POSTMODERN GEOLOGY 102 A

Holocene Petrology  for Deconstructon Majors 

Trinitite
The first rock of the Postmodern epoch is a violet, obsidian-like lithic fused from the White Sands of southern New Mexico. This thin stratum of  un-natural glass  emplaced in a shallow anticline has a tritium age of 6.1 milli-eons, a few weeks older than the examples from the Terminal Showa formation of southern Japan. Younger deposits  exist in Kazakhstan ,the Lop Nor basin in China, and sedimentary rocks in India and Pakistan. A calcian variety has been reported from some recently vanished Pacific atolls.  All are highly enriched in transuranic elements and look far older than their years.

Saddamite
More mafic than  Maccadamite,this high-temperature no pressure product of extreme thermal metamorphism exists atop the holocene tar sands of Kuwait. Consisting of quartz grains in a matrix of carbon black and asphaltenes, its petrogenesis defies explanation. High nickel and vanadium porphyrin levels suggest an  origin in marine cretaceous petroleum, but no natural or commercial explanation exists for the infernal thermal fluxes required to generate pure carbon in such amounts. There are no signs of natural catastrophe or nuclear winter in the holotype vicinity.

Cryabase

Keystone of the infant science of  neopetrology , cryabase is the only  terrestrial rock consisting enirely of condensed air.  The major minerals in this paragon of igneous minimalism  are native oxygen and nitrogen, with minor ice  II, IIIb & IV , priestlyite (the carbon analog of silica) , argon snowflakes  ,and  minute crystals of  Freon, neon, and radon  Found as aircicles and frost-like masses surrounding  liquid hydrogen tanks, cryabase causes self-inflicted meteor damage to Space Shuttles. Presently rare  outside the Kuiper Belt, cryabase is expected to become depressingly common here  if Senator Inhofe's views on global warming  are indeed correct. Cryabase is dangerous to collect as geologists picks embrittle severely at frozen air temperatures. Attempting  to lick field samples is highly inadvisable.

Saganite

Phenomenally cold and dark variety of cryabase. Arbitrarily small amounts in atmosperic suspension are reportedly able to  lower global temperatures below freezing for 40 days and 40 nights, but the type  specimen published in Science in 1983 seems to have reverted to apocryphite, and has lost this valuable property . See Ttaprophyre

The Ground Zero Gneiss

 

Thus far known only from two mined out deposits in lower Manhattan, this so far unique migmatite exhibits a portlandite matrix with corrugated layers of  zincite encrusted iron , asbestos fibers , and enormous ferrite laths whose grain structure suggests hot deformation. Zones of heavily mylonized gypsum contain mica-like books of carbonized fossil cellulose with angular markings. Unlike exsolution textures in pegmatitic graphic granites, which resemble garbled cuneiform, the GZG graphitites are highly legible, and appear to pertain to world trade.

The Tora Bora Metapeltites
Cave entrance exposures near the Waziristan-Pakistan-Afghanistan syntaxis have yielded fugitive traces of these rare and much sought after products of repeated shock and awesome seismic deformation .Extensive  contamination with clasts of lead, depleted uranium , kevlar and boron carbide frustrate analytical  petrologists seeking to collect the $50 million reward offered for a specimen showing plastically deformed or otherwise flattened microfossils of the elusive  organic phase binladenite  in amounts sufficient for positive DNA identification.New outcrops are constantly being reported and avidly pursued

Ttaprophyre

Geometaphysical phase arising from hermeneutic  metamorphism of a factoidite melange follwed by high-pressure deformation professionel. Ttaprophye was discovered  by  Johnny Carson in 1983 when 'nuclear winter'  suddenly outcropped on The Tonight Show. Specimens  from the Burgess Merideth Shale test marketed as freezer ornaments during the Cold War no longer contain detectable amounts of  Saganite.(formerly Cosmochlore), and are now indistinguishable from the War of the Worlds symplectite reported  near Grovers Mills N.J in 1938. Mutant Ttaprophyre was last seen extending its pseudopods towards unwary viewers in 2006, from warped terranes on PBS and the 20/20 High Spin Zone. Biohazard label required ! Swallowing flaky bits of ttaprophyre may induce Toon deafness, a compulsive belief in hypotheses featured on StarTrek.