Category: General

Yesterday I reported on the Lagnley Schools Music Project. Its a recording made in 1977 in a Canadian Gym by grade school students.

I’m addicted to it. Everyone I let listen to it has caught the bug immediately.

I can’t explain it, but you must listen to this. You just must. If you don’t get it after listening to it, then you are beyond help.

The music is in no way professional. The recording is subpar. The instruments are nothing more than a guitar and some chimes. And yet…..I’ve listened to their version of God Only Knows over 100 times in the last day and purchased the entire album.

This is feel good music in the most literal sense of the word. You can’t listen to these kids sing “Saturday Night” by the Bay City Rollers and not get a smile on your face.

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I also got a haircut on Sunday. It wasn’t just a haircut, but an Xtreme haircut. My hair is so short that I can barely pinch any between my thumb and forefinger. I would only slightly be exaggerating to say I have more hair on my face than on my head. The only reason I bring this up is because since I got this haircut, I’ve had a tremendous amount of energy and have been amazingly productive.

I should flesh out a theory of how hair is a manifestation of negative energy and try to become a guru and sell books. If you think about it, hair is dead. A full head of hair is a head of death. A bald head is a “life head”.

This idea just gets better as I write it.

Since I’m on an update tear, here is a list of the music I’ve been listening to this week:

• I Feel Love by The Blue Man Group w/ Annette Strean. I really like the video of this. She is adorable and has a great voice. I like Blue Man anyhow (I’ve seen them twice so far). Her facial expressions are the type I think every guy wants a woman to make.
• Dear Prudence by Siouxsie and the Banshees. I heard this on 89.3 in my car and purchased it on iTunes when I got home. I’ve almost driven it into the ground, but not quite.
• Us by Regina Spektor. I got this one from Halley. She reminds me a lot of a Tori Amos and/or Fiona Apple (Regina Spektor that is).
• Space Oddity by The Langley Schools Music Project. This is pretty F’d up right here. Its a bunch of Canadian grade school kids singing David Bowie’s Space Oddity. It was recorded in 1977. For whatever reason I was looking at the celebrity play list on iTunes for Elijah Wood and it was listed. Its wierd and addictive.
• God Only Knows by The Beach Boys. I also have a very of this by the above mentioned Langley Schools Music Project. I think it might be the sweetest song every written.
• Etude #2 by Luciano Supervielle. Phillip Glass’s private label Orange Mountain Music just released a CD of techno/ambient covers of his music. This is a version of Glass’s Etude #2, which might be my favorite piece of music of all time. Its a very subtle rendition insofar as I didn’t even know it was Etude #2 until about 45 seconds in.
• Pink & Blue by Outkast. There is been at least one song by Outkast in my current favorites playlist now for over a year.

In a world where you have instant access to almost every piece of music recorded, its difficult to find new things to listen to. The above list is pretty eclectic, as are the sources I got them from. I’m posting it just because it might take someone off on their own musical tanget if they take moment to listen.

I should have written most of this while I was on the road, but now I guess I have the luxury to write everything with a bit of reflection. I do have some entries that I put on my laptop that I made in Argentina, but I will post that later. Here are random thoughts and observations:

• Argentina had a military dictatorship in the 70s. There was absolutly nothing which referenced or alluded to that during my trip except for one sign I saw outside of a historical building in Cordoba.
  
  

  I don’t think you need to know spanish to figure out what is says…

• Nowhere did I see any beer or soda in a keg or founatin. Everything was in bottles. If you went to a bar, you got a big bottle of beer and glasses. All of the normal bottles of Coke/Diet Coke were glass. The 2L bottles were plastic.
• Due to a strike at the airline we were flying from Cordoba to Buenos Aires, we had to take a bus. The bus was far and away the nicest bus I’ve ever been on. All the buses looked like double decker Greyhound buses. The seats were all leather and were wider and had more legroom than a first class airline seat. You could easily sleep in the seat…..which we had to do.
• Meat. My God they like meat. We had a meal at a restaurant for 5 people with wine (3 bottles). The meat was all you can eat, and it wasn’t cheap-o meat either. It was big hunks of steak and rib. Total cost for 5 people with the exchange rate was $40. The exchange rate makes most stuff cheap, and food is additionally cheap on top of that. Ate at a buffet one night (very nice) that was less than $5.
• I still know nothing about the Argentinian revolution, but they are celebrating their bicentenial in 2010. They allude to the revolution on all their currency and many official signs/postings. Interesting how we may put the faces of founding fathers on money, but never refer to “the revolution”, but rather “the revolutionary war”.
• Argentina seems to be a nation shooting itself in the foot economically. They are very closed and protectionist compared to other Latin countries. The husband of one of the scientists we worked with ran a company in Guatamala and said business conditions there were better than Argentina. I was really suprised by that statement.
• When we use the term “Latin” in the non-ancient Roman sense of the word, we are almost exclusively using it to reference the world south of the US border. However, I heard many more reference to the word encompassing all the latin countries in Europe as well. I think the Argentinians view themselves as a European country more than a “latin america” country. (And there is some truth to that statement. Most of the population is descended from Spanish, Italian, or Swiss immigrants.)
• Much of our view of Latin America seems to come from Mexico. We tend to see all of it through the lens of Mexico or Central America. Other than language, Argentina seemed very very different. People have talked to me since my trip who assumed their cusine was similar to Mexican. It’s totally different. No tortillas anywhere .
• They REALLY like soccer.
• I had a geology student at a party come up and ask me in broken english if a) we really landed on the moon and b) if we had aliens in Area 51. I was sort of dumbfounded and I don’t think he got the reference when I told him we didn’t have aliens in Area 51, but we did in Area 51a.

I have photos up on Flickr now and you may see random ones appear on the left. I have a few short movie clips I’ll be adding soon.

Since my last update, I’ve come back from the wilderness of Colorado, spent a month learning rock magentism, traveled to south america and started the fall semester. I also got a 3rd level 60 character in World of Warcraft….

I have ton of photos I have to upload and will be doing it soon. I’m sort of back into a normal routine now so I hope to be updating more.

Its July 7, and I’m off for another three weeks. This time I will have no electricity so I don’t know if I will be able to keep a log or anything. We’ll see. Here is the last of what I had from the last camp:

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Friday, June 24, 2005

Its friday, but it seems like a Monday because we just had a day off and we have to start a new mapping project today. We are now going to start mapping Block Mountain, which is, from what I understand, geologically more complex and has more vertical distance to run up and down. Super. Its near Frying Pan Gulch, so I’m assuming it has the same barren desert-like landscape.

Yesterday was nice. I was able to catch up on all my email and talk to some of my friends. Bozeman is a nice town. A nice change of pace to what we’ve been dealing with. It seems like the upscale, touristy area of Montana. They had lots of high end clothing shops, art galleries and such that you probably wouldn’t find anywhere else in Montana.

I still have the reminants of two cactus needles in my right index and middle finger tips. They are still sore.

I have to get the map for the new area this morning and outline exactly what our field area will be. I’m also trying to limit my caloric intake at breakfast and lunch. I’m burning way more calories, but I’m also consuming more as well. We’ll see how this works for a few days. I’ll aslo have to increase my water consumption significantly.

Sunday June 26, 2005

I had no update yesterday because I went to sleep really early, which I also did on Friday. Yesterday we got stuck in a hail storm with marble sized hail. It hurt like hell. I got hit in the head several times and there was no where we could take shelter. Its about 7:30am right now and its raining again. Given how things have operated thus far, I can only assume we will be sent out into the rain. Rain itself isn’t so bad, but at this elevation the rain is very cold and it hails very easily. Also, in our mapping area, there are lots of gullys and creeks which come alive during rainstorms which make moving difficult. Wet rocks with moss are also slippery.

After today, we have 2 days of mapping left in Block Mountain, then the field exam, then an office day, and I think we then leave on Friday. We stay overnight on Friday at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.

Unless today gets called on account of rain, we will have gotten one day off in 23 days on this trip.

Monday, June 27, 2005

Its about 8pm on Monday evening. We have one more day in the field and one more day for the field exam, and then we’re done…until advanced field camp starts.

My feet are killing me every day. The rest of my body isn’t tired or sore in any way anymore, just my feet. It feels better to walk in my sandals than it does to walk in my boots.

Today we had a sudden thunderstorm with hail and lightening. It lasted about 15 min total. It was a very cool storm cloud. It was circular and looked like the big UFO’s from Independence Day. I took some photos and hopefully they came out.

I have several sets of photos I’ve taken where if I can stitch them together I will be able to make panoramic photos.

The schedule we kept for this camp was pretty brutal. One day off in 23. The other schools we saw in the field didn’t seem to be doing anything this extreme. Its something I hope they look at for next year. I’m really hoping that advanced camp doesn’t keep a schedule anywhere close to this. Living outside for three weeks with crappy living conditions would only make it worse.

I think we have most of our map for Block Mountain done. There are some spots which are really messed up and folded back upon itself.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

I’m done with Block Mountain. Just the field examp tomorrow, and I’m not too worried about that. Its 3/4 of a section area (1 sq mile) and all day to do it. I removed my gel insoles and replaced with them with the ones that came with the shoe and my feet felt better today. Granted, I also didn’t walk as much, but I think the lack of a insole sliding around in my shoe was key.

We have this evening, next evening, and all of Thursday to finish the Block Mountain map, of which, we are farther along with at this point than we were with Frying Pan Gulch.