You may have noticed that I didn’t finish up my story of the giant monster invading Sacramento yesterday. I’m afraid I just kind of ran out of steam. I like the story though and I intend on following up on it; maybe one of the last Stories of the Week.

Anyway… To those of you who were hoping for a dramatic, world smashing conclusion to yesterday’s rampage, I’m sorry. Let’s just say that Sacramento’s gone, but the rest of the world is still here.

A few years ago I read an article about how the larger a creature gets, the less it is able to maintain its structural integrity; the volume of a creature cubes as its surface area squares. In other words, the bigger, the heavier. Take an ant, make it a thousand times bigger, and its legs will have to become a lot stronger, proportionately, to handle its increased weight. This is called scaling, and it’s mathematically complicated, and it boils down to one basic point: land animals can only get so large before they become unstable and collapse under their own weight. This is why the biggest animals are in the oceans and not on the land.

Too bad no one schooled the creature that emerged from the Sacramento River in this basic academic concept.

I feel like I’m being inappropriately academic. It’s because I’m a bit on the panicky side, and when I get on the panicky side I get wordy. There are some who say that I’m wordy anyway, but that’s just me. And I digress.

Okay. Here it is.

This thing came out of the Sacramento River. It stands probably fifty feet tall and is estimated to weigh several tons, according to the news reports I’ve seen. God, how did it even fit into the river? Where did it come from? Not much is known about this thing. It looks like a cross between a squid and a Jerusalem cricket. It looks like it grew inside a deep cave in the ocean. It’s completely black, and looking at it is like looking into a giant shadow. And the main thing it loves to do is destroy things. It flails its limbs around and smashes them into buildings, smashes cars and other structures. The Tower Bridge is destroyed. Most of Old Sacramento is in flames. Smoke fills the skies. And the roars of the creature can be heard everywhere. I can’t find any pictures of the thing, and I’m certainly not going to try to get close enough to snap a photograph of my own.

Sirens have been blaring all day. An hour or so ago the helicopters began flying overhead, and the government seems to have given up on any discretion as they fire bombs and missiles at the thing. I just looked out onto the highway and saw a convoy of the National Guard or some other branch of the military driving past.

We’ve just heard that Sacramento is to be evaucuated, so I’ll probably be updating this by mobile phone for the rest of the day. I just hope this day doesn’t end like the end of Cloverfield, with a huge battery of bombs being dropped on this thing, and talk of atomic weapons. Let’s hope they can stop it before then.

I’ve also heard rumors about other parts of the country.

If the rumors are true, then there’s definitely something rising up out of the Sacramento River near Old Sacramento. The Delta King has been destroyed, and so have a number of buildings in the area. From my house, almost three miles away, I can hear sirens blaring down the highway and the streets of the city; and there’s something like roaring going on.

This shit is scary. How long until East Sacramento is evacuated? Anyone know what’s going on?

I have no idea what this is, but I found this picture of the Sacramento River online somewhere. It’s obviously taken from a mobile phone. I have no idea what that black blob is:

The aftershocks from last night’s earthquake have been coming in fast and furious, it seems, much more rapidly than they should. Or so it seems to me at least. I’ve lived in California all my life, and I’ve been through many earthquakes. I still have vivid memories of the Loma Prieta quake that took out the Bay Bridge and several other landmarks, and I don’t remember the aftershocks being so close together, and I certainly remember them being weaker than the original quake. But these aftershocks are growing more powerful, and coming closer together.

More reports of road closures as well. Rumors say that Highway 80 between here and Davis is closed, but I don’t know anything for sure about that — maybe someone in the Davis area could confirm that.

The news is silent, of course. Which is odd, because the news is normally all over earthquakes, especially ones in major metropolitan areas. Thus, I have no idea how much damage has been done or how many injuries or even deaths have been sustained.

It’s a weird day altogether.

A quick side note for my new online friends, especially on Twitter and Facebook: Today is “Blog Like It’s the End of the World“, a challenge for bloggers to spend the day blogging as though the world were coming to an end for whatever reason. Traditionally (at least as far as something in its third year can be said to have a tradition), the theme is a zombie attack. I’m zombied out this year, so I’m doing something with Sacramento, beginning with an earthquake and rumors that Old Sacramento has been evacuated and shut down.

So if you see any posts of mine today that are tagged with “bliteotw 2009” or “#bliteotw”, then those are part of the game. You can either ignore them, or play along. Just don’t take them seriously. There was no earthquake, and Old Sacramento is, to the best of my knowledge, still open and unevacuated.

One of my favorite places to go in Sacramento is Old Sacramento. I love the old buildings, the cobbled streets, and especially the Railroad Museum. I was planning on going there today, in fact, but apparently Old Sacramento’s been evactuated and closed down. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’ve heard rumors that there’s something going on in the Sacramento River. Maybe some sort of toxic spill or something, I don’t know. Trouble is, I can’t find any reliable information online anywhere, which is troubling.

I’ll keep posting as I find out more.

Tomorrow is Blog Like It’s the end of the World, a day where people all over the world conspire to write their blogs as though the world were coming to an end. In 2007 and 2008, the world was under attack by zombies, and according to the folks who are putting it together this year, it’s going to be zombies again.

Sigh.

It’s not that I’m not in favor of a good ol’-fashioned zombie apocalypse, mind you. It’s just that I’ve done zombies two years in a row; in 2007 I did the story of zombies taking over Dixon, CA, (complete with tragic ending), and in 2008 I had zombies take up political activism in California’s capital city. And zombies remain the best symbol of the dehumanizing elements of our modern culture, and thus legitimately the target of fear and fun. So a good zombie apocalypse can be a frightening and funny thing.

It’s just that I’m zombied out, so to speak.

So this year, I’m going to do something else. While the “official” theme for tomorrow’s Blog Like It’s the End of the World (at least as official as these things can get) may still be zombies, I’m going to do something else. I’m not entirely sure yet; half the fun will be figuring it out as I go on. Let’s just say, though, that it’s going to start in the Sacramento River, near the Delta King…