I was in town running errands this afternoon, but I never heard or felt a thing. In the grocery store, I started hearing people jabbering about the earthquake and wondered what the hell they were talking about. I shrugged it off as the usual ado about nothing, gaining more drama and apocryphal detail in each retelling. Then I get home and find that Shanna has been trying to get hold of me and find out if I’m all right. I get back to her and reassure her that I somehow managed to miss the collapsing buildings, overturned vehicles in flames, zombie hordes, looting and giant radioactive lizards stomping through downtown.

Then she mentions that they had to evacuate the Pentagon, and I got a little weak in the knees. Imagine! Oh gods, imagine how sweet it would be if that giant concrete canker sore disappeared into Mother Earth’s gaping maw! Imagine the theologians of American exceptionalism reduced to stammering simpletons as they try to justify God’s mysterious ways! Imagine the president gravely declaring war on unlawful seismic activity, a modern-day version of Caligula ordering his soldiers to attack the English Channel, as we desperately try to figure out how we can bomb the earth’s crust in retaliation! A fellow can dream…