Rocking the fake lake

The very moderate earthquake we had here in Toronto last week creating some news on the radio that was a welcome change from discussions about the G20 summits.

It was the fake lake that seemed to set people off the most, and the dislike towards security fences and the money being spent. Amidst all of this, I heard little to no discussion about just what this particular G20 summit is hoping to accomplish, and I'm almost of the opinion that all of these last-minute "issues" arose as a means to create a smoke screen for the public, so that they would feel indignant towards 1) the amount of money that was spent and 2) the inconvenience, for them, personally, created by the summits. And, in that, pay less attention to the point of the summits themselves, and the fact that little is ever solved or agreed upon during these meetings. If anything, our world's leaders come out and say that they will "try" to combat climate change, and "try" to improve economies, etc.

In response to that, the words of Yoda: "No. Try not. Do . . . or do not. There is no try."

As to that earthquake, !fuck-a-monkey! did people ever over-freak out about that. All over Facebook, "OMG...quake! Run for it!" I can safely say that most of the people on my friends list would have little to no idea of what to do if they were hit by an earthquake with a magnitude of more than 5.0. The kind of earthquake we felt can rattle one's dishes, and cause minor damage to very poorly constructed buildings. Fortunately here in Canada we have construction codes. After this earth -- it wasn't even a shake, so from here-on-in I will refer to it as an earthshimmy, similar to what a girl does when she's trying to get into an tight outfit and has to rearrange her boobs. She shimmies. And the earth did something similar that day.

After the earthshimmy, all afternoon, it was the "breaking news" at the top of every hour on CBC. At first it was a welcome break from discussion about soccer and the G20. And then I got more and more irritated, as they went live to people all over Ontario who had felt really shimmied.

When I was a young girl, I developed fears about horrible things happening, like fires, tornadoes, black holes sucking up Earth, floods, hurricanes, and (proper) earthquakes. My dad was very good at alleviating these fears, because he would sit me down and go over everything logically. He wouldn't just say, "It will all be alright because mummy and daddy are here." No, the man would explain the shit out of things. My dad would explain to me how a fire alarm works, and show me how even the tiniest bit of smoke could be detected. He showed me how the solar system works, and told me there are no black holes anywhere near us, and then we read, together, about how the nearest black hole is very very far away.

As for earthquakes, we got out the atlas, and my dad taught me about tectonic plates. He showed me where the world's biggest fault lines are, the ones that cause real devastation. He explained why his cousin Heather, who lives in California, knows a lot about earthquakes, because where she lives, a person must always be prepared for an earthquake.

And most importantly, he showed me where we live, where there are no fault lines and that we are situated on a very large plate, and that there are very ancient left-over fault lines from millions of years ago, but there is nothing that can do significant damage, at least not for another few million years.

So I got the sense that anyone who is making a big deal out of it just wants to turn it into something that affects them personally. If there is an earthshimmy, who doesn't want to say, "OMG my bed was shaking so bad and one of my dishes almost broke and I think maybe there might be a tiny crack in it! Sooooo scary!" Yes, yes, it's not nearly as scary as your house being swallowed whole.

If you're able to go on Facebook and update about your earthshimmy, you're going to be perfectly safe.