Earthquakes to destroy your city! Escaping ants invade! Planets ripped apart! It's not science fiction, it's just your daily science watch, where we watch the science—the real science, only!

A teenage Haitian girl who was in the shower when her house collapsed was rescued alive yesterday, 15 days after the earthquake. "[She] mumbled something about having a little Coca-Cola with her in the rubble." Sign her up, Coke. [AP]

A 7.0 quake has struck Haiti just outside Port-au-Prince causing widespread damage. The Haitian ambassador to the United States, Raymond Alcide Joseph, told CNN, "I think it's really a catastrophe of major proportions." The AFP spoke to a reporter with a Haitian TV station who described devastation in the capital:

As of right now, major networks and newspapers are failing to report what's being noted on Twitter as a giant fucking earthquake that just hit somewhere around Humboldt County. But Twitter users sure seem to know what's up.

With its many servers, Google devours electricity. And with search queries growing by 50%, it's only getting hungrier. The solution? Drill a two-mile-deep hole in the Earth, extracting geothermal energy and possibly destroying San Francisco with a terrible earthquake.

· Did we say we were done with earthquake stories? We lied. Shake it, Judge Judy! (And Judge Penny, whoever you are.) [Access Hollywood] · Were three dimensions not enough for you to enjoy the dead-eyed zombie children delights of The Polar Express? Well, all aboard! TOOT! TOOT! The Polar Express 4-D Experience is on its way. What does the additional D get you? "Upon your arrival at the North Pole...it actually begins to snow inside the 4-D Special FX Theater and when the conductor sings 'Hot Chocolate' and the dancing waiters begin to pour, the audience can smell the delightful aroma of every cocoa cup!'" [NY Post] · Despite a hospitalization, Elizabeth Taylor's flack insists she is nowhere near death: "Her hospital visit was precautionary. She will be returning home shortly. At present, she is surrounded by family, friends and fabulous jewels." And Pepperoni & Bacon Pizza Pops—her favorite. [ET Online] · All hail Siaosi Tupou V, Tonga's new king! [Yahoo/AFP] · Posters for The Canadian Filmmakers Festival feature some fine Canuckistanian send-ups of classic film images. [Super Punch]

And now, we promise: our very last earthquake anecdote, courtesy of reliable Hollywood lech James Woods. The former Shark star was climbing into his red SUV outside Joan's on Third when the fearsome 5.4 earth-shaker began. Then, says Page Six:

Your All-Earthquake Special Edition: · A shared traumatic experience provides thousands of deeply moving stories: This one, about the crew of an online horoscope show comforting each other in their not-quite-darkest hour, is one of them. [theCosmosGal's YouTube page] · LAist has some great security footage of a bicycle store in San Dimas doing the earthquake shuffle. We'd probably be tossing kids and grandmas out of the way to get the hell out of there, too. [LAist] · "Where was I when it hit? Oh, I was in stirrups with my gynecologist's hands in my vagina. What about you?" [Twitter] · We must commend the LAT for being so quick on their slideshow-compiling feet: Here's a tribute to Earthquakes in the Movies. Ah yes, who could forget NBC's 10.5, and its sequel 10.5 Apocalypse—both of which registered about a 10.5 in the scientifically-shaky-ground department. [LAT] · CEILING TILE DOWN. WE REPEAT: CEILING TILE DOWN. [Curbed LA]

Well, hopefully by now you've mixed yourself a nice cocktail to settle the post-earthquake jitters, didn't climb behind the wheel of an F-150, and are not currently in need of hand surgery. With everything seemingly still standing—even that wobbly nightstand that holds our framed, signed Eugene Levy headshot—we thought we'd celebrate with QUAKE '08: The Survivors' Stories, courtesy of your de facto natural-disaster-coverage destination, CNN. We particularly love the guy in the record store, contemplating his own narrowly avoided foot-mangling beneath a toppled rack of Gypsy King CDs. We also have video of KCAL's breaking news report after the jump, which confirms what we knew all along: This earthquake lasted a really long time! UPDATE: Some toppled streetlights and broken pipes have been reported. An official press conference on the rumbler is underway. UPDATE #2: More damage: We have a sighting of broken jars of pasta sauce being mopped up at the WeHo Trader Joe's!

You can follow the first-person tweets from the other California. The U.S. Geological Survey pinpoints it just outside Chino Hills. A surge of traffic briefly brought down the Los Angeles Times's website and AT&T's wireless network in the area. A map of the epicenter:

We interrupt your daily nonsense feed to report an earthquake, estimated magnitude 5.8 and centered 29 miles east-southeast of downtown L.A., just scared the shit out of you for what felt like an eternity. LATimes.com was down for a bit but was back up. Land line and cellphones are down. Developing...

The US media takes a lot of crap from people like us for being amoral, craven bottom feeders. We take a lot of crap ourselves for being sensationalist controversy-chasers. But all of us here in the American mass media can pat ourselves on the collective back and say: at least we never took sexy pictures of scantily-clad models posing in the rubble of an earthquake that just killed 100,000 of our countrymen:

Well, that's cheery: According to the San Jose Mercury News, we're living over a "tectonic time bomb." The East Bay's Hayward Fault is the Yahoo of earthquake generators, always playing second fiddle to our seismic Google, the better-known San Andreas. But, like Yahoo, it still sells a lot of online ads — I mean, packs a wallop. On average, the Hayward Fault shakes its groove thing once every 140 years, and the last big one came in 1868. Ask yourself if your business plan has been seismically retrofitted — because a 7.3-magnitude earthquake is sure to pop all but the strongest of bubbles. (Photo by UC-Berkeley)

Run for your lives! Quake! Wait, it's already over? Damn. Oh well, there should be another one rolling through any time now. Go make sure your boss crawls out from under his desk safely while you wait. [quakes.us.gov]