It's Always Quaky in Philadelphia

Yes, I get it. We're wimps here on the East Coast for freaking out about a 5.9-magnitude earthquake that ultimately did little damage. All those people on the West Coast laughing their asses off at our reactions will tell us that things like this are just a way of life where they are from. Well, all I have to say is great for you, but there's plenty of reasons why I have chosen to spend my life in the Northeast, and at the top of the list is "NO EARTHQUAKES!"

And so it was that at 1:51pm, I was sitting in the rental office of my apartment complex, waiting as a prospective new roommate was filling out paperwork, and suddenly, I felt a very wrong sensation under my chair. A rumbling sensation. Right about the moment that the three of us in the room looked at each other and started to say, "Do you feel the ground shaking?" the building started rattling. I should note that this particular building was clearly built for visual effect and not for its ability to withstand an earthquake, so when everything started shaking, we hauled ass to the door. It only lasted about 30 seconds, but that was long enough in my opinion. I really could have gone the rest of my life without that happening.

I commend myself for not really panicking so much as just knowing that when the ground starts shaking, you best be out of doors, or in a doorway (which I've never understood, because as numerous comedians note, you never see earthquake rubble surrounding still-intact doorways). Crisis over, we looked around to see if anything was grossly out-of-whack with the building and went inside. The prospective roomie went back to his paperwork (although he did note that maybe this was a sign from above not to take the apartment); I headed to my Blackberry.

I have come to realize that there is a 3-stage process to the social media dealing with major events (e.g. today, the death of Bin Laden, the End Times that never was last May). Stage One is excitement: people tweet and post on FB in a surprised and excited manner... "OMG we're having an earthquake!!!" Stage Two is when all the one-liners come out. In this case, the next hour or so was devoted to social media jesters trying to outzing each other with quake jokes. Some of the best ones I saw included:

"Tomorrow's LA Times headline: 'BWAHAHAHAHA'"
(from a hipster) "At first, I enjoyed the earthquake, but the wrong people started liking it, so now I think it's lame."
"We're gonna have to invade another country over this, aren't we?"
"'Hey, Seattle. Talk to me next time you get 1/2-inch of snow.' ~The East Coast"
"Sorry, Libya, the East Coast just had a 5.8 earthquake, so we're gonna focus on that now. Continue storming the Gaddhafi compound, though."
"This is what you get for televising a Kardashian wedding..."

And it goes on... so much so that the obligatory couple of "too cool for school" types have to whine, "Ugh, now I have to read a bunch of (event) posts..." Stage Three is the posting of appropriate songs via YouTube: In this case, numerous versions of "I Feel the Earth Move" by Carole King, in addition to numerous other earthquake songs. It is also during this stage that the joke photos start circulating. In this case, I think I've had to see the picture of the one lawn chair tipped over about 185 times since this afternoon. Processing over, we return to our daily lives.

I realize that a seismic event like this isn't really cause for comedy, particularly when there are many in Japan or Haiti who would have much rather seen their earthquakes as reasons to make jokes about wrestlers named "The Earthquake". We, quite frankly, are fortunate to have had a 5.9-magnitude earthquake strike Virginia, about 80 miles from our nation's capital and emerge with arguably the worst result being cracks in the top of the Washington Monument (insert phallic joke here). However, we Americans are a sarcastic bunch of wiseasses. When disaster occurs, we first check to make sure everyone's okay... and then we all become stand-up comedians. It's what we do. We are the country that invented "Too soon?" However, not ALL of America needs to deal with earthquakes. We kinda had a nice deal going... the West is for those who don't mind quakes, the Midwest is for those who don't mind tornadoes, the Southeast is for those who don't mind hurricanes, and the Northeast is for those who don't mind snowstorms. We're kinda starting to overlap a little too much. See if you can do something about that, Mother Nature. Thank you.