Dr. Schund, when will California be destroyed by the Great Quake?
The theory of plate tectonics proposes the existence of continental plates, stupendous deeply rooted monoliths floating upon the earth's molten mantle, propelled by crustal spreading and Coriolis force, occasionally grinding against each other in vast shivery earthquakes. To California real estate developers the theory of plate tectonics is an excellent way to cycle property ownership for a commission. To California politicians the theory of plate tectonics is an excellent way to temporarily increase the state sales tax, forever. The big question in everybody else's mind is, "When exactly will the freeway overpasses come tumbling down relative to where I am stuck in traffic?"
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent emplacing seismographs, tiltmeters, triangulated interferometric baselines, scholarly publications, and geology graduate students, all avidly trying to predict the exact date of the next temblor to save property and lives, or at least complete their doctoral theses and get a well-paying job in private industry. It is with no small degree of embarrassment that this awesome investment of intellectual and physical resources has only been capable of outputting the following: "There has just been an earthquake." Hell, a kid's marble balanced on an upright soda straw can do that.
The time has come to take decisive action. Dr. Schund can no longer tolerate this seismological woolgathering. An unexpected quake might jostle his flute of vintage wine during a crucial hot tubbing. Expertly exploiting the Freedom of Information Act to ferret out the darkest secrets of our villainous government officials, Dr. Schund has triumphed! After many hundreds of hours blue-boxing at his computer terminal he has finally laid bare the secret of Sadie Lifschutz.
Discrete multivariant analysis through simplex optimization of Fourier Transform frequency deconvolution of incremental tectonic relative displacements demonstrates to a nine sigma correlation, more or less, that the crustal plates responsible for earthquake anxiety in California move past each other precisely at the rate at which Sadie Lifschutz' fingernails grow. Born in 1905, she had her first fingernail clipping in 1906, at the precise moment of that Great Quake. She hasn't cut her nails since.
Sadie tore a cuticle simultaneous with the Whittier quake. She popped a hangnail and the Newport fault popped. Sadie split her left pinkie nail at 1710 hrs, precisely coincident with the magnitude 7.2 San Francisco quake. Had her attendants not been there with a vial of superglue to halt the split, we might have lost the whole Bay area. Her nervous habit of flexing her right index finger is in exact step with the tumescence and subsidence of the Palmdale bulge. There are complexities.
Human fingernails grow at the rate of three inches each year. Sadie's nails are now about 21 feet long, requiring a special Federal facility for their care and upkeep, and Sadie's care and upkeep as well. Congressional leaders were intent on limiting the outrageously wasteful Federal budget and the resulting mammoth Federal debt. They were not ready to limit their own franking privileges or the special expense account for entertaining Congressional pages. Targeted for termination ("robust defunding") is Project Numb Knuckles. Thus will restore balance to the Federal budget and free vast sums of money for Congressional fact finding junkets to the Mitchell Brothers' Theatre in San Francisco. Hydraulically boosted bolt cutters with titanium nitride jaws (and an OSHA-approved safety shield) are now passing Milspec evaluations - THEY ARE PLANNING TO SEVER ALL TEN OF SADIE LIFSCHUTZ' NAILS! California is doomed. We may lose everything west of the Rockies, and east of the Rockies; and north of the Rockies; and south of the Rockies; and the Rockies.
The privileged classes of the USSR are consumed with dismay that the new spirit of glasnost riding the wave of Gorbamania, at last giving them access to California hot tubs and women who look seductive in vanishingly small bathing suits, will be dashed to bits and sink into the Pacific when that first nail is mutilated and sundered. They have invested the monetary equivalent of three steel foundries and a hard currency shop to build a world-class proletarian tissue culture facility, a long, thin proletarian tissue culture facility, in the hopes that if Sadie is decommissioned at least her healthily growing digits and the attached nails can be saved.
How about it folks, has the time come to save California and give the Russians the finger?