Tuesday, August 23, 2011

take on the 'great' earthquake

What the hell does a little tremor do to people to make them go completely nuts, really there is nothing dumber than the reaction people when there is some kind of natural disaster? Living in NYC you don't deal with earthquakes very often but sitting at my desk today we got a little shake at about 2pm and since then every person on the East Coast is in a total panic.  
Although nobody wants to get hurt deep down people have a desire to say they lived through disaster, imagined or not.   Nobody wants to be around a Fukushima but everybody is thrilled they lived through the 'Great Blackout of 2003' and will gladly tell you exactly where they were when the big snowstorm of 2010 came through their town.     It's like their own lives aren't interesting enough that they need to have lived through a great disaster for it their lives to have some merit.    Today the streets of the city are packed with people evacuated out their buildings and although there are no reported injuries or damage every asshole in NYC is comparing this to the apocalypse.  Forget bitching about the weather, the only thing anybody will talk about is 'where they were when the quake of 2011 hit'.       
A buddy working in Rockefeller Center told me that some nutjob came bursting into the office saying 'I survived 9/11, everybody stay calm and then proceeded to run down 40 flights of stairs screaming' which is exactly what you need in a situation like this. 
Of course there is a ton of chatter about this being a 'foreshock' which I guess must mean it's European..  I saw a posting on the internet of a black dude running out of the building and feeling like OJ running through the airport with all the crazy white people staring at him.

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