Quatrain CCCXXXIII: That Song from Queen and David Bowie
Slow doth the grinding of the elder stone,
Through eons vast, the weary plates shift.
A schism yawns where ancient seams hath grown,
And time itself doth bow, yet changeth naught but drift.
The keynote speech, as delivered by X.D. Knoopsgat, Doctor of Bollocks in Philosophy and also Geology, to the Convention of Hard Science & Rockhounding, Aberfoil, Alabama:
My fellow Americans, And other people, “Why did the geologist break up with his partner? There was too much friction! Ha! A little joke to break the ice. Ha! Break the ice! Geology is so funny.”
Anyway…
Now, to begin with, plate tectonics are incredibly slow. It takes a really long time for anything to happen. A long, long, lòng, long, LONG, long time. And when I say ‘happen,’ what I actually mean is, not that much at all, really. Like, millimeters. (25, 4 of those in an inch, other people.) Per year. So, it is entirely feasible, even for us hardcore researchers, that the average unwitting citizen out there might think that there’s really nothing going on at all. That all of us geo’s, us molechasers, us hardnosed drillbits, if you will, are just making stuff up in order to receive a monthly paycheck. I can NOT underscore strongly enough, however, how this is not true! Geology is real! It is! It is! And I will prove it to you! Yeah, you go ahead and call security! I don’t care! I’ll be done before they get here! Rock on, fellows!
Satantango (1994)
Don’t worry. I welded all the exits shut. Now, I have prepared a little video demonstration. And when I say ‘little,’ I do kind of mean the opposite. Yes. Our first feature presentation will take a mere 7 hours and 19 minutes. Oh, pipe down! What? You have something better to do? No, you don’t; you’re geologists. So, sit down and be quiet. Put that chair down! I will not tolerate this insubordination!
Now, then. What is this? Set in a desolate post-communist Hungarian village, Satantango follows the lives of the townspeople as they deal with greed, betrayal, and the return of the enigmatic conman Irimias. Told in twelve loosely connected steps (Satan… Tango!), the film uses extremely long takes and slow pacing to explore human behavior, social decay, and the passage of time. And when I say ‘extremely long takes,’ I do kind of mean exactly that. The film opens with literally a 10-minute shot following a herd of cows.
Yes. The land is dreary and falling apart, yet somehow mesmerizing. The scenery is both bleak and captivating, with soggy ground and crumbling structures that still manage to be strangely beautiful. All in atmospheric black & white, of course. So, obviously, there are those who consider this an epic masterpiece, and, of course, there are those who find this a single, endless, gray, supremely tedious, long, more gray, very long, and unbearably slow ordeal. Like geology! So, which one are you?
Fun fact: when we’re done watching this, this entire convention will actually have shifted some 0.025 millimeters to the south west.
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
“Geology is the study of pressure and time. That’s all it takes, really: pressure, and time.” – Red
I must take a moment now, ladies and gentle people, to tip my (ice)cap to my great colleague, Mr. Dufresne, who is currently NOT a wanted fugitive, hiding out in Zihuatanejo, with his man Red. No, not at all. No, because he never actually escaped, you see. Yes, he tried, alright! For nineteen years, he scraped and fiddled with his little rock hammer! And then, when he was finally done, he got into his tunnel, with his little satchel tied to his ankle, and he crawled through “five hundred yards of shit-smelling foulness I can’t even imagine.” Yeah. And then he got stuck. And died.
And so, my fellow sediment sniffers, my dear friend became, in a way, part of geology himself. You know, as his rotting remains in that sewer slowly returned to the Earth? Yes. But then, of course, along came Mr. King, with his imagination and whatnot, and he had to turn it into the greatest story about geology ever told. So thanks for that, Mr. King. For realz, man.
Salut, Andy. I’m sure Rita Hayworth awaits you in heaven, bro. Peace out. Mic drop.
The Core (2003)
(Picking up mic again.) The next feature I’d like to share with you, my dear, captivated audience, is sheer schizophrenic. On the one hand, it’s a complete and utter insult to the greatest of all geologists, the Granddaddy of Granite, the Master of Plaster, King of the scraped away Hill himself: Jules Verne! Yes! With his magnificent hero epic that is Journey to the Centre of the Earth, he laid the very foundation for our entire field! And to then bear witness, all of us, right here and now, to how the pure evil of Hollywood, personified by Jon Amiel, takes this grand story and turns it into this hot, steaming pile of dreck! By the slowly gyrating plates of Gondwana! How evil must I be to let you suffer through all this? Well…
But on the other hand… It’s utterly brilliant. A true masterpiece. The greatest work of non-fiction and hard science fact known to man. Allow me to explain.
Oppenheimer. Einstein. Turing. Notice anything? All these great scientists, all having their own movies. And where are the geologists? Probably scraping away dirt in some godforsaken, boiling hot piece of wasteland hellscape somewhere, yes, but not in the movies! So, therefore, The Core stands as an enduring testament, forever and once more righting this terrible, horrible, unjust pox on the face of science, if not, indeed, the world itself. Thank you, Aaron Eckhart. I hereby declare you Honorary Consul of Geology, Esquire. May thee live forever. And procreate and whatnot.
How the Earth Was Made (2009)
This is, for all intents and purposes, in essence and, pun once more intended, at its core, both in this strange fictional world that is the Good Book and also out there, in the cold, hard (damn, I’m rolling. Of thereon.) actual and real world, an excellent TV series about, as its title sort of kind of already gave away, how the Earth was made. Yes. Geo’s forever! Rock on.
127 Hours (2010)
Now, then. A man, who is James Franco, goes climbing. He falls and gets his arm stuck beneath a huge boulder. He’s all alone and unable to get help. What does he do? Well, after suffering horribly for five days on end (even longer than Jesus!), drinking his own urine, and other unpleasantness, he uses a self-made pulley system to first break the bones in his arm and then, using a multi-tool, amputates it. Slowly. Yes.
Now, my question to you is this: what if he happened to film his ordeal with a camcorder? So you could actually see, watch, and let it sink into your brain, these images of how he, slowly and meticulously, cuts his own arm off? Would you watch that? Would you watch such utter horror? Such extreme torture porn, bordering on snuff movie?
Of course you would. We are all, after all, horrible little voyeurs who like nothing more than to watch our fellow man squirm in agony while we fuse with our couch and stuff our faces full of Doritos. Also, spoilers. Oops. Next!
Troll (2022)
Now, what if an actual mountain got up and started walking? And what if that walking mountain happened to have a real rotten attitude towards… well, basically everything, but towards those tiny, vaguely annoying humans specifically, for waking him from his slumber? And he was ugly, to boot? Well, you shoot many rockets at it, of course. Which annoys it even more.
What if then this basalt behemoth started making his way to Oslo (we are in Norway, yes), while on the way trampling on all but the kitchen sink? And then also on the kitchen sink, as well as the rest of the city? And cows, too? And yet, the humans that are after him can’t find him. He’s hiding! Yes. How does a troll the size of a mountain hide from humans? By impersonating a rock.
The nuclear option gets called in, obviously, but, before it comes to that, one of our dapper little humans discovers you can defeat a walking mountain by luring him away from the city using a skull of a baby troll in the back of a truck and then exposing it to lots of tanning beds. Yes. I love this movie.
Right! So, now you know. Geology is real. Yes. As real as the Good Book itself. Now, before I let you out of here and turn myself in to the authorities, I wanted to share with you a quote I found in that same book: ‘here’s a blowtorch. Now goeth forth and cutteth your own way outeth.’
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