Godzilla

Sarasota Herald-Tribune Columnist David Grimes has a funny column about the earthquake Florida felt last weekend. Yes a 6.0 magnitude one took place in the Gulf of Mexico and was felt in parts of Florida.

Mr. Grimes wonders if Godzilla is the next hazard Florida will face. The funny thing is, I was watching the 1998 version with Matthew Broderick not long after the quake started.(It was on cable at about 11:30 in the morning, the quake took place just before 11) Isn't that a bizarre coincidence? I hope it doesn't prove prophetic.

As Mr. Grimes says if we can survive Mickey Mouse and all those hurricanes in 2004 and 2005, Floridians will cope with earthquakes. After all, we're all masochists down here.

Linked to- Blue Star, Bright & Early, Pursuing Holiness

As if we Floridians did not have problems enough what with hurricanes, tornadoes, sting rays, red tide, alligators, sharks, fire ants, sinkholes, lightning, floods, wildfires and snowbirds, we now have to worry about earthquakes.

As you may have read (or felt), a magnitude 6.0 earthquake occurred Sunday morning in the Gulf of Mexico about 250 miles west of Sarasota.

Dishes clattered in some Sarasota high-rises and many nerves were jangled, but other than that everyone and everything came out OK.

Which, of course, is no reason why we shouldn't panic.

Not that I'm a conspiracist or anything. (Hitler, as we all know, staged the fake moon landings, personally shot President Kennedy and is now living a peaceful life with Elvis in a small town in eastern Michigan. They have no children, but they do own 27 cats.)

The Florida "earthquake," if you wish to call it that, occurred on the day before the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Since no one had ever heard of a Florida earthquake before, this event was clearly the work of terrorists. My sources tell me that Iran chose that day to test its first nuclear device about six miles beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. Why Iran would go to all this trouble is not immediately clear; my guess is that the bomb-detonators were worn out and wanted to take a vacation that included Disney World and maybe a prime-rib dinner at Sam Seltzer's Steakhouse. All of this is understandable. Nuclear-bomb detonators need protein and lots of it. Those plungers are quite sticky, or so I've heard.

The detonation, or "earthquake" as the media is dubbing it, opened up a rift in the floor of the Gulf of Mexico from which Godzilla emerged, still angry over the 1998 movie titled, appropriately enough, "Godzilla," starring Matthew Broderick. ("He just came off looking like a generic dinosaur," said Godzilla's agent. "No wonder the movie only got 11/2 stars.")

The mainstream media is covering up the emergence of Godzilla for reasons known only to them. Perhaps they do not want to deflect attention from their election coverage; it is hard to tell. (I will not make any jokes comparing Katherine Harris to Godzilla; this column is, after all, scrupulously nonpartisan.)

I have, however, had several long meetings with our Real Estate editor and it is his measured opinion that the emergence of Godzilla from a crevasse in your front yard would lower your property value from between 10 and 60 percent, depending on how close you live to the water.

(This does not include amenities like swimming pools and granite counter-tops, so, like so much of life, the final number is a bit of a guess.)

I personally believe that Florida will survive the effects of Godzilla and a 6.0-magnitude earthquake, just as we've survived Mickey Mouse and 292 hurricanes in the past two years.

Spam, anyone?