Tsunami's and auctions and settlements, oh my!

So there was an earthquake in Hokkaido last night, eh? About a 5 (out of 7) and happened right about the time I was ready for bed but as I watched the news with there bantering on and replay after replay of earthquake footage there was a special report! Tsunami!!!

That's right, a monster wave charging the northern island and expected to hit within the hour. How cool is that? So I decide to stay up since the news channel just sat there with the camera pointed at the water waiting for this huge tidal wave most likely carrying night surfers on it's bosom to slap the coast of Japan. And so I waited. And waited. waited...

Oops! Sorry folks, no tidal wave tonight! All is well, go to bed. What the hell, right? But then they said that the wave wasn't that big anyway. Only about 50 centimeters at its tallest point and only three of them at that.

For some reason I had this image of like this sky scraper wall of water building up as it raced toward Japan at unimaginable speeds because "Tsunami" and "tidal wave" are big strong sounding words. But now I figure all they are are waves caused by earthquakes under the ocean floor no matter their size. mmmm...

In other news the base player for Nirvana (the tall guy who calls himself "Krist Novoselic" apparently) auctioned himself off of eBay with the highest bid going for $7300 US. The winner will be picked up from their local airport by the bassest in his little airplane and flown to the city of his choice for a little wine and dine. Proceeds going to charity. Awww... Wait a minute....he's flying???

And woman who the Wachowski Brothers ripped off for the Matrix trilogy gets over 2.5 billion dollars in copyright infringement compensation. It seems she wrote the story back in 1981 and submitted it to the brothers (brother and sister??) which they rejected and later referred to while writing up The Matrix. Oops! Say, if she's getting cash for copyright infringement, how about the people who made "Ghost in the Shell"? Or was that movie used as a source of inspiration only? Shucks.