Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Earthquake!

Yesterday afternoon, Joel and I were in the student center waiting for our Biology class to start. We were watching Phineas and Ferb on my laptop, and Joel was surfing the internet on his laptop at the same time. Suddenly he started making motions for me to pause the show and look at his laptop. According to a website someone had posted on facebook, there was a huge earthquake that apparently affected the entire United States. I hadn’t felt anything, so I figured it was a joke, especially since it wasn’t on a main news site that I had heard of, and there was some profanity in the article. But a quick internet search proved that it was at least partially true as news reports were coming in on other sites of an earthquake affecting the entire eastern side of the country. For most of yesterday afternoon I was under the impression that there had been some pretty serious destruction going on, and I worried about my cousin who lives out East.

Thanks to facebook, I soon found out that she was fine, and that the earthquake wasn’t nearly as bad as our ever faithful media had made it out to be. As usual, they opted for sensationalism over journalistic integrity, and severely over-dramatized the entire thing. It was definitely not worth the enormous fuss they made over it. Which brings me to the point of this blog post. People have already started to satirize our media’s ridiculous over-reaction to the earthquake, and a couple things I’ve seen cracked me up so bad, I just had to share them.

The first thing I started to see was last night, when facebook posts started popping up from a whole bunch of different friends claiming that the epicenter of the earthquake was in Washington DC along a little-known fault line called, “Bush’s Fault”. (For those of you who don’t get the reference, it’s from Obama’s endless claims that the trials that plague our country are all because of President Bush.) I didn’t laugh the first time I saw it because I still thought that there had been wide-spread destruction taking place, and I didn’t find it very funny to be poking fun of the tragedy. Once I found out that nothing serious had occurred, it became a lot more funny.

Today, one of my favorite blogs, Cake Wrecks, had an earthquake themed post, and it contained the following quote that really cracked me up.
“During the crisis, literally billions of unsuspecting East Coast citizens were mercilessly and violently wiggled for an agonizing duration of nearly 25 seconds.”
Jen Yates, who writes the blog, has a hilarious sense of humor. You can read her entire post HERE.

Perhaps the funniest thing I’ve seen so far, was a picture from a website shared on facebook by my cousin. The website claimed to have a photo of the “Devastation from the East Coast earthquake”.

So as not to give away the joke until after you’ve finished reading, I’ve put the photo below, so scroll down when you’re ready.

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Earthquake Devestation
Devastation From the East Coast Earthquake

I about died laughing. :D

3 comments:

  1. If I may, I'd like to provide some insight into the earthquake that happened yesterday here in Virginia. While some stories in the media seem to be "over rated," many have been accurately portrayed. Yes, I do laugh about some situations that happened to me yesterday as a result of the earthquake; but overall, it was and is a very serious situation, with some sad ramifications. Specifically, the National Cathedral has sustained damage, and some local people have had cracks show up in their walls. Personally, it was nerve racking to wonder if the glass in the laboratory cabinets was going to shatter over my head, or if the floor would sustain itself. And, the sound itself was disturbing. The earthquake that occurred yesterday was a 5.8 in magnitude. The February earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, were rated between 5.0 and 6.3, and the results were devastating. So, while I laugh about some situations, I am also in alert, watching and ready to flee the building...again...should this earthquake be only a foretaste of one to come.

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  2. we saw the same photo, captioned "2011 VA earthquake. we WILL rebuild"

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  3. Brittany, you were the first person I thought of once I found out that the worst of the earthquake was in Virginia. I'm glad that it wasn't bad. I really hope that it was the only one. I would hate for a really violent one to happen to you.

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