Midland RockHounds

111

Some of you, no doubt, are wondering what a rock hound is. Don't feel bad, it's apparently one of the most common questions the team's director of public relations gets asked.

It's simply a slang term for a geologist. Particularly an amateur kind...you know, the sort of person who obsesses about different kinds of rock with a fervor typically associated with birdwatchers who maintain a "life list". But apparently the term can be appplied to just about any geologist.

And there are a lot of geologists in the Midland area, because it's in oil country. Of course it is, you didn't need me to tell you that a city in Texas is in oil country. Anyway, oil in the ground means oil companies in the area, and oil companies in the area means geologists in the area. And someone involved with the team decided to name the team after geologists, and either that same someone or another someone decided (wisely) that Midland Geogologists wasn't really a good name or a particularly exciting one, but Midland Rockhounds worked pretty well. Of course, this happened in the 1990s, when everyone thought it was cool to pretend they were a software company and stick capital letters in the middle of the name, so instead of Midland Rockhounds they went with Midland RockHounds. That trend has pretty much come and gone, but apparently that news hasn't reached Texas yet so they never fixed it.

Of course, an actual rockhound makes for a lousy logo, whether your idea of a rockhound is some nerd boring people to tears with the rock collection that takes up his entire spare bedroom or some nerd working for an oil company while wearing a lab coat and probably getting made fun of behind his back by the people who actually go out to the oil rigs and do real work. (Of course, said nerd spends most of his work week in an air-conditioned office and makes three or four times what they do, so as far as he's concerned the joke's on them.) But if you take the hound part of Rockhou— excuse me, RockHounds literally, you can make something pretty decent. Their first logo, which looked like a canine character from The Flintstones, was pretty bad, but this time they've wisely decided not to make the character in the logo look like it was alive at the same time as all the animals that would eventually become the oil that's now being pumped all over Texas. He doesn't look like an actual geologist, though. He looks more like someone that actually works at the oil rig. And given the grin he's got on his face, it's pretty obvious that he's really proud of the cutting remark he just made about the nerds back at the office.

Stop being so smug, pup. I already told you those guys makes three or four times what you do. As fas as they're concerned, the joke's on you.

Final Score: 111 points.
Penalties: Software, 13 pts; Equipment (egregious), 27 pts; Humanoid, 30 pts; Cartoon, 47 pts; Local, -6 pts.
Bonuses: None.