#because I'm polite to them like it's not any individual dog's fault that I don't really like dogs

[random2908]

me: I'm not a dog person.

my little sister: What are you talking about? Dogs LOVE you.

me: That's not what that means.

my sister: It's the important part. Who cares how you feel.

[seat-safety-switch]

Earthquakes are rough. It's a betrayal of the landlord contract we all signed with the planet when we moved in. On this issue, the language is clear: the ground is not supposed to move, unless we hit it with a shovel, or a really big hammer, or we split some atoms underneath it. Then the ground does move, and a building falls over.

Now, where I live, we don't really get earthquakes. We're too far from a fault line, so it only ever happens when the big oil company folks trebuchet six tons of plastic waste into an aquifer that they think nobody's using. It would be nice if those dinosaur-squeezing greedheads would let us know that they're doing it beforehand, because when my garage started shaking last night, my prized novelty bobblehead of Virgil Exner fell off the shelf, onto the ground, and became mildly scratched.

Sure, you could blame me for not expecting an earthquake in my house which had never before received an earthquake. That's certainly what the city did when I called them to complain, thinking it was something mundane like a big truck driving by, or a sewer explosion. I'm not one to accept blame of any kind, however, and I soon formed a posse with several other like-minded individuals from around the neighbourhood. Rice-A-Roni Stan from down the block was particularly upset, having had an entire NBA Jam arcade cabinet fall on him during the seismic event, requiring himself to be freed by his small, but heroic, wiener dog.

Here's the thing about modern politics: despite all the foofaraw about "decorum" and "tact," if you walk into City Hall carry pitchforks and torches, they'll find someone else to blame. And sometimes, if you're lucky, they'll even pass the blame onto the right person. In our case, we quickly descended upon the oil company offices. Oil company people are savvy, having spent their entire lives bribing reactionary assholes into giving them a wide leeway. So was it with me: the front desk receptionist decided to placate the leader (me) by presenting me with a scale model of one of their service vans. The little doors even opened and closed.

Sure, if you ask the newspaper, the remaining splinter groups left in the absence of my now-defanged leadership committed a mass murder, slaughtering executives like cattle, but I had nothing to do with it. I was too busy playing with the little model van, making realistic (but exaggerated, I must admit) engine noises with my mouth. Vroom, vroom.