New York Hardcore on Donahue

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*

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!

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...

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!

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!

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

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

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

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.

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...

..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"

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

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

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!!!

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

All Engineers are Moronic Assholes

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...

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!

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...

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!

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.