Metallurgy
Metallurgy (a compound word of Metal and Urge with an extra 'l' in it for political reasons) is simply "the urge of one to be metal." This is usually a mental disease found within circles of mechanical and structural engineers. The diagnosis is often expanded to cover anyone who thinks, dreams, or fantasizes about being mechanical. The sufferer might not want to be a robot, but perhaps merely a motor vehicle, a train, a "love machine," an electric spade, a crane, a chainsaw, or some type steampunk machine.
History[edit]
Metallurgy was first studied by Sivanius Sirius, who recorded the famous YouTube video of David killing Goliath. He had a small background in physics and knew that such a little stone thrown by such a little man couldn't have killed a giant. He found that David had a mental disorder that he termed metallurgy.
He noted the symptoms of the disease in records later preserved at the Great Library of Alexandria. (These survived the Great Fire and can be studied in the Sivanius Reading Room).
During his Lab classes, he experimented with his theories on his lab partner Surius Narayanis. The experiments left a permanent metallurgy in his Parietal lobe. On occasions, Sivanius surreptitiously delivered packages via Hermes Travels.
Wikipedia defines Metallurgy as "a domain of materials science that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their intermetallic compounds, and their compounds, which are called alloys." However, as every upper-level language arts teacher will tell you, Wikipedia cannot be trusted, because it isn't written by people with Ph.D.s, who know every thing about everything.
Diagnosis[edit]
This illness usually is found in men and is usually most noticeable in late junior high through early college. Sufferers may be ridiculed by their cohort as 'nerds' or 'geeks' or both. (Sufferers have an inherent advantage in the ongoing nerd-and-geek war, in that many people with metallurgy believe they are machine guns or tanks.)
People with metallurgy usually hate math (unless it has units tied to it), despite excelling at it. Metallurgists have active social lives, mostly with others of their types, mostly through online video games. This makes diagnosis easier because the clinician often finds so many victims, when looking for one, that he can offer a quantity discount for therapy.
Metallurgists tend to be really skinny with no muscle mass (or really fat with no muscle mass). However, muscular metallurgists exist, in the case where the victim believes that he is a rowboat or bicycle or passes the time in wide-scale deforestation.
Another common symptom of Metallurgy is an obsession with playing Dungeons and Dragons.
Dangers[edit]
Most people suffering from metallurgy are not dangerous. They usually are indecisive — perhaps not all that indecisive — and will take quite a beating before they retaliate, if they do at all.
Metallurgists, especially young ones, can be harmful to themselves, especially those who ingest large amounts of coal or suck on live three-phase electric wires.
Living with this illness[edit]
Many metallurgists lead seemingly normal lives, giving no indication that they are afflicted, except for their unshakable tendency to vote straight-ticket Republican, claiming those Democrat bastards want to shut down the mines or tax everyone back to the Stone Age. (As this was before the Iron Age and Bronze Age, such a policy would leave the metallurgist with no course of action except painful adaptation.)
After spending on the standard necessities of life (Ramen noodles, cola, video games, guns, and large samples of ore in glass cases), most of a metallurgist's money accumulates in a savings account and is forgotten when he dies, reverting to the State, as the metallurgist is equally likely to have forgotten to write a will either. Metallurgists tend to die in horrible large-scale accidents involving either experimental chemical reactions or landslides. The metallurgist may spend his final minute of life in horrible realization that he is not a machine and cannot in fact drill himself out of danger following a mine collapse.