This morning we had an earthquake in the L.A. area, measuring 5.4, I think. In earthquake lingo, that means we could definitely feel it. It’s been a while since we’ve had a really good earthquake (to quote what the Lovely Miss Courtney told me when I called home to check on stuff). And since it’s been a while, I thought the occasion deserved a Top Ten List.

Here then are the Top Ten Cool Things About Earthquakes

10.  You get to see people who are normally calm go into freak-out mode. I won’t mention names, but that happened to a few people here at the office. I actually heard someone say the “c-word,” the spiritually acceptable euphamysm for manure.

9.  You get to see people who you MIGHT think would freak out actually staying pretty calm.

8.  It gives you something else to talk about besides the weather.

7.  It gives you an easy way to quickly end a meeting.

6.  You can scare people by telling them it’s God’s judgment on (insert your choice of people who make God mad here).

5.  If you’re a Democrat, you can tell people it was Bush’s fault, and this kind of thing would never happen if Obama was in charge.

4.  If you’re a Republican, you can tell people it was Obama’s fault, and this kind of thing would never happen if McCain was in charge.

3.  It makes me get serious for a minute and think about what life would be like if an actual serious disaster really happened, and there were subsequently only nine Starbucks in Torrance instead of ten.

2.  It gave me an excuse for the appearance of my desk, which typically looks as though an earthquake hit it.

1.  It’ll give me an excuse to drive faster for the next several days – if a cop stops me, I can tell him I’m concerned about my family because of the earthquake.