BREA, California – My group of crazy old fart retirees down at the Olde Ship Pub was getting restless. We haven’t maligned anyone in quite a while and when it came to a vote, geophysicists were selected to be the target du jour. No one in the group is a geophysicist so we had to rely on our memories, meaning the task would be far more difficult. The pub’s proprietor overheard the talk of our new project and immediately began icing down another keg of Boddington’s Ale and Guinness Stout. It was going to be a long night and he didn’t want to run out.
You might be a geophysicist if…
Your sampling rate is not how fast you can eat all the free food samples at Costco.
You delight in knowing the difference between Stonely and Rayleigh waves.
For you, migration is not the mass movement of animals.
A stack is not a pile of plates.
The shots you prefer are not found in a bar.
The pinnacle of your career is when the IBM salesman knows your name.
You don’t go to the cinema and wear funny glasses to see 3D.
You’re more of a priesthood than any other oil and gas discipline.
Your vocabulary is the least comprehensible of any other oil and gas discipline.
No geophysicist has ever become the CEO of a major oil company and you wonder why.
Your favorite character in the Disney movie Bambi is Thumper.
Your favorite movie is Gravity.
You can’t explain in less than 30 minutes why you get paid to do what you do.
There are no super-obvious clues to identifying a geophysicist like the radiant nerdiness of an engineer or the drooling lack of hygiene of a geologist. Indeed, geophysicists share some characteristics with engineers such as short-sleeve white shirts, pocket protectors and a love of math. Occasionally you will find a geophysicist who loves field work as much as a geologist, but it’s rare.
This was a tougher assignment than our other character assassinations and we apologize if nothing tickled your fancy, although our waitress claimed that the last time her fancy was tickled she developed a rash.
