So Uncyclopedia have an entry on geologists, which includes a secion on How to Spot a Geologist in the wild.

 

Lets see how effective it is……

 

• Someone who has the longest occupational description on Uncyclopedia (and has looked at all the other occupations to confirm while consuming large quantities of alchohol).

Yes, I’ve done this….

• Hand-lens, compass, pen-knife, handcuffs etc. tied round neck with string.

Yes, I’ve done this sort of thing…..although on field trips and not a daily basis as it would confuse the norms.

• Someone awkward and unsure around people who don’t know the difference between a rock and a mineral

Add to that those think that Geology is ‘just about rocks’.

• Someone with a beard and Sandals… Jesus was a Geologist (actually, carpenters back then were also stonemasons, so there is some truth to that statement)

Sadly being female I can’t do the facial hair thing but I do have sandles.  And if there was a Jesus and he was a carpenter then I guess that fits.

• Someone who owns a pet rock and is not eight (in the case of paleontologists, this will be their closest friend), with said ‘pet’ often found hanging from keys.

I have various rocks squirrelled about the place, and whilst I don’t currently have a rock on my key ring I do have a little metal T-Rex on it.

• Someone with over enthusiasm on the subject of dinosaurs and who cringes when a dinosaur is called a reptile.

I mostly do hard rocks, anything with a fossil in it needs to go back in the ground and be baked for a few more million years.  But yes, Dino’s are fraking shiney.

• Someone who outgrew geology, started a brewery, and is now in politics.

I’ve not yet outgrown geology so that doesn’t count.

• Someone explaining to airport security that a sidewall core covered in gunpowder residue isn’t really a weapon.

I’ve not been allowed to play with explosives yet 🙁

• Someone who only includes people in photos for scale, and has more pictures of his/her rock hammer and lens caps than of family and friends. Especially *Someone who uses their new baby for scale (Oh God..the horror!)

Yes, I’ve even used SoS for this

• Someone who, if they could travel to Jupiter’s moon, IO, would think the coolest part about it was the volcanoes and not the space travel.

Space is cool……but sulpher volcanoes!!!!!  WANT!!!!!  SIDE TRIP TO OLYMPUS MONS ON THE WAY!

• Someone with a collection of beer cans/bottles that rivals the size of his rock collection.

I don’t do beer, I’m a spirits person.

• Someone lighting a cigarette with a handlens focussing the sunlight, or a coat hanger stretched between the battery terminals of a University van.

As a non-smoker this doesn’t apply.

• Someone who brings beer instead of water when hiking.

See above about not drinking beer.

• Someone whose lunch consists of rocks, instead of ordinary bread. Shale lightly sprinkled in Halite mostly.

Om nom nom……sounds tastey 😉

• Someone who consumes tonsil-killing chili for dinner every night of the week, and warms it up in a can on the drill rig engine block.

Hmmmm……..I don’t quite have an asbestos mouth but I do like a good chili.

• Someone whose child is trained to know the geologic timescale before being able to walk.

I don’t have my own children yet, but when I do have them they’re going to be trained up in the noble Science of Geology 🙂

• Someone explaining to airport security that just because his/her safety boots are covered in high-explosive (usually ANFEX) residue, it doesn’t mean he/she is a terrorist

Again, no one will let me play with explosives at the moment. 🙁

• Someone with hair in a pony-tail (this applies to male or female geologists).

I have been known to tie my hair back on many an occassion.

• Someone who considers a “recent event” to be anything that has happened in the last hundred million years.

50,000 years is the youngest we’ll tend to go…….although for quaternary stuff we do have to deal in the tiny change time spans.  But yes, anything less than 50,00 is too recent……it’s why you shouldn’t lend Geologists money…..

• Someone who licks and/or scratches & sniffs rocks or in case of china clay will eat it to prove it’s perfectly safe.

Yes, I’ve done this

• Someone who eats dirt and claims to be “getting an estimate of grain size”

I’m not a sedimentologist, I have standards.

• Someone who will willingly cross an eight-lane interstate on foot to determine if the outcrops are the same on both sides.

We don’t have interstates in the UK…..but yes, if it was called for I’d pop across if at all possible.  If you can dodge traffic you can dodge a ball.

• Someone who considers causing a four-lane pile-up on the highway by examining outcrops while driving, as acceptable behaviour.

Hmmmm….tricky…..I ight damage the rocks already in my car.

• Someone who can pronounce the word molybdenite correctly on the first try.

Can’t everyone?

• Someone who has hiked 6 miles to look at a broken fence that was “offset by a recent earthquake”.

I don’t live anywhere near a significantly active fault zone 🙁

• Someone who says “this will make a nice Christmas gift” while out rock collecting.

Almost, mine was easter presents 😀

• Someone who thinks a “sexual exploit” is lying naked on an outcrop so the satellite will photograph them on the next pass.

I wouldn’t inflict my naked body on anyone like that.

• Someone who hires student assistants with an eye to whether they can run slower so the bears get them first.

I don’t do field work in bear country……personally I’d want them to be able to carry the rock samples I collected.

• Someone who can jump start a campfire in wet weather with the judicious application of a beer fart.

Again, I don’t drink beer.

• Someone who from personal experience knows the difference between Arctic grade and summer grade diesel fuel.

I’ve never driven a diesel.

• Someone who even on an average day in the field can make Indiana Jones look like a bit of a klutzy wuss

Oh yeah!  Scampering over boulders is the best 🙂

• Someone who looks at scenery and tells you how it formed.

Hell yeah!

• Someone whose pockets tend to be filled with bits of rock.

Yep, i even grabbed a couple of pockets of sand once…..but that was for a postal prank……

• Someone whose rockery moved into their spare room and had replaced the goldfish.

Pretty much

• Someone who has more pairs of hiking boots than shoes.

I tend not to, just the one pair of boots for me.  Although to be fair what i wear for trainers tends to be walking shoes……I never know when I need to go offroad.

• Someone who knows that Lagerstätten isn’t beer, but wishes it was.

Again with the not drinking beer thing.  Also if thats something fossily and palaeo it’ll send me to sle……ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……..

• Someone who wears hiking boots constantly, even for formal functions, and occasionally sandals with (obligatory) socks

See comment above about my ‘trainers’, and so long as I can count LARP then i’ve done the formal functions thing too.

• Someone who thinks of woodlice as trilobites but would tell anyone off who said so.

Don’t you even DARE say it…….I’m watching you!!!!!

• Someone who, when on a beach, will collect shells and try to explain their muscle scars to you.

I don’t do fossils……

• Someone who prefers to explain the sequence of events shown in a cliff face to sunbathing.

Cliff faces are so much more interesting though!!

• Someone whose collection of petrified wood samples is stacked like cord wood.

Not had a chance to go ‘shopping’ in a petrified forest……

• Someone who plans extra time on trips to investigate road cuts along the way.

Depends what I’m doing.

• Someone who almost crashes his/her car looking at road cuts while driving.

I have been known to turn my neck from time to time……

• Someone who often explains how their boozy coffee with whipped cream resembles a layered igneous complex.

I don’t do coffee, but sub in hot chocolate and you’re there!

• Someone who knows the phylum, kingdom, and genus of every ancient creature lodged in stone, some of which look nothing like an animal, but can’t remember his/her mother’s, or spouse’s, birthday.

Again with the not doing fossils thing

• Someone who uses a geologic hammer to halve a boiled egg, open a coconut, open a melon, crack nuts, or generally open any tough to get at food.

The norms won’t let me……

• Someone who modifies his/her pace to one meter in order to simplify pace-and-compass mapping.

Yes, done that

• Someone whose radioactive ore specimen collection glows in the dark. It is so bright you can:
  • use it to read by.
  • illuminate your front yard.
  • use it as a landing beacon.
  • see it from Mars.

Like with the explosives, no one will let me play with this stuff yet 🙁

• Someone who can identify the chemical formula for Cummingtonite…and chuckles like a junior-high kid every time.

Are you Cummingtonite or is it just the way you’re standing 😉

• Someone stuck on the side of the road without a spare tire because it was removed to make more room for samples or alcohol (or the spare is already being used on the other side of the van).

Never been my problem….I’ve bought my booze once I’ve got there 🙂

• Someone who, when asked what this rock is says, “Leverite, so leave her right there.”

Theres also fubarite too!

• Someone who compulsively peels pack moss and topsoil in the woods, just in case there are rocks underneath.

I <3 rocks!!!

• Someone unwilling to improve their personal situation, resigned to the fact that the sun will explode in 5 billion years anyways.

It’s true, but we’ve gotta try something right?

• Someone who walks out of a bathroom and asks if you noticed the fossils in the stall dividers.

Again, fossils are under done rocks…….but I do this with any sort of rocks in a toilet…..or for the bar…..curb stones get a look at…..and building stones…….I think I’ll stop there…..

• Someone prone to Linnean mnemonic devices such as Keep Privates Clean Or Forget Getting Screwed.

Cambridge Ordinand Silently Developes Carbunles at Permanent Trial by Jury for Creationists…….Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous……

• Someone who can only relate to one “Rock Band” (besides BIF): Are We Not Men, We Are Devonian!

Must be a yankee reference……

• Someone who enjoys their topography: Subduction leads to orogeny, and orogeny leads to relief.

Oooooo……….yyyeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

• Someone who walks into an art museum and looks at the floors and columns commenting on the stylolites and fossils, rather than looking at the paintings.

Yes…….art work is generally more boring than fossils…….

• Someone whose shorts expose way more leg than you ever wanted to see.

Well they arn’t that short……but no one wants to see my pastey white legs!

• Someone who rocks the party and is the schist everywhere they go.

AWWWWWWRIIIIIIGGGGGHHHHHHT!!!!!!!

• Someone whose sentences begin with the phrase, “Let me tell you what happened here.”

Should I just hang my head in shame at this point?

• Someone who can say, “Gneiss Cleavage” or talks about slaty cleavage and means it in a non-derogatory sense.

The angle of cleavage is *very* important.

• Someone who has to point out that your kitchen worktop is NOT made of granite and after a seemingly non-sensical crash course in petrology (involving many ‘diagrams’ and supposed ‘writing’) will even produce their trusty hand-lens to show you.

Close enough…….I know someone with a lovely basalt hearth stone……they get very antsy and angry when I point out it’s not a granite as they were told after they picked it.

• Someone who gets really upset when the countertop, which is obviously mafic/aphanitic/metamorphic, is called granite and takes 20 minutes to tell you why you’re wrong.

See above…….said people want me to refer to this basalt as a granite……I will burn my degree certificate first!!!!

• Someone who has an odd obsession with Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek etc…and often dresses the part!

YES!!!!  Larper 😉  Mead is tastey 🙂

• Someone who can’t use a street map because it doesn’t have contour lines.

I’m good with maps no matter what type.

• When helping someone move and you ask “is this box full of rocks?” They answer “yes, be careful.”

Yes…..previously mentioned rocks are mostly in a box in the garage…..

• Someone who always carries a small squeezy bottle of vinegar in their pocket

I’m not *that* demented……

• Someone unsympathetic at the prospect of extinction for the long-haired woolly-horn red-butt moose, replying “Glaciers woulda killed him off in 10,000 years anyways.”

Extinction will happen to every species….

• Someone who when colouring, stays between the lines. Always.

Yes, but thats for mapping and we don’t do as much as geographers.

• Someone who scoffs when they see your compass doesn’t have a clinometer as standard.

I have pity on the norms and don’t do this openly

• Someone who will drink whiskey from funnels at parties in place of lager.

Whiskey is foul…….but I’ll go for some peach schnapps that way 🙂

• Someone who selfdescribes his character as: “I’m gneiss, but don’t take it for granite!”

It’s not my fault that my personality is grabben your attention 😉

• Someone who insists on wearing shorts and flip-flops in the dead of winter “so their toes can breathe”. Only in really cold weather will they wear hiking boots with their shorts.

I’m a geologist…..i’m always hardcore!  It ain’t rain till it’s horizontal and going through EVERY layer of clothing.

• Someone throws huge pieces of pumice at strangers to determine if they are acceptable to befriend.

I wouldn’t want to waste the pumice……precioussss

• Someone who has a moustache or excessive facial hair.

I’m a girl so I’ll have to pass on this one

• Someone who takes baths in crude oil.

I prefer showers

• Someone who has a holster for their rock hammer.

I have holsters for both of my hammers……..

 

Womble