foot. and yeah, I'll say it: there's really nothing all that cool to see on 16th street mall.

The same fucking shit you see at every other mall is there: Hot Topic, check...Chili's restuarant, check...Lids hat store...check, TJ MAX, check....walgreens, check...Office Depot, Check...food court, Check. Thats about it. really!

Go to the park (any park), its better.

16th street mall is already off-limits to cars, if we could just get rid of those behemoth fucking wastes of time and money people could walk and ride bikes from one end of the downtown to the other. It'd be great!

meh...ok, Yeah, I almost got plastered AGAIN today on the way to work by some entitled, fat lazy shithead in their car. and I'm juiced on coffee.

I'm not asking for much out of life, but maybe, maybe some secure bike lanes in denver (not a stupid lane painted on a really busy street), or better yet, just open 16th street mall to bikes, skateboards, and rollerblades ONLY and give us a conduit to get around downtown....

I already love denver's bike trail system, its awesome, I love riding it, and I really like Denver on the whole, its a great place to own a bicycle. The city planners have already ruined the Denver tech center and the interlocken-loop areas, lets keep downtown for the pedestrians.

go outside, get out of your car and walk around for awhile. fuck your car. fuck that waste of money and time. and if you drive into downtown, fuck you too.

Ahhh....traveling.

2008-10-19T18:45:00.000-07:00

well ladies and gents, after a long respite, I'm back on the road...back traveling. I've got a healthy week of work here in Good old Joplin Missouri. If you've been following my travels like I know alot of you have been, you'll remember that Missouri is the home of the Shit hotel, and the Sexual Bible.

I'm trying not to be judgemental in this electrically charged political climate we're living in, but so far, my trip to Missouri hasn't been a skittles-rainbow quite yet.

I did come here thinking it would be a similar experience to my last trip...but its as as different experience from the last time as the rocks I'm now working in: Paleozoic Carbonate rocks instead of Pre-cambrian rhyolitic gneisses. (I'm rolling around in the Mississippian aged "St." prefixed rocks).

I hope to have some good posts coming up, I work for a different company with different people, and using different methods. Though as I sit here in my hotel, using all the outlets to charge various meters, data-loggers, laptops, gps's, etc... I kinda feel a sense of deja vu.

So...here we go, I hope to have more to say tomorrow after a day of work.

I believe this is what they call a Missouri 6 course meal.

Funniest thing I've seen about the election

2008-10-10T08:55:00.001-07:00

Comedy Gold..

Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos

2008-08-26T06:36:00.000-07:00

Public Enemy is playing some free show downtown today...hopefully.

Bruised, battered and scarred, but hard...word.

and to all those curious about flava flav? ....FUCK flava flav, he needs to stay the hell of of chuck D's rhymepath.

yeah.

Some reading I liked

2008-08-25T20:03:00.000-07:00

I read a part of Clifton Fadiman’s “reading I’ve liked…” at the behest of my mom. While I didn’t really agree with all the books on his list (he was really into Victorian aged shit and random stuffy literary crap that you’ve never heard of), I thought about what I’d write about if I were gonna write a book about “reading I’ve liked”.

Its hard to say, I’ve read quite a few books that I “liked” but there’s been a commonality to the books that I really liked. If I had to try and encapsulate all the books I’ve read, and really thought about the books that I’ve liked, I think I could encapsulate it in by saying that I like MEATY books.

By meaty I mean books that you slow down when your reading them, and its almost like the language and description of the setting, or emotion or mood is what stands out. Like you read a random paragraph and then you look up from the book and think “that’s fucking perfect”.

I’ve never been good at picking up thematic ideas or metaphor or shit like that, but rather I’ve been attracted to books that have great description, or really reflect emotion or imagery.

I’m now reading Suttree by Cormac McCarthy (one of my favorite authors). Yeah, I admit, I was introduced to Cormac by reading The Road on Oprahs book club – fuck off, I liked it and I’m glad I took oprah’s advice and read it.

Cormac McCarthy’s books are spectacular, Blood Meridian has got to be one of my favorite books of all time. McCarthy knows some geology, and his descriptions of the brutal and unforgiving desert southwest make you want to just say “that’s fucking perfect”…take this description:

They rode through regions of particolored stone upthrust in ragged kerfs and shelves of traprock reared in faults and anticlines curved back upon themselves and broken off like stumps of great stone treeboles and stones the lightning had clove open, seeps exploding in steam in some old storm. They rode past trapdykes of brown rock running down the narrow chines of the ridges and onto the plains like the ruins of old walls, such auguries everywhere of the hand of man before man was or any living thing.

I don’t know…I’ve walked around in the desert a lot and looked and thought about rocks a lot..and to read his descriptions? Its perfect. Sometimes rocks DO look split open as if by some steam explosion, or have some linear pattern that resemble walls made before man or anything else…its just a perfect description.

Shiprock, in New Mexico comes to my mind specifically in this passage...the volanic neck of shiprock, pushed up through the plateau, and the radial dikes like walls before living things...yah d00d!

This morning I was sitting in the bathroom and broke open the beginning of Suttree by Cormac McCarthy which had this fucking perfect description of the fish in the bottom of a muddy river:

Fabled Sturgeons with their horny pentagonal bodies, the cupreous and dacebright carp and catfish with their pale and sprueless underbellies, a thick muck shot with broken glass, with bones and rusted tins and bits of crockery reticulate with mudblack crazings.

I think you have to have in your mind what a sturgeon looks like, and what those shiny shed scales look like strewn about a muddy black river bottom…where the water itself is relatively clear, and the sun reflects those scales back through the mud to you. Its just a great description. I'm not that far into Suttree, but I'm already liking it....Shortly after this passage, McCarthy through the voice of a character describes the effects of some moonshine whiskey as "the dry heaves, the drizzle shits, the cold shakes, and the Jakeleg"

I was riding to work this morning I thought about all the other great writers I’ve read, and I remembered specifically Herman Hesse (another one of my all time favorite writers). From Steppenwolf:

“And who over the ruins of his life pursued its fleeting, fluttering existence, while he suffered its seeming meaninglessness and lived its seeming madness, and who hoped in secret at the last turn of the labyrinth of chaos for revelation and gods presence?”

This passage comes after a description of things that Henry Haller considers to be worthwhile in life… who really appreciates these things, and indeed, in the end…who consciously takes time to appreciate all the things in life that are awesome.

If you are trapped in some deep narcissistic depression where you look around at your peers, and at people in general and wonder at their dismissive or shallow characterizations of life's pleasures and pains...well shit, all thats left is death or transcendence.

The Steppenwolf is one of those books that you read and then spend the next 12 months of your life reflecting on everything. It really is beyond me to describe it...its just good. I read it first when I graduated college, and then again about a year ago…and both times it carried a slightly different meaning, both equally important. Damn it’s a good book, crazy and elegant, frustrating and perfectly descriptive.

I just spent like 5 minutes looking back through some other books I’ve read and there are other authors like that: Salmon Rushdie’s language and descriptions are convoluted and perfect at the same time. Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire is another book that every so often you look up from and say “yeah man, perfect”. Arthur C. Clarke’s descriptions of some sci-fi ideas are like that…he’s got some short story about an automatic house that starts up after a nuclear war…its perfect like that. I forgot the name of that story.

Who knows…I like books like that, that make you think or at least for the moment you read them and are so impressed by the writing or the theme or the setting of the book that you think about it for a few days (or years) and end up posting about it on a fucking shitty blog.

in re-reading this, I understand its a stretch to juxtapose Herman Hesse with Arthur C. Clarke, or Edward Abbey with Cormac McCarthy, but really...I guess it just boils down to great writing, I like good writers, writers that express emotion, and can convey not only an elegant description of some physical scene, but at the same time express how that scene shapes how you feel about it.

I mean really, I wish I had the talent to articulate why I liked the “books that I’ve liked”, but I don’t. dammit.

What are you gonna do?

2008-07-18T08:28:00.001-07:00

I was on a field job recently, and it was out in the suburbs of this town.

Near the site was one of those shithole commerical developments, you know the type: There's a walmart store or a target, and then in a strip mall next to the parking lot there are 2 shitty restuarants, a radio shack, a great clips salon, etc... Right next door to this there was some condos...just some crappy middle-to-lower income housing.

I started thinking that there are people that live in those condo's, and are assisstant manager of that radio shack, get their groceries from the superwalmart there, and get their haircut at the cost cutters. Its like a closed system...just out there using resources.

I mean there's gotta be more than a few people that live like that. Rarely going outside of that comfort loop to see anything in the world, to meet different people, and because of it, there's no record of anything they might accomplish. Though the concept of significant accomplishment by people in that situation doesn't seem likely.

So I started thinking about myself....like ok I've traveled around a bit, seen stuff, but I have this naive and really self-centered view that somehow the life I'm living is any different or better than if I worked at that radio shack. I go to work, I come home, I consume food, gasoline, shit like that. and what do I give back? what's my exit from that closed loop?

I tell myself that I work for an environmental company and that I'm doing shit to help the environment, or that if I travel to europe somehow I'm more worldy than that person who works his shift as a line cook at Huang's Asian Express next to the great clips and watches the history channel at night.

I don't really have anything. and I'm not trying to sound depressing, I mean if you pull-the-camera back far enough, all any of us really do is exist in the world, with a very small, VERY small minority of people that actually DO anything that is remarkable. Nothing anyone does really matters in the long run, and if you really get ape-shit and think about your existence in the context of geologic time...you don't mean shit as an individual. T

what significant accomplishments can I ever hope to do that would record my existence outside of the immediate people I know? Maybe this is the wrong way to measure your life - or even consider yourself. Rather what's really important is what you mean to the other people in life, those immediate people that you know. or maybe you're not supposed to consider any of that and just live your life.

Like really just kick the shit out of life.

I'm Platinum!!!!!

2008-06-11T02:54:00.000-07:00

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.

From the SNL Archives...

2008-06-05T13:33:00.001-07:00

via videosift.com

Bought Another Motorcycle.

2008-06-05T13:22:00.000-07:00

this one's a bit bigger:

1994 Ducati 900SS CR.

Sad.

2008-06-05T08:24:00.000-07:00

pretty much truth though...

The Belt Super Group.

2008-06-04T13:50:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-04T13:42:00.001-07:00

Posted a Web Album Here.

Stupid Environmental people.

2008-06-04T09:20:00.000-07:00

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.

Went to Europe

2008-06-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-03T07:43:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-06-03T07:39:00.000-07:00

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.

So I Have a New JOB!

2008-04-25T07:13:00.000-07:00

Its awesome. So far its really great, people in general are cool, the work is fun, the location is outstanding, the money is great, and the amount of travel I'll have to do is minimal.

One thing thats a little shitty is that the guy who called me and asked me if I wanted this job is one of the most repugnant shitheaded losers on the planet. he's so bad, that he's the reason, or rather one of the reasons, I started this blog to begin with.

I worked with him once on a project in wyoming and he's seriously fucking crazy...and he hasn't changed at all, for some examples check this out.

When I interviewed here I was like "shit this job is awesome...but I might turn it down simply so I don't have to work with DK". In the end, I ended up taking the job with the hope that I wouldn't really have to work with him. and indeed, I think I can minimize the time I have to interact with him.

I think what I'll do is start a recurring blog post: Crazy shit DK has said to me today.

So there's that little black mark, but overall, the other people here are awesome, there's even a guy here who likes to ride motorcycles. Awesome.

Why does mass transit have to suck?

2008-04-25T06:56:00.000-07:00

Who's planning mass transit routes?

Here's the thing: On most days I can walk as fast as the bus will take me to work. Let me repeat that: I can WALK as fast as the standard city bus route in Denver.

Granted I ride a neighborhood route, and a lot of the other routes are slightly faster, but not much.

It takes me about 35 minutes to walk home from work (thats uphill most of the way), and the bus...depending on the stops takes about 25-30 minutes. I would be willing to bet you that the RTD route 28B spends as much time sitting at the curb with its engine idling as it does actually moving.

There are at least 12 stops that my bus will make to get from my house to where I get off the bus. 12 stops in 2.3 miles. 12 FUCKING STOPS IN 2.3 MILES!!! That means on average, there is a fucking stop ever 1,000 feet or so. There are 3 stops between lowell blvd and federal, very close to where I live, I can literally walk from one to the next in probably less than a minute. There is no fucking need to have that many stops.

I get on the bus in the morning because I'm a lazy bastard, and by the time I need to get off, I'm LIVID trying to figure out who in their right mind would waste their life on a fucking bus like this. I don't even BOTHER trying to get on a bus in the afternoon, I can walk 2.3 miles.

its INSANITY.

Will someone please PLEASE redo the mass transit system in denver?

Oh and this morning on the bus, I saw 4 fucking North Face windbreakers. If you own one of these, you are an idiot. plain and simple. You are slightly stupider than the person sitting next to you.

Its been 2 months

2008-04-14T20:19:00.001-07:00

Since I posted my Challenge....no takers yet.

Srsly people, the money is still out there...still waiting for your "proof"

Expelled!

2008-04-14T20:12:00.000-07:00

So there's this new creationist movie out there that's been getting all the hype in the science blogs. Its called "expelled" and its this pathetic documentary that is starring Ben Stein...that guy who's entire career is punctuated by a 35 second role in Ferris Bueller's Day off.

Expelled

I'm not linking to their actual website because FUCK the makers of expelled, including Ben Stein.

There's lots of great blogs/Science websites/Rational people that have blogged about how unbelievably stupid the movie is. if you want, you can google search the movie.

Also, Dr. PZ Myers...I have OBEYED.

So...

2008-04-14T20:11:00.001-07:00

I'm driving along sheridan blvd. tonight with the wife after a successful jaunt to the local Target.

there's some guy in a Silver Range rover next to me with his girlfriend.

She gives me the finger for some reason that I really don't understand, and the guy says "come on bitch"...

The light turns green, so I speed up to try and avoid them, they speed up too and get next to us shouting gangsterisms like "c'mon bitch, lets go, c'mon fucker, Bring it, etc..."

so I say to the wife, call the police, his license plate is from colorado and is: 959-PSD. she does.

the guy realizes what we're doing and then takes a hard left, and his girlfriend throws a bottle at our car which breaks and nearly hits me on the side of the head since my window was down.

WTF?

UGH!!!!

2008-03-28T20:57:00.000-07:00

So I'm out here working on a field job. Like most people I'm a creature of habit....in the morning, I drink some coffee, and before I leave the hotel I refill my coffee cup with the lobby coffee and put the coffee in the console of the truck we're driving.

I'll sip that coffee part of the morning, but mainly at about 12:00 to 1:00 pm, I'll swill that shit...even if its cold. It has the right amount of caffiene to keep me going for the day.

well.

My coworker smokes. its pretty shitty. but. I go to take my daily early-afternoon sip of cold coffee, I get two full gulps in, when I realize that it tastes like a fucking ashtray. My coworker was putting his cigarette butts into my fucking daily coffee.

needless to say I spent the majority of my afternoon chewing gum like Jim Carry in "ace ventura pet detective" when he realizes that einhorn is finkle.

THe wife even called me after work and I was laying on the hotel bed with the lights off just thinking "ok, seriously, if I just puke now, get it out, I'll feel better" I was seriously contemplating sticking the finger down my throat to rid myself of the fucking poison SHIT that was infesting my stomach and small intestine.

instead, I went to a bar and had a navaho taco and a few pale ale micro brews. which, in the end was a little better than puking.

but still.

srsly people, lets fucking quit fucking with people's fucking coffee.

Friday geology pic(s) - TDrilling the San Juan

2008-03-28T05:02:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged about geology for a bit, but I'm out here in Durango, CO on a project and the San Juan Mountains look gorgeous, the basin is full of terrific outcrops, and the weather is so perfect that I'm really itching to get out, hike, look around, and think about ROCKS again.

Unfortunately out here I'm chained to these drilling sites and sampling ROCKS...I haven't really had a chance to play around out here.

Here's my sweet cell phone picture of myself standing around on the drill pad out here:

Yes, that is a big ass fucking rig that at the time the picture was taken, was drilling through some coal seams in the Dakota formation, probably at around 4,000 ft below the ground surface. Geologically its kinda boring, but check this out:

they do "green" drilling, which means that all the drilling chemicals from the mud pits to fracure fluids are all contained in tanks (back in the day, drill rigs would just dig a big-ass unlined trench in the ground and put it all in there, where it would leak into ground and surface water)...the only "waste" this rig generates is drilling cuttings that come out looking like baby-poop (if babies ate sand-rich shale and coal). all the waste water generated is recycled through the system, and is eventually pumped back down the borehole where its pretty much inaccessable to anything.

If you had to develop a natural gas field, this company is doing some of the most environmentally responsible work I've ever seen.

I don't work for that company, I work for a company that is testing the cuttings to ensure that they are indeed environmentally responsible.

A Firestorm to PURIFY!!!

2008-03-06T17:33:00.001-08:00

Earth Crisis is playing a reunion show tonight in Denver. I'm not going. There's a few reasons for this:

1. I've seen Earth Crisis twice already, the last time resulted in a very sore neck and an extremely bloody nose as a result of someone kicking me in the face. I've also seen all of the other bands on the bill with them: Terror, Shai Hulud, Down to Nothing, and Sworn Enemy.

2. I just haven't been into hardcore music much lately. not sure why, but I really am just not all that interested in going to shows. I came home today, took the dog for a walk, and then thought "I'd rather just sit here at home and have a drink and watch reruns of seinfeld with the wife while the dog chews a bone on the floor."

how un-hardcore is that?!

RIP Gygax////

2008-03-04T14:24:00.001-08:00

Gary Gygax died.

damn.

What are my friends all up to?

2008-02-28T19:38:00.000-08:00

I've been out on field jobs for too long now and I feel colossally out of touch with everyone I've ever known....well not quite everyone, but mainly friends and stuff.

sucks.

Anyway, I'm getting ready to head back home again and I'd like to get back in contact with everyone.

If you want to hang out with me or maybe catch up on life, gimme a holler!

Holla, Holla, Holla!!!

Its been 10 years!

2008-02-14T15:09:00.000-08:00

so...I know its ridiculous, but as of today I have either been dating and/or married to my wife for 10 years: Mrs. Karen.

10 years. can you believe it?

Here's how it went down 10 years ago today:

I was working with my wife at this oil and gas company. She was the secretary-type working at this glass-topped desk right next to the elevators at Aspect Management - a small oil and gas company in the paramount building in Denver. I was this loser who just graduated from college who used to get off the elevators every day and see her and think "damn dude, that chick is HAWT!" I'd talk to a few of the people that worked with her. I stood around the copy machine and the fax machine alot.
As previously blogged, I was a penniless twit who was living in a homeless shelter.

About 3653 days ago I said "hey, want to go to the art museum this weekend? its free or something...?"

She agreed.

I met her at about 2 pm or so on 16th street in denver. I walked down there, she took the bus from her suburban apartment. I'm pretty sure I met her outside the walgreen's.

the whole scene almost went exactly like Dave Chapelle's First date from half baked...I didn't have shit for money, so we went to the free-day at the art museum. There was some nude photography exhibit, and I purposefully stood next to the pictures of naked people saying things like "uhh...so, what do you think of president clinton?" She gave her opinions freely, talked nicely, and was pretty formal.

About 2 hours later I didn't know what to do, so we decided to take a cab back to her place (as I currently did not have a place), and ordered a pizza and watched the Sound of Music. A cab? pizza? musicals?

Seriously. How's that for infatuation? I was so into this girl that on the first date I think I actually said something like "Julie Andrew's Musicals from the 1960's? I LOVE THOSE!"

We proceeded to watch the sound of music and eat pizza until both of us fell asleep, I woke up on her floor the next morning with the worst back-ache I've ever had. She asked me if I wanted a ride home, and I said "OK", and I had her drop me off near the Perkins restuarant on East colfax avenue. It was one of the best "dates" I ever had.... even though I was left standing on a street corner on one of the most urban corners in Denver.

I didn't even get to kiss her until a week later or so when we were downtown in Denver hanging out again. I have to convince her that I had this pressing issue at my work and I had to, HAD TO, go there, and she had to come to so that I could get her alone and kiss her.

ridiculous. here it is though: I still love her as much as I did the day I saw her. ....wait...nah, fuck that shit, I love her more today than I ever have. and I'm in Sacramento, at an airport, getting ready to get on a plane home.

All can think of is getting on that couch, sitting next to her with the dog, the cat nearby, s'awesome.

She's my best friend. thats it. thats all you really need to know.

Hikin' Around New Almaden!

2008-02-14T06:51:00.000-08:00

Its been quite awhile since I posted anything closely related to geology on this blog. Honestly, in the last few months I haven't really been thinking about it. Snow is covering alot of the good geology in denver, and out here in Sacramento there's not much to look at.

A few times during my stay out here I was staring at the cutbanks of the American river just HOPING that there might be something exposed thats interesting. The best you can get from that though is thinking about the pre-levee flood cycles recorded in the not-quite-lithified beds. oh well.

So I went to New Almaden County Park this last weekend. New Almaden was a town located near a few small Mercury mines that were established in the early-to-mid 1800's and produced a shit-load of Mercury right up until nearly the 1970's. They Mainly mined out a mineral Called Cinnabar, which tastes great and when powdered can be heated up, releasing a wonderful sinus-clearing vapor. (ha...actually its a mercury sulfide mineral that if handled incorrectly might either 1. cause you permanent brain damage, or 2. kill you).

The miners used to crush down the cinnebar, heat it to about 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point sulphur and mercury gas were given off. The Mercury gas was funneled off into condensers and then bottled to make bomb fuses and rectal thermometers. The Sulfur gas was released to the atmosphere to cause acid rain for the people residing just east of the smelter.

This is the remains of the Mercury Condensor at the New Almaden Mine area. the big horizontal pipe was used to funnel off the mercury into the condensers. Its also an awesome location to spray-paint the name of your up-coming San Jose straightedge hardcore band for all to see.

The mine area is also a stone-throw next to Loma Prieta, the mountain whose name was used to name the 1989 San Francisco earthquake that delayed consumption of beer and dry roasted peanuts during the World Series. The Epicenter of that earthquake is located fairly close to the park, but I didn't go see it.

Like so many mines in colorado, the hey-day for this mine area appears to have been in the later part of the 19th century. New Almaden also happens to be the setting of the first portions of the book "Angle of Repose" by Wallace Stegner. Which, interestingly enough is not mentioned at the actual New Almaden country park...not a singlereference to Stegener's book, despite his romantic and vivid description of Lyman Ward's Grandmother's experience of it.

Anyhow. The park was awesome, it was about 65 degrees and sunny when I was there, and the trails are ridiculously well maintained. The mine ruins are constrained to a few busted old non-descript buildings, an Eagle-Scout-project-created Historic Trail map, and a few rapidly fading descriptive plaques. I rolled around there for the better part of a day, at one point I forgot to pay attention to the trail maps and ended up walking 4 miles out of the way down the wooded hill trail.

"What the hell? where's the trail? I can't believe I got lost in a county park trail...considering how much boasting and arrogance I express when pressed on my ability to use a topographic map and brunton compass!"

I kinda wish I had more time there, and that I had prepared for the geology more...there was some great exposures and the cenozoic history of the mountains is complex..something that requires a little more involvement to understand and appreciate than staring at the mineralized joints and rocks at the county park and going "damn, I wish I knew more about this."

Anyway...I have to get ready to go work now.....

Some of the old, twisted trunks of Cypress trees and the trail. the crappy pictures are a result of using my camera phone and not a sweet real camera. sorry.

No, Actually it DOESN"T work,!

2008-02-13T07:13:00.000-08:00

I'd like to tackle a bit of bullshit that I'm tird of hearing about on jobs.

The Divining rod. I know what your thinking..."Joe, no one takes that shit seriously anyway" and you'll think I'm creating a controversy that doesn't really exist...

But, I shit you not, there are currently at least 3 people in my office that "believe" this shit works.

shit.

As a professional geologist, we do a lot of invasive work in the earth: trenching, drilling, excavator work etc... and Utility locates are actually pretty critical to alot of jobs. I've been on rigs that have hit utilities, and it tends to make everyone nervous - (is that just an old concrete storm sewer, or a high pressure gas line?)

Anyhow.

I've talked with a few people who swear, that no matter what, they ALWAYS can find utilities using divining rods.

But I've taken a dramatic stance on them: if anyone pulls divining rods out on a job I'm on, they are immediately off the project. I do that for 2 main reasons:

1. if a client comes by and sees us standing around with divining rods trying to find where we will be digging, what will they think?

2. We are supposed to be fucking professionals whose job it is to use SCIENCE to find what's in the earth.

Most recently, I've been working in Sacramento on a field job doing geophysics: using a method that is commonly used to find buried utilities in abandoned industrial areas, or on military bases, or whatever. I'm out here working with a Geophysicist, he's 37 years old, has an MS degree in geophysics, and does UXO removal for a living.

He Believes that the use of Divining rods works. He is also a dumbshit.

SO I ask him:

1. If they work, why have you never included them in any job you've done?

2. if they work, why not use them rather than pay for real geophysical equipment? A bent coathanger is alot cheaper than the $40,000 resisitivity system we are currently using.

3. why haven't you patented this new technology? if there really aren't any studies out there, but you know it works, why not write that article demonstrating their use? you'd be famous! you'd also be Rich for developing a technology that industry could certainly benefit from.

4. and i tell him, "if you pull those divining rods out on this job, I'll have you off this project tomorrow..."

naturally he got all pissed and provided the following arguments to me:

1. Despite the fact that there is not a SINGLE reference in a peer reviewed journal to the successful deployment of divining rods, he "knows" they work.

(I actually contacted my Brother-in-law Scott, a graduate student in physics, to search some journal databases and he found no positive papers that reference the sucessful use of divining rods, for ANY purpose. I couldn't find anything on google scholar either...and a general google search only revealed a "straight dope" article talking about how it doesn't work.

2. He personally knew This guy who lived in Hawaii who could locate buried utilities or metal 80% of the time. This is quite possibly the most juvenille and stupid argument for anything I've ever heard.

3. like the hypothesis of Plate tectonics as proposed by wegner lacked sufficient data to support it when it was proposed. Divining Rods also work, they just lack supporting data. Actually its nothing like that, because even plate tectonics was used to explain existing observational data (fossils, stratigraphy, and continental geometry)...thats how science works.

4. I just haven't tried to to it myself and therefore I don't know that it can work. Oh believe me, I can make that thing work 100% of the time over areas where I know there are utilities, and I"m not going to spend my time trying to find unmarked utilities.

Normally, I'd let this shit slide and just shrug it off, but this is a guy whose ONLY job in life is to Find buried items using geophysical methods.

I finally had to end the argument. I bet him, and I'm extending that bet to ANyone:

if you can show me that this method works: peer reviewed journal, or even a technical article from a private industry that can demonstrate a positive correlation between divining rods the location of buried utilities, water, or ore bodies, I'll pay you $100. No grey literature will be accepted, and full datasets must be available for scrutiny.

I don't even want to hear shit like "I know this guy really good at it" or "dude...seriously, shit works."

there you have it, its on the internet now, I can't retract it. Don't worry, I have the $100, and I have paypal....so if you can show me the science, I'll show you the money.

until then, Piss off with your folklore and quackery. yeah, I said "quackery". ass.

Steamboat Memories...

2008-02-03T20:02:00.000-08:00

Here's a youtube video I uploaded commemorating our recent Steamboat trip:

Live- Blogging the Superbowl

2008-02-02T08:01:00.000-08:00

I'll be live-blogging the play-by-play action from the awesome superbowl today from 3 pm to whenever its over, can't wait for those sweet commercials....

...wait a minute....nah, fuck that shit, I'll be watching old Warren Miller Video's on ESPN classic and getting drunk on coors light and gentleman jack bourbon.

Old School OP snowboarding, ha, 1,000 times better than the superbowl this year.

YES!

Glen Fucking Plake!

Live for nothin', or Die for somethin'

2008-02-01T21:32:00.001-08:00

I few years ago, I actually read the David Morrell novel "First Blood" after seeing the movie play on TBS or some other shit basic cable station. I thought the novel was terrible. Though I did like the whole Idea of Rambo dying at the end....oh shit, did I just ruin the book for you? ha.

Tonight I saw RAMBO, the new movie. I won't ruin the whole movie for you, but suffice it to say, the plot is even more ludicrous than you think. Its a pure blood-fest; so gory and violent at times its almost laughable. its also really loud.

its cliche, ridiculously violent, intellectually vacuous, and ultimately pointless....but but but, there's this awesome scene where rambo kills EVERYTHING with a huge machine gun! YAHOO!

Here's the last thing I'll mention: If I'm 85 years old, or however old stylvester stallone is, and I still have forearms that look like bridge cables, I will definately make insanely violent movies that showcase my own bad-assed-ness.

New Year, New Ideas

2008-02-01T07:11:00.000-08:00

I plan to destroy my lack of blog posts with updates of devastating awesomeness coming this weekend and beyond.

Of Note:

I'm back in Sacramento
I'm bored
Sufficient interesting shit has happened that warrants internet sharing
I've got to get going or I'll be late for work
I still like geology
I've consumed sushi in the last 24 hours

Here's a sweet picture of my friend Tony Shreddin' Chute #3in christmas bowl At steamboat, colorado (taken by me last weekend):

ok...its official, I've been in Sacramento WAAAAY

2007-12-11T21:02:00.000-08:00

Too long.

I gotta go home.

Here's what I did this sunday:

I woke up, had great plans to hang out at a coffee shop, as previously mentioned. But alas, the place was too cold so I went back to my hotel, and figured I'd go see a movie.

Beowulf in 3-D was playing at the local Imax theater, so I thought "oh awesome, I'll go check that out".

Here's a picture of me in the hotel room with a positive attitude, confident and optimistic about my potential afternoon:

So I go to downtown Sacramento, and I find this weird Chicano gathering in which there are a bunch of people on horses, and the HORSES are dancing, while the people just sit on them. the event was entirely in Espaniola and therefore I have no idea what it was all about.

Here's a crappy picture of that:

So I find the IMAX theater, and buy my ticket. Unfortunately, I had about 1 hour to kill before the show, so I walked down the street and got a beer at a sports bar and watched the rest of the Steelers/Patriots football game on the TV. What I didn't realize, until I had 2 beers there, was that I was drinking their "winter pale ale".

After drinking one and ordering the other, I asked "hey, how much alcohol is in this anyway?" the bartender said "Oh man, its like 8.9% (almost double what most beers are)...isn't that SICK"

so...needless to say, I finished my beer and went to the movie. and about half way through the movie, I took this picture:

WTF?!?!?!!?!?!?!

I gotta go home.

To all who know and understand: BEWARE

2007-12-09T19:18:00.000-08:00

The paradigm shift is coming.

enjoy the holidays while you can, because come Jan 1st...life comes crashing like a one hundred car pile-up on a sacramento freeway.

01/01/08 we destroy the machines that are trying to kill us. we break free of the beast. we are legion, we are violence incarnate. let the round ups begin.

Hey...Kevin Seconds owns a coffee shop

2007-12-08T21:09:00.000-08:00

In Sacramento.

The Singer for the AWESOME punk band 7 Seconds has a coffee shop here in Sacramento. I think I'll go there and write up my Accretionary Wedge Blog post tomorrow....I'll also be listening to "Soulforce Revolution" the entire time.

Check out this sweet picture of me from High School:

Braces, stone-washed jeans, and 7-seconds "4 am in texas" tshirt. circa 1989

Edit: I'm at the coffee shop today (Sunday December 9th) and unfortunately its cold as LIFE in this motherfucker. no hardcore music playing, not even a TRACE of a Sham 69 cd...and I'm freezing. I don't know how long I can hold out...

New York Hardcore on Donahue

2007-11-18T09:01:00.001-08:00

I'm heading back to San Francisco today to hang out, and while sipping coffee i saw this:

Its New York Hardcore on Donahue..check out the audience, you'll see Ray Cappo, John Porcelly, Vinnie Stigma, Harley Flannagan, and many others.

Its too bad Donahue is off the air.

Don't worry about that Agnostic Front Song, no one took them seriously until after the Cause For Alarm LP anyway.

waves hand at wierd people In Arizona

2007-11-14T06:40:00.001-08:00

In addition to my mention on Pharyngula, it looks like awhile back some woman included me on her blog links, and referred to my post about Wickenburg AZ as "Brutal"...probably the best compliment I've heard in relation to my blog yet. Of course, I'd say to you Ms Helicopter Pilot blogger-person: no ma'am, my post was not brutal...your fucking town is Brutal.

WIckenburg Arizona:

*A place where I've puked nasty KFC chicken into the parking lot of the super8 motel.

*I had some old woman almost ruin my favorite backpack (she assured me she could fix it, but she couldn't so she just tore all the zippers off of it and then bought me some piece of shit pack from the Alco just east of downtown - and yeah, she was elderly)

*I ate the spaghetti and meatball special at the "mineshaft" and the only "meatball" I saw the entire night was laying on the floor of the men's bathroom...at least...please god tell me that was a fucking meatball and not....Oh god......

*Speaking of the Mine shaft, the only people that drink beer there are redneck stoners trying to be your friend and mine engineers...two diametrically opposing camps of people that I would bet money on if they ever held a sanctioned UFC-style fight. Engineer in one corner, stoner dude listening to country music in the other.

Wickenburg AZ, that place is BRUTAL.

............No wait, this picture is fucking brutal:

Wheelchair stagedive?! I didn't think it was possible!

Hooray for my blog!

2007-11-14T06:18:00.001-08:00

I was surfing around this morning and saw that my blog is on the Pharyngula blogroll!.

That might not mean all that much, but Its pretty flattering that PZ myers has checked out this page. Makes me want to write some more awesome stuff about something cool!

but damn, I'm still stuck in Sacramento...I can't think of anything to expound upon...maybe these topics:

*Hooters hot-wings: why the fuck are the wingtips still on these things?
*How to drink enough beer to forget what you did the previous week
*the geology of the Marriot townplace suites parking lot
*my undying prejudice against the lack of common sense apparent in most Mining engineers
*How to piss off rednecks by playing Public Enemy, Ice Cube, and Royce da 5'9" tracks
*How to purchase redbulls from a gas station at 6 am.
*Hotel Pools: why do they make my fucking eyes burn?

I'll prolly just continue my blogging drought until I get home at thanksgiving...still, I'm feeling a little cooler today as a result of being on PZ's blogroll.

Visited San Francisco Yesterday...

2007-11-04T09:08:00.001-08:00

I'm out here in California on this Sacramento Project again, and yesterday I had the day off and went to San Francisco...and all I can say is, Man, San Francisco is perfect.

what a great city. I didn't do anything special, bascially just walked around all day. I walked from Chinatown, to fisherman's wharf down to the financial district and then to Amoeba records.

I stopped in at City lights bookstore and bought a Leo Tolstoy book "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"...because I figure if I'm gonna be stuck out away from home for a long time, I might as well get into a really depressing book of death, life, and redemption.

the bar at vesuvio...quite a nice place.

I had a gin and tonic at Vesuvio and read my book a little bit. Walked down Columbus Street to the Italian area, had an espresso...

man, I really wish I had 5 days in that town, with a bicycle, and a friend named Karen...such a great place to hang out.

I tried taking some sweet pictures, but well...it didn't work out.

Here's a nasty picture of what appears to be a snapping turtle that has been cut into quarter sections with a machette (mmmm, doesn't that look good?). It was for sale in chinatown at this crazy meat store that also serves a pretty good hot-wing (and no, I didn't get sick from eating wierd chinese meats). There's also 2 smaller turtles for sale in front of it.

GRoSS!

thats about it...today I have off again, but I think I'll hang around Sacramento, maybe get drunk at a bar and wait for work tomorrow.

San Francisco...cool town.

Addicted to MOSH!

2007-10-26T12:46:00.000-07:00

Some friends were asking me about getting some new music, and while I haven't gotten anything new in a little while, I had to tell them about Violator.

If your not listening to Violator, then you are failing at life.

Check out the track "destined to die" on their discography page....its SICK.

superfast, old school sounding brazilian thrash done RIGHT!

c'mon dude: jean jacket vests, thrash-patches, tight pants, supertongue basketball shoes, and feathered hair....the only thing they need is a machete.

hell yes!

I bought a machete!

2007-10-17T14:30:00.000-07:00

People don't believe me when I say that the area where I'll be hiking this next week is really really densely vegetated.

Take a look at this picture:

there's a field surveyor in the picture, he's about 6 feet tall, has a yellow trimble GPS backpack on, and a mouthful of copenhagen.

do you see him? he's right in the front there....take a good look.

All Engineers are Moronic Assholes, Part 3

2007-10-16T09:11:00.000-07:00

So today I'm sitting in my cube and I get a phone call from this engineer.

he's driving around in St. Louis trying to figure out how to buy 5 gallon buckets to place rock samples in...he's freakin' out...can't handle it, can't figure out the world around him.

Him: "Joe, how can I get buckets!"

Me: "Go to the nearest home depot/lowes/hardware store/whatever"

Him: "but how do I find one of those?!"

Me: "stop at gas station, ask fat guy behind counter"

Him: "ok I'll try that...and also where's the nearest starbucks coffee at?!"

Me: "Kill yourself please" (I didn't say this, but I thought it.)

I mean seriously, he calls me up and wants me to help him get to the nearest hardware store.

I asked him why he didn't just bring out the 200 buckets that I had already purchased for the project..he mentioned something about how high his billing rate is and how it wasn't worth the cost to the project.

so I said "oh, that makes sense, instead of spending a day driving buckets out to the project, you are gonna spend a day driving around st. louis looking for buckets...."

Engineers, man...complete and total moronic assholes.

Its times like these

2007-10-09T21:38:00.000-07:00

So Here I am, out in Arizona...working on a project that I don't want to deal with, I'm tired of traveling, I don't know when I can go home, I just want to crawl into my bed in denver and not think about anything...

and I'm standing on a mesa, in the middle of fucking nowhere- about 2 hours north of Phoenix, at the transition from basin and range geology to colorado plateau geology, there's nothing but the sound of the wind in my ears, and all I can think of is "how could I ever have been anything in life besides a field geologist?"

I feel like a belong in places like this: standing on a mesa top, hawk soaring overhead, basalt cliffs looming, carbonate allvium underfoot destroying my fucking boots. Arroyo, coyote, rattlesnake, mesquite, prickly pear, faulted landscapes. Jagged Peaks, breccia, scraped forearms, falling down a talus slope. Desert silence pervasive, undying sunshine and heat, sweat, and geology all around. Just me, a USGS Topographic quadrangle, a rock hammer, a brunton compass, a pencil, and a fucking canyon, its the perfect job. There's nothing that compares to mapping geology in the desert southwest. if you've never done it, you've never lived.

my Jeep, an angular unconformity between the Gila formation and overlying alluvium, basalt mesas, blue skies...no fucking people, just the desert.

yes, you are seeing this correct: its a photo taken from the top of an active landslide. the scarp is the white line along the back of the photo, in the foreground are dilational fracture sets, the ground surface is dipping at about 12 degrees to the south. this it what it looks like when a canyon tears away its constraining mesas. Today I mapped a landslide the size of Mile High Stadium. it was amazing. I sat and listened for about ten minutes to the silence and I could hear the rocks falling, the mesa flanks failing.

self-portrait, who else will take your picture when your alone in the desert?

Some Pics from Sacky

2007-10-07T21:56:00.000-07:00

I've been out for the last 2 weeks or so working in Sacramento on the Levees.

we're doing galvanic resistivity surveys.

anyway...here are some sweet pics from the last week or so.

this is my coworker Collin "sweetwater" Strine-Zuroski demonstrating the instruments we're using out in the field. Colllin's from Maryland. If you need help with Woot.com or with certain blogs, collin can help you out.

here's a picture of some of the equipment...note that this rental vehicle is also our field vehicle. as with all field vehicles, by the second week of work, it smells horrible inside - think sweat and feet mixed with rotting vegetables and battery acid.

We went to lake tahoe for the weekend, since its only about 100 miles or so from Sacramento. it was beautiful. In addition to the gambling, ridiculous amount of alcohol consumed, and eating some of the most artery clogging food I've ever had, we went hiking along the rim trail. The rim trail is a 156 mile ring that goes around the lake...on all the trees out there is this crazy almost neon-green moss that grows only on the northern side, and equally spaced between branches. its wierd.

Finally, here's a self portrait of me that I took right after they informed me that instead of spending a weekend in denver at home, I'd be flying right to Arizona where I am now...FUCK.

Cool shit my parents brought for me.

2007-10-07T21:52:00.001-07:00

I'm starting a new catagory of posts on this weblog. A few weeks ago, my parents came out to see me and brought out like 6-7 boxes of my old stuff. some of it is pretty cool, some of it is well...garbage...but its all the shit from my youth, packed up.

here's a good example:

this is a hand-made cabbage-patch style Mr-T. doll that my grandma made for me back when I was maybe 10-12 years old or so. its awesome, check out the hand knitted socks and crocheted chuck-taylor all-star shoes. the eyes are painted, and the earrings are real.

sweet.

People who shoot...

2007-09-15T12:12:00.000-07:00

..Prairie dogs are ALL fucktarded shitwits. most of them are also FAT fucktarded shitwits ALL OF THEM. ALL. OF. THEM.

Posting from the "man room"

2007-09-15T11:59:00.000-07:00

Thats right...I'm 99% finished with the Man Room, the first of our house remodelling projects.

I just hooked up this computer, and then crossed my fingers as the cable modem flickered to life...

(Yeah, I did the wiring for the modem and some of the wiring for the power down here)

Hooray!

Since the computer is down here, and I have a sweet audio setup down here, Karen might never see me again.

sifl's blog - awesomeness

2007-09-09T07:40:00.000-07:00

So there's this guy who posts on a music messageboard...he never says anything to me except to tell me I'm a fat lazy rock-shithead.

fair enough.

He maintains an awesome blog though:

Sifblog.

he also is the Historian of Waffle Town.

Both blogs are worthy of checking out.

FUCK YOU SIFL!

All Engineers are Moronic Assholes, Part 2

2007-09-07T09:19:00.000-07:00

Another reason all engineers are moronic assholes: They think the entire field of geology can be summarized by: “its either a rock, or sand, or silt, or clay....nothing more.”

Let me put it another way, check out this awesome picture of the Jurassic Aztec Sandstone as it is exposed in a beautiful slot canyon (a favorite rock unit of anyone living out west!):

to an engineer this sandstone can be summarized like this:

poorly graded sand, indurated, has a strength of 25.

to a geologist:

a well sorted, medium grained sand. the sands have frosted grains and indicate that it was deposited by the wind. The wavelength, width, and geometry of the crossbeds can be used to determine windspeed, direction, and duration of sand deposition. The colors indicate the movement of groundwater through time. The scalloped and undulating outcrop patterns describe the method of its erosion. the slot canyon itself provides a direction and pattern of fracturing of the rock, its stratigraphic position with other rocks place it in temporal context. Its lateral juxtaposition with other rocks tell you where it was relative to mountains, to the sea, to other areas. fossils within it tell you its age, etc...

I could go on and on...There's so much contained in rocks, the story of the earth, a picture of the past, a story of how the earth came to be the way it is. Geology is truly more than sand, silt, and clay.

And I know what you fucking engineers are thinking: "Joe, who gives a shit about long flowery rock descriptions, how does knowing its age and where the wind was blowing 250 million years ago help me write this report?"

Well Mr. Engineer, all of those flowery descriptions, placed in context can be used as a predictive tool: knowing the stratigraphy can help you determine what you will expect to see in your next bore hole, and may help you determine if you even need to pay for the next borehole. The wind direction and crossbeds may influence groundwater flow, contaminant transport, and might indicate how to plan for seasonal fluctuations in the water table. fractures and patterns of fractures can help you with rock strength, and help you predict potential failure zones. Understanding the change in crossbed angles from deposition to compaction and lithification can tell you about strength, blah blah blah.

The point is, is that there's alot more to the story than an engineer can understand.

The fact that engineers can't see beyond sand, silt, and clay is probably the reason so many of them are loser creationists. Seriously. Go look on Answers in Genesis, or on the Discovery Institute websites....both of this bogus asshole creationist websites are chock full of "science" articles written by engineers who think they know what geology and biology are.

engineers, while being book-smart at times, have no concept of the scientific method, understanding the value of descriptive data, and have no idea how other scientific disciplines can provide valuable insight into their little bullshit projects.

Bada TAKE BOY! YOU WIVE!!!

2007-09-07T07:52:00.000-07:00

bada NO TAKE BOY, DEN YOU DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All Engineers are Moronic Assholes

2007-09-07T07:08:00.001-07:00

I'm starting a new angry, coffee fueled hate-session here at cataclasite: ALL Engineers are moronic Assholes.

I was going to make this a single post, but my gripe list about engineers continues to grow with each day that I have to work with them.

Now let me preface my new theme “all engineers are moronic assholes” by saying that All engineers are not moronic assholes. To be sure, I have several friends who are engineers, they are all great and they all tend to agree with me on the fact that “all engineers are moronic assholes”.

I apologize in advance if you are one of the one-in-a-million engineers who are not moronic and asshole.

I work with engineers, almost exclusively. Geotechnical, structural, and mine engineers. They are ALL moronic assholes.

Today's Example:

Previously I wrote about a field job that made me a bit nervous due to the large number of bears in the area, and the fact that most often I am mapping alone.

A week or two ago, I went back to that site to do some additional work, and had to meet up with a structural engineer who was helping out with the site. He’s younger, has waaay too much testosterone, and is generally a meat-headed shitwit.

So we go out into the field, and he says to me “yeah man, I ain’t walkin’ around without my gun”.

I didn’t really believe him and said “oh yeah? Heh..I think we’ll be ok”

But then he say’s “Yeah, its loaded and in the console here”.

I opened up the console, and sure enough there’s a loaded 9 mm semi-automatic handgun. Great. (he also had a 16" RAMBO knife under his driver seat too...cool dude, really cool)

We get to the site, get out, and prepare to go hiking around in the forest. I say “yeah man, we’ll only be out for like an hour or two, really no need to bring that”.

So he brings it. He doesn’t have a holster, so he just carries it in his right hand, with his finger resting on the trigger.

He keeps talking about how the bears are really bad, and how he’s gonna plug one of those fuckers if they get too close, and the entire time he’s walking behind me about 15 feet.

Let me put that in perspective: he’s walking behind me through the forest, there’s no trail so we frequently have to step over trees, or stumble down an embankment, or whatever, he’s got his finger on the trigger of a handgun, and he’s using it to point out directions, and passes the barrel so that it’s pointing at me briefly here and there. I keep thinking "this kid is gonna stumble on a fucking tree, he's gonna trip, pull the trigger and I'll end up having a bullet in my ass like Meriwether Lewis on the way back to St. Louis."

I don’t really like guns to begin with, and I went and shot a glock once…glocks, or at least some glocks don’t have safety’s…you just chamber a round and a little metal flange comes up and then you can start blowing shit away. I didn’t ask him what kind of gun he had, but he assured me that he hasn’t chambered a bullet.

Anyway, I’m walking along, and I just want to punch this shithead, he’s making me nervous with his pussy-bullshit handgun, and that’s when he really gets stupid: you see, in the area, there’s a lot of open range cattle, and yes, while cattle are very big, they don’t move and you can walk up pretty close to them before you realize they are there.

So we startle a few cattle, and each time he raises up the gun. Each time I have to say “dude, relax, it’s a fucking cow”.

Needless to say, only a fucking desk pushing moronic asshole engineer would walk around waving a handgun because he’s too chickenshit to walk in the woods with a badass geologist.

Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? …it’s a gun…

Same Awesome Motorbike, Different Angle...

2007-08-23T14:02:00.000-07:00

Well I've been getting an awesome response from people for my new Motorbike...thanks!

To answer some questions:

1. Yes Its registered, insured, and I have a clear title on it in my name.

2. Yes I've been riding it every day since I got it, its so much fun to just go tooling around. I've taken it up to about 50 mph so far, it can go quite a bit faster, but I think I need to take a safety class before I ruin both myself and my bike. Its not that big, only 175cc, but its got plenty of juice for getting around denver neighborhoods.

3. Yes it runs (see #2). it runs like a champ... I think it really needs the carbs tuned on it, and maybe some cable lube since it hasn't really been used much in the last 17 years (it was ridden about 35 miles in that time...). I think the guy I bought it from just kept it in his garage and polished it everyday for the last 17 years or so. I'm gonna work on the carbs this weekend...and hopefully not ruin it.

4. No its not PEE WEE's bike.

I bought a Motorbike!

2007-08-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

Check it out, its a Sweet 1971 Honda CB175. yeah, its from 1971!!! check out the condition its in, it only has 2630 miles on it!!!!!!!!

amazing.

Man I'm getting old...

2007-08-18T11:27:00.000-07:00

After my terrific Vacation to the BWCA, I promptly got shipped off to california, Sacramento to be exact. Out here we're doing a geophysical survey to determine the geologic constituents of the levees that line many of the canals and natural rivers.

Bascially that means we're shooting electricity into the ground, the intensity of the electricity that returns helps you determine if the levees are made of sand, silt, clay, or a combination of those. Since the levees out here have been made at different time periods (some are as old as the mid-1800's) no one really knows what the fuck they are made of.

Since Hurricaine Katrina, levees have been a pretty hot topic...hence this work.

Blah blah blah.

the bottom line is that this project has been kicking my ass. I've been really tired, my back hurts, I'm experiencing muscle pain almost everywhere...

Here's a good example:

In this picture is an unending gravel road, on the right side of the gravel road you can see what looks like a really really long extension chord (the road itself is on TOP of a levee). every 15ft of this extension chord is a metal tent stake that is about 24" long. the chord is about one third of a mile long. you run a computerized electrical survey, then move the cable, reset it, and begin again.

So thats what I've been doing, laying down the cable, pounding in stakes every 15 ft and carrying electrical cables for about 1 mile per day. its heavy, continuous manual labor.

I honestly can't tell if I"m a huge wimp, or what, but at night by back has been killing me, my arms are all fucked up and I just don't have the energy that I should.

aside from my complaining here are some highlights of working in Sacramento:

1. to help with the manual labor, we've gotten some mexican laborers that work in the construction division of my company, and I've been learning alot of spanish. And by alot of spanish I mean I've been learning how to swear and how to order mexican food:

Me: "How do you say hot sauce in spanish so I can order this burrito?"

Luis: "You don't know spanish, Pinche Retardado!!!" (you fucking retard)

Me: " yeah I know by that's why I'm asking you, now stop fucking around"

Luis: "ahh, well say to the burrito man that you think he is 'Apedrear'" (you smell of shit)

The burrito guy: "fuck both of you, no burritos for you..."

Me: "thanks luis"

I've also been wearing a red terrycloth sweatband on my head...not the most fashionable thing, but try carrying an 810 foot long cable for 5 miles in 95 degree weather and just dealing with the stinging pain of sweat in your eyes without a sweatband.

Luis: "Joe you don't seem gay or anything, but you have alot of fucking gay shit, eh Puto!"

Me: "thanks luis"

Usually when I do field work there is quite a bit of Rated X language, but this last week I've been learning to be offensive in 2 languages.

2. One of the field hands, Jesse, is really into hot rods, lowriders, etc... and I've been talking about it with him. I have a decent interest in these things too, ever since my groundbreaking work on the video game "Midnight run, the Dub edition".

You see, I don't have a low rider in real life, but I've been able to create several sweet customs by playing a video game on the xbox. In the game, you earn money by winning races, and you use the money to buy parts for your lowrider. The game is fortunate enough to use the real logos and parts from companies.

So Jesse will say something like "I'm workin' in a nice '66 chevy nova with 15" giovanni's, I'm getting a new gearbox for it this weekend"

and I'll reply with "Oh shit, nice! are those the 15 spoke giovanni's and the GSM 5 speed gearbox?" (I only know what he's talking about because in teh videogame I've upgraded my '75 monte carlo with the same giovanni's and a high performance gearbox)

and he'll say "oh yeah man, and I"M fucking getting airbags too"

me: "sick man, are you ridin' the airbags on the whole suspension or are you lowerin' the front end" ( I also got airbags for my sweet virtual monte carlo)

Luis: "I"m lowerin' just the front"

me: 'sick man, SICK."

Luis: "Yeah"

so bascially I kinda sound like I've built a lowrider, even though I 1. don't own a lowrider, 2. I don't work on cars, and 3. I've just playing the video game.

If Jesse Knew I was such a poseur he might say "Te meto la verga por el osico para que te calles el pinche puto osico hijo de perra!" and don't ask me to translate that sentence, it took me like 45 minutes to remember how to say it...and believe me, that sentence is VERY graphic.

Anyway, writing this has made it alot easier to forget about the muscle pain in my body, I hope to have more soon.

One of the Best Places On Earth!

2007-08-14T06:23:00.000-07:00

As previously posted on Cataclasite, I went to the Boundary waters for my friend Mike's Bachelor Party (Congrats again mike!).

Iv'e been going to the boundary waters pretty much on a yearly basis with some high school friends for at least 5 years now and I have to admit, Its pretty much one of the best places on earth.

Lots of people move to colorado for the outdoors, and indeed, there's alot about Colorado that is beautiful. Its one of the reasons I enjoy living here. But I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I firmly believe that there is NOTHING in colorado that can rival the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

If you've never been, do it before you can't.

My friend Doug took a 360 view of us in a canoe at about 6 pm when the sun was starting to go down over the lake(Click for large version):

Look close at the picture, note how there is NO ONE else visible ANYWHERE. In the BWCA, if you travel in about 10 -15 miles, you will get to pristine lakes that are rarely touched by anyone, and you can spend a week camping without seeing anyone else...its fucking perfect.

Look close in this picture, you'll see

1. cool, clean lake water
2. peaceful breeze
3. a lake where our canoe is the ONLY boat, and indeed, probably the only boat around for about 3 lakes.
4. the only sounds are of Loons, wind in the trees, and the gentle sound of your paddle in the water
5. A tshirt that depicts a moose with a huge boner (yes, thats the official bachelor party uniform)

Now check out this picture of the maroon bells in colorado:

look close...you can't really see it, but behind the camera in this picture is:

1. 3 retired artists making oil paintings
2. 4 EXTREME mountain climbers who are wearing no less than $1500 in technical gear who are gonna make it to the top of a mountain that you can walk up carrying a six pack of miller light and wearing flip flops
3. 6 tourists from wisconsin, and 4 denver locals on their cell phones saying shit like "OMG guess where I am?!" and "Yeah, we totally climbed up to this crazy lake, shits fucking sweet, heh"
4. 6 sets of yuppies with shock-absorbing telescoping super-walking sticks! FOR ADVANCED WALKING CAPAbility!
5. the bumper to bumper traffic that you will sit in from Vail colorado all the way to denver. Total Mileage: 96 miles, total travel time: 7 hours

Don't get me wrong, I love colorado, I moved here because it's unbelievably fucking beautiful, but if you really ask me where I'd go for the SUPREME outdoor experience; Its in northern Minnesota, tucked away in an area that most people in the United States have never heard of.

Of Gay Men, Bears, and Big Bombs

2007-07-24T07:09:00.000-07:00

So I haven't posted much in a long time, most all of my loyal readers must have gone on to reading other, more productive and interesting bloggers.

To be honest, I haven't really felt like posting anything lately. here's a brief rundown on what the writers of cataclasite have been doing/have been finding out:

-Hiked in Missouri, picked wood-ticks off of various parts of body, became familiar with midwestern humidity

-Hung out on an Air Force base in an old bombing range drilling boreholes - yeah, drilling holes in the ground with big machines in areas where active ordnance may still lurk, luckily I didn't blow up. Scariest thing: The Military guide who was to assess our drilling locations for bombs said on the first day of the work "I've been in 2 wars [vietnam and the first gulf war] and I've seen alot of shit, I'm ready to die, so..."

..."But Mr. Military Man, I'm not sure I'm ready to die!"

-Found out that the Man who helped to the electrical work on the man room in our house is a HUGE brokeback mountain fan. His partner is a prop-person in the big world of hollywood, and he actually wears Heath Ledgers Jacket from the movie, and yeah, he drives that tourquise old pickup truck from the movie too. He also has the Lost Ark of the Covannent (yeah, the one from Indiana Jones!) in his goddamn living room!

-Hiked around an Area near Rifle Colorado (see Picture Below), spent much of my hiking time trying to not die from a massive bear attack....I saw 2 bears, one that could easily have killed me. I'm about 160 lbs, this bear was as tall as me, because it stood up to look at me and it was my height...and I'm almost sure its probably been in more street-fights than me. I was alone, with a mapping book, a backpack, and a can of smoked oysters (which were horrible!)

Now I know what your thinking..."Joe Stop being such a big wimpy idiot...your not gonna get attacked by a bear." Here's my problem with that: when I'm out field mapping geology, I don't pay attention to where I'm going alot of times...I've walked and fallen down talus slopes before. Also, I never really say anything aloud, I'm pretty quiet... I could completely see me walking up to a bear cub, have it run up a tree and then the mother bear would come crashing through the underbrush and force me to use the Tang-Soo-Do Korean Mu-Duk-Kwan I learned in second grade.

-I'm getting ready for my vacation to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness...which is one of my all time favorite places.

Thats about it for right now! I'll post more after I have like 3 more cups of coffee.

Can you see the bear in this picture?!

I want one of the jump suits!

2007-07-23T20:30:00.001-07:00

Human Tetris:

I think this one's my favorite:

Postworthy

NO camera...and stuck in Missouri

2007-07-01T06:59:00.000-07:00

Today is my only day off here in Missouri, I had some crap written in my field book that I wanted to post, but I'll do it tonight. I plan on going out to play today.

"I call it the flying elbow"

2007-07-01T06:56:00.000-07:00

Awesome.

Long Kansas Drives....

2007-06-14T13:17:00.000-07:00

well well well.

Remember how I mentioned that the project I was working on was pretty contentious because of some lawsuits?

well, no sooner did I get out to the site in Missouri, when the lawyers shut down the work again. I drove all the way to missouri, had one 3 hour long meeting, and drove all the way back to Denver.

funny how that works out.

I did manage to get this picture though:

its the ruins of an old Lead Mining site near where the project was. Though it's completely unrelated to our job site, it looked kinda interesting.

Apparently back quite a time ago, there were significant Galena deposits mixed in with the geology I briefly mentioned before.

If I end up getting to go back out to this site, I hope to find out more.

I made it to my destination

2007-06-10T13:59:00.000-07:00

Today’s story about the growing general weirdness of Missouri is brought to you by White Castle Hamburgers…of which I am currently not eating.

The town I will be staying in, is like a lot of random small towns: the central super Walmart is contained in a valley, with its satellite applebee’s, chili’s, and famous footwear’s all gazing back at it from the surrounding low hills.

I’m lucky enough to be at a Super8 motel right smack dab in the middle of the action!

Today’s Case in Point:

I arrived early, and the room wasn’t ready yet, so I had a few hours to kill around town. I drove around for a short time, going into the tractor supply store, the walmart, and walked along the decimated and empty “historic downtown” as much as I could.

I also stopped outside “MEGASPORTS!”…and thought I could try to find something interesting in there. Since I’m sporty, and this was MEGASPORTS! I could get all megasporty or some shit.

SO Im’ walking into MEGASPORTS, and I look over and see a kid sitting in the backseat of a chevy cavalier. I only looked for a second, and it looked like he had a display box of sweat-wristbands. He had the box in his lap, and had scattered hundreds of little packages of sweat-bands around him by accident, and now he was trying to put them all back in.

I didn’t really think about it except “damn, that’s a lot of sweatbands”…and went into the store. After spending about 5 minutes in MEGASPORTS!, which was dominated mainly by shotguns, bows and arrows, and wildlife trophies, including a fox (who shoots foxes?), I left.

When I walked back to my car, the kid in the Chevy was still there. This time I took a better look and saw, to my amazement, that the box he had on his lap was actually an ultra-case of white castle hamburgers, sliders. He was eating them and then leaving the empty boxes scattered around him. There must’ve been like a hundred hamburgers in there.

Christ almighty, I didn’t know you could buy that many hamburgers at once…and where was this kids family? Someone needed to stop the kid in the parking lot of MEGASPORTS! From exploding…but that person wasn’t me.

Fuck it, my room was ready and I had beers to drink and emails to check.

I start work tomorrow, maybe I’ll get some hamburgers.

Highways and Bibles

2007-06-10T13:53:00.000-07:00

After a really uneventful Drive through Kansas to get here, I entered Missouri last night at about 6 pm, and drove to the Camelot Inn in Higgensburg Missouri. Which, I’m not sure yet, may just be the asshole of the west-central portion of Missouri.

I drove all day, and when I was tired, I pulled off onto a random highway exit and went into the Camelot Inn. About 10 miles previous, I saw a spectacular billboard, light up so bright it almost eclipsed the adjacent “PASSIONS: ADULT SUPERSTORE” and “I’m Glad my Mom chose adoption and not abortion” signs.

The billboard for the Camelot Inn promised free wireless internet, a pool, and most importantly for me, a lounge. I thought, “great, after 600 miles of Kansas or whatever the fuck distance it is, I’ll get a room, grab a cold beer in the lounge and drift off to sleep”.

When I arrived, I was really dissapointed. It was this busted, bullshit little motor lodge, in which the front-desk lady was sitting squarely behind bulletproof glass. “The lounge is closed until further notice”, and “Intranets?!”

I managed to pick up a 32-oz can of High Life from the next door gas station and went to my room. Now, I was told by a few people at work that Missouri is kinda mixed. There’s a Midwestern feel there, but its also mixed with a lot of southern influence. Think of the kitchy behind-the-times feeling of portions of the upper Midwest, mixed with the blissful ignorance and shallow kindness of southern baptist community.

I’m not sure if I agree with those descriptions yet, but whatever...

Anyhow, I was sitting in my room, and I noticed a few things that really bothered me right away:

1. someone had left burn marks from a cigarette on the toilet seat…not the lid for the toilet, not the tank lid either, but on the actual seat, the part where you put your butt… So think about it, someone was smoking, needed to set a cigarette down, and chose quite possibly the most disgusting horizontal surface possible. The burn mark was about ½ inch long…suggesting it had been there for a few minutes. What the fuck? If your done with your cig. Butt, why not throw it into the toilet? Or flick it outside? Why set it down such that it lays on the toilet seat and burns a little trench into the cheap plastic? And, did this person pick it back up and finish it off? Fuuuck I don't want to meet that person.

2. There was a bible out on the nightstand. It was left open to a passage…it had obviously been sitting open to this page for quite some time as the book was flat-open, and the spine was cracked. I figured it was the standard “john 3:16” page where you go up to the open bible, glance down at how jesus died for your sins, and you were supposed to think “how thoughtful and clever to leave the bible open to this page”…

When I got up close, I noticed it was not the John 3:16 page, but strangely, Songs of Solomon, Chapter 7:

How beautiful your feet in sandals, O prince’s Daughter, The curves of your thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a skilful workman.
Your navel is a rounded goblet; it lacks no blended beverage. Your waist is a heap of wheat set about with lilies.
Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.
Your Neck is like an ivory tower, your eyes like the pools in heshbon by the gate of bath rabbim.
Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel, and the hair of your head is like purple; a kind is held captive by your tresses.
How fair and how plesant you are, O love, with your delights!
This stature of yours is like a palm tree, and your breasts like its clusters.
I said, “I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of its branches” Let now your breasts be like clusters of the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples…..

Amazing. Why that chapter? I Have never read that before yesterday, and I sat in my room sipping my beer thinking “why this page?” Did two religious people come here to have sex and enticed each other with the bible…accidentally leaving the pages open? Did some lonesome trucker stop and read this passage like an overweight secretary reads a romance novel? Did the cleaning staff leave the bible open like this…of so, why this passage?

No matter how many explanations for leaving the bible open to this page, I can't seem to find a scenario that isn't disturbing.

Despite the completely awkwardness of my hotel room, combined with the tangy smell of feet in humid-southern-summer evening, I managed to sleep fairly well and drove off from the Camelot at 7 am.

Is this your fucking bible?

Hopefully I'll have some fun stuff to post about too...

2007-06-10T13:51:00.000-07:00

Man. Well…I’m back on the road for a while for work. I’m working on a pretty spicy project out here in Missouri. One in which the client who we are working against is getting sued, possibly in criminal court, for some environmental damage that has already been caused.

It’s a sad tale for sure, one that could have been a lot worse had circumstances been different. Unfortunately I can’t tell you all much about in because it is under investigation and I’m not going to broasdcast the details to the legion of Cataclasite readers.

Suffice it to say that my role will be the same as almost all my roles in my job: I’ll be drilling wells, putting in geophysical lines, and doing some geologic mapping…

The job site is interesting, its situated on some Pre-cambrian rhyolitic bedrock that sat as at topographic high for much of the Phanerozoic. In short, the job site is on an island in the middle of a Cambrian ocean….so there are very old rocks there, they are VERY highly weathered, and nearby are lots of beach-deposit on-lap rocks.

I don’t know much about the site yet, since I haven’t been there, but I’m actually looking forward to it because of the geology present. I hope to have some pictures soon.

check out this picture

2007-06-04T13:07:00.000-07:00

Check out this pic of me (on the right) with a coworker riding out at centennial cone, I smoked that fool on the uphills...

(of course he destroyed me on the downhills)

Ugh....I feel sick

2007-06-04T11:02:00.000-07:00

Here's how much of a lazy bastard I am:

Rather than construct a real lunch to take to work today, I took a sandwich bag, filled it with oreo cookies, grabbed another bag, filled it with crackers and left.

So here I am, just jacked out on coffee and oreo cookies. shaking a bit from the sugar, nervous and extremely aggressive from the coffee.

how nutritious!

*EDIT*

yes, Karen did pack me a nice bowl of fruit, which I ate when I got here. but since eating the oreo's, I can't remember back to like 9 am.

Speaking of Long Unfunny Desolate Roads...

2007-06-04T08:50:00.000-07:00

We ended up catching about 35 seconds of Larry the Cable Guy on comedy central last night…and let me tell you this, I’d LOVE to read a book about Larry the Cable Guy living in a post-global annihilated world forced to live on by himself…walking around looking for food, scavenging, and quietly saying to himself “alright” and “git-r-done” like a crazy bag-lady talking to her shoes as if they were her pets. Can someone find this guy on the street and give him the Nancy Kerrigan treatment please?!?!

…We clicked to comedy central, Larry commented about butt-cracks or some busted fucking 5th grade joke, and then they cut to an audience reaction shot of a prissy 40-something successful-looking woman in a business suit heartily clapping and laughing. She turned to her friend next to her and mouthed the word “ooh, Perfect”. As if Larry’s comparison of a butt-crack to the grand canyon was crafted and delivered with the sincerity and honesty of a wine-maker with a glass of his best Cabernet. “ohh Perfect”. Riiight. Fuck you larry.

It was so lame I actually choked a bit on my cheese and rosemary cracker anti-pasta and had to take a sip from my glass of imported Czech microbrew at the same time I was changing the channel. Perfect.

The Road

2007-06-04T08:36:00.000-07:00

I finished up “The Road” by Cormick Macarthy. I haven’t read anything else by him, but I really liked The Road, despite its endorsement by Oprah’s book club.

SPOILER ALERT!

To be sure, the novel is pretty brutal…its set in the future, in a mad-max like world where everything; cities, forests, land has been reduced to a ash-drifted wasteland where the survivors of some global devastation (asteroid, nuclear war – you’re never actually told the cause of the annihilation) are forced to live in.

An unnamed man and a little boy are forced down a road, scavenging for their lives, all the time avoiding death squads and being un-trusting of anyone else on the road. They see the brutal realities of humanity starving to death, the inhumane treatment of people, the sheer desolation and destruction of the world, and they are forced to deal with their own existence. In a post-world-ending annihilation, what is the point of life?

Of course the reason I think this book earned Oprah’s endorsement is because of the relationship of the man and boy…They live entirely for each other…that is the point of their lives. The boy is dependent on the man, and the man is entirely dependent on the boy. In a future so bleak, what else is there? If you cannot depend on the people you are traveling with, if their well-being is not a reason for living, then what is the reason for living?

Towards the end of the book you worry about the boy “what if the man dies? That kid is fucked!” and “if the boy dies, the man might as well drown himself rather than spend the rest of his waking life lamenting the death of all that he loved and walking around looking for shitty canned meats”. Both are depressing prospects that left me wondering as much about what happens after the last scene in the book as what really does happen at the end.

I’ve never read anything else by Cormick McCarthy, and I really liked the bleak, blunt, and dramatic writing style..everything is short, quick and to the point. Its written like how I imagined the world he created to be…no need for long flowery descriptions of scenery or of the characters, because the earth is just dead, and the characters are faceless minions.

I read one Amazon reviewer where someone hated the book because if you turn to every page you can’t escape this list of adjectives: Dark, ashen, dead, grey, dying, and damp….but I think that’s precisely the point, how else can you describe the landscape? How more bleak and foreboding can you make it besides using these stark and repetitive descriptions? The world IS Dark, ashen, dead, grey, dying, and damp. There’s nothing else to describe, no trees, no green fields, no sunny days, no white fences, red barns and rolling country sides just dead ground. No bustling cities, no buildings, no white boats bobbing up and down on the docks, just ashen waste.

Finally, some of the discussions I’ve seen online talk about what the cause of the global destruction..if you consider for a minute that there was a HUGE meteor that hit the earth, caused global firestorms and climate change that decimated the entire world, and created the world of The Road, then how interesting is it to try and think about the meteor that killed the dinosaurs?

Is the Road similar to the Chicxulub impact 65 million years ago? Did dinosaurs face the same unending overcast skies, cold damp rains and dying plants? If you take out the characters in the road, and then put dinosaurs in there, have like 3 beers and turn the lights out while listening to GodSpeed! You Black Emperor albums, you can really imagine what it might have been like back at the end of the Cretaceous.

What if it really happens to humans - the earth is hit by an asteroid? Are we truly as susceptible to destruction as the Dinosaurs? Are our populations and technological successes, similar to the size and proliferation of dinosaurs (and indeed, much of the life during the Mesozoic), as fragile as they turned out to be? What if humanities destiny is merely to occupy a sequence of fractured strata that will be later unearthed and pondered like so many geologists now?

I went on an SEPM field trip (the 1997 trip) in the Midwest back in college and the trip was focused on an Ordovician sequence of rocks in which there are several groups of fossils present in the lower levels, and then absent in the upper, temporally later sequence. The data and interpretation presented was that there was an extinction event between these fossil sequences…I sometimes think about that sequence…it was one of the first and only times that geology was so plain, so dramatic, and so readily apparent to me. It was the first time I actually looked at rocks and what was in them and started to try and imagine and think about them as a story. Since it was so old, there wasn’t a whole lot of information about the cause of the extinction (or maybe I just don’t remember). What the hell happened to kill so many little critters?

A digression there I guess…kind of a rambling shitty post, but hey, I’m trying to get back into the swing of this shit.

Flight and Ender's Game..some reviews!

2007-06-04T08:27:00.000-07:00

So not much has been going on in my life other than I've been reading a ton of books on the light rail, which makes me feel the need to make a little review:

MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT!

Flight – Sherman Alexie. Pretty disappointing book. The book is about a kid who affectionally calls himself zits, who in the act of perpetrating a ridiculously violent act is whisked away to inhabit the lives of other people for a brief time, including an Indian at the battle of the little bighorn, and eventually his father.

The book is short, only moderately interesting, and touches on the same themes that his previous books do - tragedy of America’s Indian policies, the social and economic disparity between modern Indians and the rest of the world, and the loss of identity that native Americans face along with the disparties, etc… In previous books I’ve read by Sherman, these themes have all been tackled with a sense of prozac humor, and some pretty gripping drama, but this book is just flabby, busted, shit.

The book actually ends with this touchy-feely hallmark ending that makes you close the back cover, look up and say “what the fuck?!”

I don’t know, Flight is a shit book by an otherwise good author. That’s all I’m gonna say about that.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card – This book was recommended to me by a friend, its actually really good.

In the introduction to this book, Orson Scott card mentions that he started this book as a short story based around one portion of the novel version: the battle room. That’s the thing that stuck in my head so much about it. ¾ of the book is about the battle room – a place where children learn a counter-strike-like game that is a proxy for real military training. Set in the Future when humanity is faced with destruction by an insect-like alien race, the gifted children of the world are taken to a military space station and trained to become military officers. Its great, kind of a war-games meets D.A.R.Y.L type thing...

The last ¼ of the book is a rushed add-on to the story that essentially relates ender’s military training to the real world. He finds out that much of the simulations during his training were actually real live battles. He saves the world from the aliens by directing a massive interstellar campaign that he believes is just training.

And then of course, there’s a random, completely unnecessary side plot concerning his brother and sister taking over the world by posting on internet messageboards – a task that I have already tried to accomplish myself with no avail. This was a really far-fetched idea that was 1. completely unnecessary to advance the story, and 2. wasn’t fleshed out enough to make you interested in its outcome…Ender gets done saving the world from aliens, goes home and then “oh yeah, remember your loving sister and your snotty asshole brother? Yeah…they took over the world in a non-violent coup-de-tat using nothing but fake usernames and messageboard bulletins”

There is a sequel to this book, which I think I'll pick up since I found Ender's Game to be compelling enough. hooray for SCI-FI!

A method for discussing climate change

2007-05-31T11:05:00.000-07:00

I saw this link today, its an outline for how to talk and discuss the common misconceptions about climate change and global warming.

Its great because in addition to being a great primer on the issues associated with climate change, it can also be effective in getting stupid people to shit the hell up.

its actually pretty interesting to read.

Goodnight Sweet Prince

2007-05-17T05:18:00.000-07:00

Christopher Hutchins gives Jerry Falwell one of the best eulogies ever.

"By The way, Its official...I can't have children!"

2007-05-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure Saturday Night Live isn't as funny as when phil hartman was on. I'm also pretty sure Jimmy Fallon has NEVER been funny.

I did however, find this sketch to be hilarious:

good times.

Drug Tested and approved!

2007-05-04T10:25:00.000-07:00

I went to go take a drug test today and I have to say, that I can't fucking believe it. In addition to the myriad reasons for drug testing to being a complete fucking waste of time and money, I found the experience to be really insulting.

I mean here I am, I’m over 10 years into my professional life, I’ve passed their job interviews, and I’ve amassed a respectable resume that can easily be verified by calling both references and former employers.

But they still don’t trust you with what you choose to do in your personal life. I just got done going to a piss-broker, not even a real doctor’s office. I got to stand there with my coworkers, all of us with our piss-cups standing in line:

“empty your pockets and don’t flush the toilet when your done”

“the sink has been turned off, you can wash your hands after the test is over”

There’s nothing better than getting to see your coworkers carry a warm cup of their own urine around.

“How was it Bob? Damn, you really had to go, and all that orange in there…better lay off the carrots…oh, the temperature sticker on the side says its nice and warm!”

Its also really awesome to get to stand there with the piss-broker and sign your piss vials with your coworkers

“sign and date across the seal”

You know what? Fuck you.

And don’t give me that “if your not doing drugs, you have nothing to worry about” acceptance speech anyway. Its that same fucking apathetic mentality that put a criminal in white house. Its that fucking apathetic horseshit attitude that allowed habeas corpus to be retracted. It’s the same bullshit fucking idiocy that allowed a war to be launched without close public scrutiny. Maybe this paragraph is a stretch, but acceptance of a policy that is embarrassing, invasive, and fucking asshole just because your clean doesn’t make it right. If so, you’d probably also be in favor of a morning rectal probe at the front door, hey why not right? You’ve done nothing wrong!

And if you don’t buy my bed-wetting liberal arguments, then consider this: I’ve already done the fucking work that this drug test was for. I went out in April, performed the field work and already submitted the report draft for the work. My drug test was to verify the fact that I was fit for the field work, 1 month AFTER the field work was completed. You want to talk about a waste of time and money? Your damn right I billed the time to the client, it’s costing $100’s per hour for us to be pissing in cups for work that’s already been done. I also had to take an alcohol brethalizer test. WHAT THE FUCK FOR? In case I’m drunk? What?! If you’re a company, why not just fucking throw the $250 for the test down the toilet?

Drug testing, I’m completely against it.

GREENWASHED!

2007-05-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

So my wife and I have been trying to be more "green" in the world. WE've planted a massive garden this year, in preparation for our "edible landscaping" - a type of xeroscape where you grow vegetables.

I also take mass transit every day.

we recycle, you know we do pretty much the same shit every other yuppie couple does.

Lately, rather than just chuck our cans into the recycling, I've been keeping them and I'm gonna turn them in at the end of the year. I figure if we turn them in ourselves, we may get like $50 or $100 - enough for a nice dinner out or something.

So I take an extra bag along with me when I take the dog for a walk and pick up all the cans in the neighborhood that I find and put them in the recycling to cash in on later.

So tonight my wife and I were arguing about who was more "green" and she threw down the gauntlet and accused me of "greenwashing"...which is the idea that I'm only cleaning up the neighborhood and recycling because it has a direct cash benefit to me. Of course I protested, and said that there are multiple motives for cleaning up the 'hood...but she wouldn't have any of it.

so there you have, I've been Greenwashed. I'm just another asshole out there tryin' to make a buck....by the way...are you done with that can of beer?

just another greenwashing yuppie asshole from denver colorado.

The Rage is relentless!

2007-05-01T14:15:00.000-07:00

There's been alot of bootlegs and hype and talk on the internets since Rage Against the machine reunited for Coachella.

Here's one such video calling for the trial, conviction, and execution of the current administraton for treason. "And this current administration is not exception...they should be hung, and tried, and shot...for Treason"

My sentiments exactly.

I'm not ready to start rounding up people and shooting them, but a trial for treason? certainly reasonable especially when you see articles like this.

Pathetic. ridiculous. sad.

Here it is, HARDCORE

2007-04-29T19:59:00.000-07:00

I love hardcore music...lately I've been a little out of the loop, and disenchanted by the local hardcore scene, but you only have to look as far as youtube to figure out why HARDCORE is the best genre in music ever....I FUCKING LOVE IT. its in my BONES.

the shows, the energy, the feeling, the music, the message... everything PERFECT.

Here's a compilation video from youtube for Judge's "Where it Went"....one of the best hardcore songs ever written, by one of the best underground hardcore bands EVER.

DO YOU FEEL WHAT I FEEL? DO YOU FEEL THE SAME?!....."

FRiday PUNK Video!

2007-04-27T14:26:00.000-07:00

Here's some old school punk for people that really know and give a shit:

Stiff Little Fingers - Suspect Device LIVE!

and

Bad Brains - Intro/I Awesome 80's set live track. the crowd is insane!

and finally, Gang Green - Alcohol! This version is censored...the real chorus? "I'd RATHER DRINK THAN FUCK!" "YOU GOT THE bEER, you got the time...you got the coke, gimme a line...!!!!"

OUT OF HAND.

New Municiple Waste track!

2007-04-24T11:37:00.000-07:00

Check the song "Headbanger Face Rip" its a new song by Municiple Waste, probably one of the best thrash bands in the world right now.

They should have a new album coming out in a few months, I can't wait to download it.

my book review: The Sparrow

2007-04-24T11:21:00.001-07:00

So while I was in AZ, I read two books. There's not alot I usually feel like doing after work in the field...I mean besides my excercise routine of running 20 miles, and then doing my usual 200 pushups.

I read In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick and The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell.

In the Heart of the Sea was great, a quick and pretty easy read about the ramming of a whaling ship by an 85 foot sperm whale, a true story that formed the basis for Moby Dick....but thats not what this post is all about.

I also read the Sparrow...and I liked it, but I hated it. It was good, but annoying.

Here's the premise (in short): A group of people, a few of them very religious, one or two of them "spiritual", discover intelligent life on another planet. They decide to go directly there and meet this intelligent life, assuming that since one of them is a Jesuit Missionary with language skills, they are the best suited, and in a religious sense, are directed there with the help of god.

They go there and get all religous, live pleasantly, hang out with the natives, and then they realize that the basic social organization of the aliens are a lot like Human's relationship to cows. There are two races on the alien planet, one that is like cows in that they serve as a herd-like animal that the other race routinely slaughters for food.

They land and first make contact with the "cow" group. Needless to say, things go horribly wrong when they figure out that the other race kills the cows. They all die except one of them, the jesuit priest, who spends the time reconciling his horrible tragedy with god.

I think the main theme of the book is that "you just have to have faith"...sometimes bad things happen to good people, and what you EXPECT from god, isn't necessarily what god has in store for you. The Book is heavily faith-based, and written in an almost nauseatingly warm-fuzzy tone: everyone gets a hug when things are good, or when things go bad, there's this naive expectation that good is in everything, and descriptions of beauty include references to spiritual experience.

So...there you have it. God is awesome, we're all filled with such love, and sometimes shit-happens, but that can't change the awesomeness of god in the heart of the faithful.

The book is a lesson in maintaining faith in the face of life's greatest tragedies.

How else can a believer in god deal with evil in the world?

There's an even easier explanation for why there's evil: There is no god. If you step back from the story for a minute and think "if good things can happen to good people, maybe there is no god". Things can just happen, the Universe just is what it is, and we are here dealing with it. Maybe because you’re a religious zealot and can’t see past the narcissistic delusion of your faith, you couldn’t notice that you were about to get sodomized by an alien.

In fact, I think if you look at the premise of the story, and say that it was religious arrogance and ignorance that directly lead to the demise of the characters.

1. They assume at least latently that somehow god was involved with this trip, and that they were doing gods work in going to the planet.

2. They assume that social and cultural values that we have on earth are also true on other planets. They also assume that there is equality and harmony with all species on the alien planet.

3. By immersing themselves within one social group on the planet, without understanding ANYTHING about the planet itself, they place themselves in direct conflict with the cows and the carnivores.

4. They assume that the killing of the cow race of aliens is morally wrong.

If you think about it for a minute: Its ignorance of the alien planet, its culture, its intelligence, the roles of different intelligent races lead directly to their downfall. Also, Their arrogance that they should just zoom right in and start hanging out with aliens as having something to do with gods plan is ridiculous.

I’m not sure if this book was supposed to reinforce or help to bring people into a spiritual life, expose and highlight the human folly when it comes to faith, or to provide a discussion on the mere existence of god, any god.

I also browsed the Amazon.com customer reviews for this book, there are more than 400 of them, and it seems that many people thought the same thing. There are comments from actively theistic people arguing that Russell has no idea what it means to be religious and faithful, and some who say that it’s a great book that all Christians should read, even though Russell is a Jewish person.

I’m still confused by it a bit, and If I had to say anything about it in short: 1. people acting on religious principles are ASKING to be slaughtered. 2. if there’s anything we should learn from history its that religious missionary behaviors lead to death of a few at the least, and fucking genocide at the most and 3. if you want to explore new planets, new cultures, new ideas, send a scientist, not a naïve, kooky group of religious bubbleheads.

Anyone else read this book and get as frustrated as me? If not, you should read it and enlighten me.

Back in Denver; survived eating Pipe Grease!

2007-04-23T07:35:00.000-07:00

I survived the field work I was doing! hooray! And I'm sure you're all wondering what the hell I was doing so far away from home for so long. Well, here's the fruits of my labor:

Neat. It doesn't look like much, but the thick middle post in this picture is a 520 ft. deep borehole that has a big ass length of PVC pipe in it. There's a really expensive instrument that goes into that pipe that is used to measure any horizontal offset in the borehole. Assuming the borehole is completely straight when it was drilled, any offset in the borehole measured at a later time means that the actual mesa in which the borehole resides is moving....a scary prospect, but one that needs to be monitored nonetheless.

To be sure, AZ was fun. the work was interesting, and for some reason, and maybe its just me, I've come to the realization that it is almost impossible not to play with this stuff:

its joint grease that they use to grease the threads between pieces of drill pipe. its also this cool copper-metallic thick grease on a modified toilet brush that makes you want to dunk the brush into this margarine-thick (pleasantly spreadable, even when taken right out of the fridge!), and then run around smearing it on your rental car, on other people, on the ground, on someones lunch bag, etc... I also had this hard-to-resist urge to eat it...like some wierd piss-smelling kid in elementary school eating the paste off the craft tables. It tastes kinda like strawberries.

just kidding, I didn't eat it.....ok i did..no I didn't..I just tasted it...no I didn't, but I wanted to..

MIA in Bagdad!

2007-04-13T07:22:00.000-07:00

Sorry for almost no updates here from the AZ trip. I've been moved to Bagdad AZ, and there's no internet, no phone, nothing. Since the drillers will be late by about 1 hour today, I thought I'd check in.

I'm on a random field computer out here at the Bagdad mine. tons-of-fun. Unfortunately, where we're working is nowhere near the pit, or the big trucks, or near anything else that might be considered exciting.

After thinking I'd come out here and see tons of those HUGE-ass trucks, and massive diggers, I'm sad to say that I've seen almost nothing. THe picture I uploaded in my previous post is about all I get to see out here. No trucks Nothing.

Then...just as I was feeling like GS Schaller and the snow-leopard last night, a truck crossed my path:

neat.

AZ stories,,,

2007-04-05T17:45:00.000-07:00

I'm down here on a field job in Wickenburg Arizona, which in addition to its ridiculous density of Upper-midwestern Retirees, has more than 4 hardware stores to service its less than 2,000 person populace. Its like if people over the age of 70 took over and started a wierd cult based around the old west, chrysler luxury sedans, and national breakfast chain restaurants (country kitchen, dennys, village inn, etc...)- instead of "children of the corn" think "elderly of the joshua trees"

WHen I got here, I had some big plans for cataclasite documenting this job because its both interesting (I'm core-logging a borehole in a HUGE active copper mine). I thought I could get a bunch of great pictures, but so far I've only been able to get this:

Today, the drill rig broke down (long story there) but suffice it to say, that I ended up in town hanging out at about 2 pm today. So, I decided to find an outdoor patio-type bar, have a beer, and read my book.

Unfortunately the only "patio" was some lawn furniture outside of the local off-track betting place that also served beer. Not suprising, at 2 pm the off-track betting bar in wickenburg AZ is full of marlboro-sucking 75 year old women.

I go in, order a modelo negro, and sit down to read. About 10 minutes later, this fucking wierd-looking, busted homeless lookin' guy comes up to me and says "I was just thinkin' about getting a new motorbike".

Now. I normally hate talking to people I don't know, no matter who they are. If they creep me out, its even worse, I thought "aww...fuck this shit." but I kept my mouth shut.

Anyway, I said "thats great man...", and immediately the guy says to me "mind if I sit down?"

..So he did. In the first 5 minutes of talking to me he mentioned that:

1. He's amazed at the property prices in wickenburg
2. the motor bike that he wants to buy is a custom trike because he got in a bad car accident and has trouble holding up a motorcycle while stopped at stop-lights or stop-signs
3. his left femur bone is actually from a cadaver as a result of said car accident
4. he doesn't like '57 chevy's but he thinks that the chick in the advertisement he's pointing to is good-lookin'
5. he also doesn't like Camero's because everyone wants one...and he's already owned a few.

At this point I was moderately interested in what he was saying, and was pretty convinced he wasn't gonna shank me, so I engaged him..

"so you've owned some camero's eh?"

"Yeah, I also owned a '73 dodge charger, some trans ams, a '69 z28 camero with a 302, and a '70 chevelle SS454"

"Is that the big block?" (I don't know shit about cars, but I think I heard that 302 or 454 or something had to do with the size of engines)

"mmmhmmm, It could do the quarter (1/4 mile drag strip?) in the low 10's (close to 10 seconds?)"

This entire time I had my field notebook with me and wrote the entire conversation down, to which this guy apparently took no notice.

"sweet car, how come you don't have it now?"

"I joined the navy...plus my parents were holding on to a Dodge dart that I drove around"

"hmm"

"yeah, I also got hold of a '69 roadrunner - you know the 440 with a six pack"

"oh, you hold on to a car that cherry" (this is actually a line from the movie tommy boy, I'm glad I worked it into a conversation...I know the words to this entire movie, and its not because I watched it over and over, the reason I do know the words is a long story...)

"yeah, there were only 460 of them ever made, because the '69 came with a 383...if you wanted one with the 440, you had to custom order it"

right at this very moment, one of those car-carrier trucks came by, and on the back of it was 3 SS454 Cameros. it was probably just a fucking crazy coincidence, but I kinda got that freaked out hitchiker-in-the-desert vibe...like I was about to find out that this entire town was populated with classic car-owning elderly people wielding hand-tools recently purchased from small hardware stores, and I'd soon be chopped up.

Luckily:

him: "well, didn't mean to talk your ear off..."

me: "alright"

and then he left.

No more Music I"m listening too..

2007-03-27T07:58:00.000-07:00

I had to delete my automatically updating "music I'm listening too" thing, because here at my new work, I don't have administrative rights on my computer so I can't install the Last.fm software. which is too bad. Being the asshole music snob I am, I always find it ineresting to think about music, and what people are listening to.

I like hardcore music, music that I think the majority of people find fucking repellent. Thats actually one of many reasons that I like it.

The thing is, no matter how obscure a band I think I know - some hardcore band from nowhereville, USA who put out 1 7" record back in 1986 - There's always someone else who has been listening. Its kind interesting to browse the last.fm site for that reason.

Take for example the band Outspoken. They released 1 full length record, and 7" records in their career, in addition to a few songs on comps and other shit. Not a hugely popular band by any means, but If you go to Last.FM and look around there are at least 6 other people that have listened to this band in the last week....and not just any outspoken song, but "Daydream" one of the best fucking hardcore songs ever written.

There's tons of people in the world, and I know that at least 6 of them listen to the same obscure shit that I do. So there may not be a way for you to see what I'm listening to anymore on this website, but I'll still post about it anyway.

what's the point of this post? FUCK CORPORATE POLICY!

Let me see what we have here...

2007-03-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

...Nothing. How come the guy who "runs" this stupid blog never posts anymore? He's just a contributor to the massive amounts of SHIT on the internet. Just another narcississtic scumbag who goes online, spends half of a bored afternoon customizing a shitty little "blog", posts 3 times, and then lets it ROT like so much other internet crap.

Why do people abandon blogs so quickly? its a fact that most people do, and if you glance over the stats, you might say "well Joe's over the age of 29...no one that old fucking wastes time with blogs, or if they do, they've already made the commitment to post on them seriously."

I don't know about that. There's lots of loser websites that try to provide insight as to why people stop blogging. To be honest, there's alot of reasons given, most of which seem to be at least plausible.

I think there's another reason: most people's lives are really boring. I haven't posted in a few days, going on the order of more than a week now, and I think "what can I write about on my blog"? Have I seen any interesting geology? have I done anything cool? has there been a news clip that really interested me or pissed me off?

Not really. There's been some basic things happen, work is more demanding since I took a new job..thats a big thing. I've been trying to get other stuff done, and everytime I sit down at the computer, I end up playing video games or surfing bullshit websites.

But maybe I haven't really tried. I haven't fucking thought about how to express the happenings of my life into blog form - which, to be honest, I thought I'd never have a problem with, because my entire mind-set is based around short 35 second blips of interest and attention span. Case in Point: after starting this post, I'm down here in like the 5th paragraph thinking to myself "damn, wrap it up Gilbert, your not even interested in writing anymore about this"...

The bottom-line? Cataclasite won't fall into the abyss of shitty abandoned blogs. while my posts are a bit more sparse, I'm gonna make a commitment to the many readers of this site to update it...starting with this post.

Cataclasis Confessional #1

2007-03-19T11:50:00.000-07:00

Today's Confession: Food that I really like that is really shitty:

1. Ramen Noodles. I love these. they are nutritionally worthless, cheap, shitty, garbage, but I'd eat them everyday if people would let me.

2. Mac and Cheese. Had a serious in-depth barroom discussion about this food group on saturday. its the perfect meal. fuck you if you don't like it. The Whole grain ones from rich organic food co-ops or the cheap shit ones from the grocery store, I like them all.

3. Burger King Chicken Sandwich. yeah, I said it....I like them. I liked them before dane cook worked the bk loungepiss off.

4. Hostess Twinkies. Me and twinkies go way back, and yeah, they're made with animal fat, so your loser vegan-bullshit won't work. I've even made them from scratch before.

What do you have?

what the fuck?!?!

2007-03-19T11:49:00.000-07:00

Geology Pic - Ice Grillz!

2007-03-15T07:11:00.000-07:00

So I've decided to just keep posting geology shit, regardless of the day, since its obvious that I can't stick to a Friday schedule with work and such.

This past week I was out doing field work in Crested Butte. One of our tasks was to dig out the entrance to this old mine adit, go in, and service a trough that was in there.

As it turned out, the mine adit was buried under no less than 15 feet of snow - completely blocked.

After tear-assing around on snowmobiles for 2 hours, and then 1 hour of shoveling we finally were able to get into the adit, and saw some really really cool ICE.

There were two main types in the adit: nice crystalline crusts on all of the overhanging adit beams, and large completely clear stalagmites of ice that apparently formed from water dripping from the ceiling of the adit.

There's a classic question in Mineralogy: is water a mineral? according to the classic definition of a mineral, Ice is indeed a mineral, it just has a melting point much lower than the ambient air temperature in many parts of the world.

Water crystallizes in the hexagonal crystal system, which means that while it may look wierd and different and that "no two snowflakes will ever look alike", Ice crystals always have six 2-fold symmetric axes.

If you look close in the below picture (as always, click to enlarge), you'll see a number of ice crystals, and they all have six sides. Its kinda cool because ice doesn't usually form nice big crystals like this, its usually snow, or frozen amorphous ice, or in random cubes slowly cooling down a gin and tonic. To be sure, the temperature of the air in which the ice crystals form has more to do with how the crystals will look than anything. Colder air will form different ice crystals than warmer air will.

Here's another pic:

The same principle is true for alot of minerals. In fact pyrite and other sulfide minerals are often associated with copper, gold and silver. in order for gold and silver mineralization to occur, groundwater has to be at an appropriate temperature and condition. So, if you want to find the gold, look for the pyrite crystals that have the right shape. The shape of crystals is called the habit. The same mineral can occur with many different habits.

EDIT: my good friend sara (without the "h") suggested that these crystals look kinda like Depth Hoar- an ice crystal morphology that I was unfamiliar with. Apparently depth hoar forms by sublimation within snowpack, and can contribute to snow instability in avalanche prone regions.

The crystals above were formed inside of a mine adit, where humidity was higher than ambient air, and the crystals formed on the cross-beams in the adit. Could these crystals have formed in the same way as depth hoar - by the nucleation of water vapor? seems both possible and likely... Thanks for the suggestion Sara!

Another Habit in the mine adit was these wierd looking amorphous clear ice stalagmites:

I'm not exactly sure how these formed, but they were everywhere. My wife told me that they all looked like "just a bunch of dildos". Not sure if thats how my Mineralogy professor in college would have classified them, but I guess the resemblance is close enough.

Cataclasite is back online!

2007-03-13T18:56:00.000-07:00

Though the quality posts will wait until tomorrow...

On tap:

-A belated geology pic
-My ongoing un-healthy, and self-destructive anger at Denver's mass transit system
-My completely worthless opinion on professional life
-Another Geology pic

Stay tuned!!!!!

Happy Birfthday Uranus

2007-03-13T18:48:00.000-07:00

Uranus was discovered today in 1781.......

................ANUS!

Cataclasis, back on Haitus...again!

2007-03-04T07:50:00.000-08:00

I've got some field work for the Crested Butte Project next week, so I won't be posting for 3 days after today.

Don't worry, I'm bringing the camera, and I intend to have a "crested butte part 4" completed soon.

this time I hope to have pictures of 3 tons of water samples being jumped by a flaming snowmobile.

stay tuned...