Fascinoma

Yesterday I was on the phone with the Lobbyist when the earthquake hit. Being an erstwhile Angelino, and otherwise experienced at such temblors, I knew what it was right away, if not necessarlly, what to do about it. The Lobbyist rang off quickly and evacuated her building. I watched my co-workers abandon ship and then looted the communal office supplies. After about 4 PM, the work-mood being broken, and my co-workers almost all departed, I headed out and boarded the subway, for two stops. My train had a malfunction of some sort which caused me and all my fellow passengers to be offloaded to a jammed platform, next to which the broken train sat, preventing any replacement. I decided to walk, since it was a beautiful afternoon and it was only a couple of miles.

The streets of downtown were gridlocked becaude many traffic signals were haywire. But every bar along Connecticut Avenue was jammed with happy evacuees, people who got outside and discovered it was beautiful and so decided to knock off early and/or wait out the bad traffic. My heart went out to the many poor-schmuck waitrons who arrived at the restaurants where they work expecting the sleepy 3-to-5 time when they could mix mixers, fold napkins, eat their own meals, and othewise gear up for actual business, only to be swamped by earthquake-related goldbricking.

Today I noticed that the Post had a big headline "Earthquake Jolts DC Area." Well, no shit Sherlock. This strikes me as the quintessence of modern journamalism; it's not really about news, per se, it's about confirming what everybody already "knows."