Eat well, shit strong, and don't be afraid of death!

I'm in Oakland instead of Denver because the weather chose Wednesday for its once-in-a-decade "Hey, what are you doing complaining about the cold, you're from Colorado" nincompoopery. ( The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco )

But life is good; I find tonight in the San Francisco Chronicle a story about how poop is a big part of Catalan Christmas celebrations. So of course I look up "el caganer" ("the crapper") on Wikipedia, and find at the Tió de Nadal (Nativity Log) page a song sung to get presents out of the log as you beat it with a stick:

caga tió, caga turró, avellanes i mató, si no cagues bé et daré un cop de bastó. ¡caga tió!"

Shit, log, shit torrons, hazelnuts and cheese, if you don't shit well I'll give you a blow with a stick. Shit, log!

And then you reach in, get the cheese, and share it out amongst the party. So! Awesome! I mean, who could invent something so awesome? Only the long accretion of years... It's like a pearl.

Even more awesome, though, from the caganer wikipage: "Other mentions of feces and defecation are common in Catalan folklore. One popular Catalan phrase before eating says "menja bé, caga fort i no tinguis por a la mort!" (Eat well, shit strong, and don't be afraid of death!)."

I like it even better in English, where the lack of rhyme makes it brasher. Seriously, what a great toast! What a great motto!

Finally, an interesting earthquake!

Yay! Big earthquake just went through! Well, it was probably a 4 or 5, but it lasted for several seconds, long enough to set furniture to rattling, and for me to think, Hm, something might fall on me. It was the first earthquake worth its salt I've felt since coming here 8.5 years ago! Like the earth twitching its hide to get irritations off. Something over near my desk was tapping rhythmically against the wall...

Lots of times I feel things that apparently aren't quakes... Up on a hill on the second story of a century-old wood house... Or maybe I'm just faint and tremulous myself. It's always nice to feel something that the USGS confirms. (The USGS says 3.7, for about 45 seconds.) I wonder if they'll confirm the tiny aftershocks I'm sensing?