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Shake, Rattle and Roll: Major Earthquake in Japan…

 

Wow…it's a big one, centered on Hokkaido.  I’d posted about Yoshio Kushida’s prediction this past week; his research indicated a 7.0 earthquake might hit near Tokyo last Wednesday.

 

There was a smaller quake, after which I’d wondered if this was NOT the big one Kushida forecast, or if Kushida was just off on his prediction.  Although the idea of forecasting earthquakes via radio wave anomalies has been kicked around for a couple decades, it’s not fine-tuned.  Was it just a calibration problem?

 

Perhaps it was – but not by size from the looks of this earthquake.

 

Let’s hope that there were few injuries and no fatalities resulting from this event, and that any tsunami is smaller than anticipated.

 

 

  5:08:21 PM    comment []

Ý

 

WARNING: SLOW BLOGGING AHEAD

 

The folks are in town today; I’ll be spending quality time with them.  They've traveled here from the great white north because my sister wanted to have a 70^th birthday party for my father this weekend.

 

It seems odd to think of my dad as 70 years old; he’s more spry than many folks twenty years his junior.  But there’s no denying it; he watched the attack on Pearl Harbor as a small boy, eating a pancake out of his hand in the backyard of his family’s home in Honolulu.  Only someone of his age could give such an accounting of that event.  He’s definitely 70.

 

Blogging may be light the rest of the day.

 

By the way, be sure to swing by and wish Jan Haugland at Secular Blasphemy a very Happy Blogiversary today; he’s been at it here in Salon blogs one year today.  Wishing you many more Happy Blogiversaries to come, Jan!

 

  11:07:16 AM    comment []

®

 

Ever have one of those days?

 

The kind when you’re not quite certain if it’s something you ate or if your contacts need to be cleaned or if you need to change your reading materials?

 

Yeah.  One of those kinds of days.

 

Nothing goes quite right, even though there’s nothing of note in the transits of the stars to suggest an underlying reason.  The planet Mercury was retrograde last week; it’s full on direct now, there should be none of that backsliding which induces spilled coffee on white shirts just before an important meeting with a client.

 

It’s not as if the stars would be kind enough to fill you in on the schedule in advance, to let you know via email or even a little crawl at the bottom of the television screen: You’ll be experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by…

 

No, the heads-up doesn’t come to let you in on the mad and cosmic tarantella which begins.

 

Every little thing went wrong yesterday; my software crashing, the washer off balance, the weather crappy and unpredictable, the youngest uncooperative and dragging his feet about everything. Name it -- it didn’t go well.

 

The last straw was my once-a-month trip to McDonald’s to pick up dinner for the kids en route to the hair salon.  This was a big mistake, a misjudgment on my part.  Fast food is neither fast nor food, particularly at the closest McDonald’s.  There are more people in the kitchen than there are customers in line, yet it takes this crew more than fifteen f*cking minutes to make a Chicken McNugget Meal and a hamburger.  At rush hour, no less.  I’m standing in line, regretting this decision, hemmed in by customers behind me and unable to flee without forfeiting an investment in time and money.  It cause me no small amount of stress being so trapped, feeling the stickiness of many spilled and half-assedly wiped carbonated sticky beverages beneath my feet, seeing the herd of waiting customers all queued and squirming like cattle waiting slaughter.  God, do I look like the rest of them, eyes wild and restless, weight shifting, clenching and unclenching my fists?

 

I can see the Ronald McDonald clock's hands slowly moving toward the top of the hour from my position in line.  Ronald’s left hand is pointing straight up, his right hand pointing down over his crotch – meaning I am now late for my hair appointment and my kids waiting in the car (drive thru would have been LONGER) are probably licking at the windows and panting like dogs and generally being a nuisance to each other.  The woman behind me sighs; she is so close to me that I can feel her breath on my earlobe, feel her blood pressure rising as she gets angry about the wait.  I’m getting unusually claustrophobic, the panic rising in me as I am corralled by another customer on each side of me, all of us waiting, watching, like vultures hovering over a dying beast.

 

The kitchen staff move in slow motion, as if through viscous fluid, languidly pulling a burger out of the steamer and placing it on a waiting bun; first, a young woman filling a birthday party’s orders, then a young man filling the regular orders.  It’s balletic, waltz-like; a manager behind them all in the kitchen waving his arms around conductor-like, moving in a sluggish syncopation.  I cannot see his hands from this point of view; I can only hope he’s preparing food and not actually holding a baton.

 

I am ready to reach across the counter and take hold of the closest polyester-clad hireling and shake them out of their torpor.  I would have the beat the woman behind me to it, though; she is nearly crawling over my back, demanding of no one in particular, What-the-hell-is-going-on-in-the-kitchen.

 

Good question.

 

Ronald’s small white gloved left hand is now hyper-extended past overhead in an awkward pose.  F*ck, I am going to be so late.

 

The burger I ordered is sitting, waiting, teasing.  The fries intended to accompany the McNuggets taunt me from under the heat lamp.  Waiting, waiting.

 

Another young polyestered person comes forward from the bowels of the kitchen, bearing a small white box, snagging in a leisurely fashion the teasing burger and taunting fries, tosses them into a brown sack and whips them at me in a practiced sweeping motion.  Nuggets, you?  I am asked charily to confirm my order, already in my grasp.  I nod and bolt.

 

Burdened with super-sized tidings, I don’t see my kids as I make my way to the car.  They should be anxious, noses pressed against the glass.

 

My heart skips a beat.

 

As I make it to the car door, they sit bolt upright and laugh.  They can see my concern.

 

Damn it all, where do they get that obnoxious sense of humor and bad timing?

 

They know the drill; once the laughter subsides, the older one grabs the beverages, the younger one the meals.  They divvy them up, begin chowing away.  A frantic cell phone call to let my hairdresser know we’re on our way as we get on the road and head across town.

 

I collapse in the seat as an apron swirls about my neck.  I feel like I’ve been running a marathon.  I finally catch my breath, waiting as my hairdresser prepares my haircolor.  I look as if I had been running all day – no escaping that as I look in the large and unavoidable mirror before me.

 

Someone catches my eye in the mirror.  It’s a brief look, but eye contact was made.  An apron draped about her neck, her hairdresser preparing her color.  The next booth is the same; another apron, another hairdresser mixing color.

 

Each woman wearing the same look.

 

The same as mine, in the mirror.

 

I look again more closely at the first woman; she’s not watching me any longer, studying instead her own fatigued face in the mirror in front of her as her hairdresser hovers over her, beginning to apply color.  I follow the movement of the hand at work, somehow familiar as it languidly applies the thick paste on her client’s head.  The hairdresser looks familiar, reddish hair, careworn as she performs her slow rondel about the chair.

 

Ah, a clone of Jane Avril.  She looks used, haggard, like Avril in Lautrec’s poster artwork.

 

But so does her client.

 

And the client next to me, waiting, tiredly, as if the chair was supporting her and not merely seating her.

 

Good God, do we all look like that?

 

What a rude cosmic trick it would be if we’d all had one of those days, together.

 

What a vast and dreadful dance.

 

  10:36:24 AM    comment []