Apparently that mild moving sensation that I felt this afternoon at work wasn't due to my shoddy office chair nor caused by my cubicle neighbor twitching their leg. Supposedly that brief, ethereal feeling was the long distance effect of a moderately strong earthquake in Virginia. Having now gone through my first earthquake, I'd have to say the experience was pretty underwhelming. I probably would not have noticed anything if it hadn't been for people around the office getting up and a check of my facebook newsfeed revealing multiple updates of simultaneous earthquake speculation among friends. Of course, an earthquake is one of the most devastating of natural disasters (Haiti, Japan, SimCity 2000) and it is pretty insensitive of me to complain about the mildness of my first earthquake experience; but I did still expect something more for my first earthquake.
I especially expected more given the completely disproportionate response my office gave to it. There was a formal announcement of potential evacuation and cancelling the rest of the day which eventually fizzled out (but apparently some buildings in the city actually did empty). For at least a good hour everyone appeared to be too shaken and frazzled to get back to work (hey, can't complain about a free break). I can only imagine all the cynical residents of California, Japan, and other fault lying regions chortling at our relatively gross overreaction to a incident of seismic activity that probably happens to them everyday. They probably look at us the same way we look at people in the South who freak out when a rare inch of snow falls in the region.
The other interesting thing about my light earthquake experience is that when it occurred I had the above "Earthquake Song" by The Little Girls in my head since Sunday, after hearing it on my friend Lisa's mix CD while coming home from a weekend road trip. Suffice to say the earthquake experience has only further entrenched the song into my brain. It's just a delightfully catchy piece of early 80s New Wave quirk. If I ever achieved one of my dream jobs of slightly exploitative pop music svengali I would create a female group based entirely on this sound. It would be cute girls, standard rock band set up (maybe I'll throw in an organ, too); singing cheery, lighthearted songs about dark and often gruesome subject matter. Had this song had not been almost completely forgotten by time it would most definitely be banned on the radio every time a devastating earthquake occurred just as Julie Brown's "The Homecoming Queen's Got A Gun" would be banned every time there was a school shooting.
Man, 80's kids had problems.
I independently texted Lisa about how I have not been able to get the song out of my head the past couple of days.
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