Did you hear? All dogs are blue now

CONGRATS, TROY. YOU DID ME PROUD.



Now that FMM is over, and the votes are in, let's take a moment to honor the champ. If anyone had to beat my homie Abed, I'm very okay with it being Troy. Loves me some Troy, man. They're basically like two halves of a whole, anyway. Frakking MFEO BFFs fo' liiiife, yo.[/acronym overkill]

In celebration, do yourselves a favor & watch this vid. It'll instantly improve the quality of your life:

Mother Nature: the biggest HBIC of them all

So, I'm stuck awake with a headache/stomachache Tag Team Dealio o' Funtimes Galore (I hate having periods--this one is particularly hellish at the moment), and I don't feel up to rewatching this week's Bones yet to write up my thinky thoughts, or working on my fanfic for that matter, but I figured I could take advantage of this prime spamming opportunity to comment on the Japan situation. It takes less mental energy, & it's better than sitting around feeling sorry for myself. Plus I was starting to feel like a bit of a douche for not saying anything.

Admittedly, I don't have much to say. It's one of those things where I feel like everything that should be said…has already been said. You know? Adding to it now only to state the obvious, like, "HEY, I CARE TOO! Suddenly the world is SAD! And scary! Things happen--WHO KNEW? It surprises me & alters my perspective! But only for a tacitly agreed upon, socially accepted time frame. Then we'll go back to forgetting all that," rings vaguely insincere & too close to the Facebook-y "post this status update to your wall if you also hate cancer!"-type trends that drive me nutballs.

That being said, I *do care*. Human beings are being affected by tragedy--of course I care. I just don't like saying I care when I have to worry about a potential bandwagon vibe being associated with me doing so. Because there's constantly things to care about, and this is only one of them--a very big & valid one, mind you, but just one--and people get in a tizzy over natural disasters like they're a bizarre, Water Cooler Topic of the Week-ish unexplainable surprise and/or a sign of zee END OF DAAAAYS, but the thing is--earthquakes like these aren't. Japan is on the Pacific Ring of Fire, just like Oregon, just like the entire American west coast. I've grown up knowing about it (I was TERRIFIED of "The Big One" as a child, but I've gotten over that fear); it's just one of those things. It's like living in the U.S. south--"if you're here, you'd better accept your ass might get carried away by a hurricane/tornado." You know?

Of course, knowing that, any poor soul living in a geologically coo-coo area who gets the occasional/inevitable smackdown from Mother Nature is also going to receive my sympathy. Most def. Because, come on, it sucks. Suffering sucks. I don't care how or why it happens. But I also know I'm going to throw an *eyebrow* to articles with headlines painting earthquake scenes in totally logical places as "apocalyptic." OMG. Calm down, people. The Earth is still an evolving, *living* planet, which by its very definition defies such doomsday-esque adjectives, at least until the sun burns out, we nuke one another, etc. That's WHY we have earthquakes. That's why we have mountains. That's why we have volcanoes. Take a chill pill & relax. Mourn the people who have died (they deserve respect without inaccurate sensationalism), help the survivors rebuild, and stop trying to turn this naturally destructive (and traumatizing for many, I'm sure) event into mucho cha-ching noises for your wallet. Ugh. Nature will rebuild itself & there will be MORE disasters, I promise you. That's how this works. Pace yourselves.

Seriously though, my heart does go out to the people over there. Frakking Earth. JUST STAY STILL FOR ONCE. Life is hard enough as it is without you shaking all over the damn place, tossing seaweed around. (FYI: I hate seaweed with a passion. If it touches me in the ocean, I scream Horror Movie screams of horrific sceaming horror)

Anyway, that's all, but while I'm on the subject, I'll leave y'all with a few interesting vids to help illustrate what I mean when I say that the Earth is a living planet, as well as WTF I was talking about when I said that Japan is on the Ring of Fire.

I certainly wasn't talking about the Johnny Cash song, that's for sure.

1. Welcome to the Ring of Fire. Nope, not ominous sounding AT ALL.

2. Anchorage gets its ass beat. 9.2, folks. NINE POINT TWO. No thanks.

3. Sometimes our mountains blow up. It's a thing. I can't believe how old this vid looks. It was only two years before I was born. So interesting to watch though. I've been to Mouth St. Helens countless times, I've watched other documentaries before, I've heard stories from people who saw Portland covered in ash in the days immediately following the eruption (you can actually see St. Helens from here; we're very close to Washington), but this is the first vid I've watched that dealt exclusively with everyday people at the time. I love this kind of stuff. 31 years ago! Crazy.

Also, can I just be the first to say this: Ha HA, re: Washington logging people being SUPER SOUTHERN looking/sounding. They so are. What the hell is up with that? Maybe it's a Country Western thing. I don't know. Seriously though.

4. San Fran in '89. Thanks a lot for the nightmares, Cali. You were one of the biggest contributors to my childhood phobia, I'll have you know. Of course I've slept through all but two of the earthquakes I've experienced in my life--in California AND here in Oregon--but that didn't stop me from watching news coverage like this as a kid and being like, "OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" Haha. Especially since the science people *love* reminding us that the NW is due for another 9.0-10.0 monster quake any time in the next 100-500 years. They're all, "Soooo, maybe after you're dead. Or MAYBE TODAY. Wait & see. Dun dun DUN!" It's like one of those shows about asteroids. "ONE COULD HIT NOW! OR…NOW! Or not at all, but don't you feel like you'd better build a fallout shelter just in case? Muahahah!"

5. And lastly, a song to end on a hopeful note/remind us that life (in the general sense) can, indeed, go on. It helps put destruction in perspective when one remembers that. The Earth is a busy gal, yo. It has shit to do. It's not concerned with you & your ~feelings~. It wants to knock some trees down & carve a canyon or two. Get out of the way.

On the upside, the Earth obviously sometimes feels bad for kicking the crap out of us, because it follows the destruction up with pretty rivers & what-not. I guess it's a balancing act.