Probably already told this joke...

...but I tend to tell it a bit differently every time and I like the version that I came up with today. If you've already heard it, feel free to skip it.

Young Rudi Schatzwalter (a) was a 160-IQ genius, and (b) cared about nothing in the world except earthquakes. Spent every waking minute thinking about 'em and studying 'em, and by the time our hero was in his 50's, he'd gotten to where he could read his charts and predict quakes in advance, every time.

So one fine spring morning he's reading his charts and realizes, this is it, the Big One is a-comin'. He gets on the phone and calls up the Governator:

"Governor, you have to declare a massive evacuation. Next Thursday at 3:23 p.m. there's gonna be the mother of all earthquakes, and everything west of the San Andreas Fault is gonna slide into the ocean and disappear."

Ah-nold knows better than to argue with the great Schatzwalter, and so the word goes out, and the huddled masses move their huddle, so to speak. By Thursday noon not a soul is left in the endangered area except for three stoned, toothless hippies and Alec Baldwin.

Fox News is all excited because it's gotten the great man himself to agree to fly over the devastation in their news helicopter to give them an exclusive on his reaction to the titanic event. 3:00 comes, then 3:20, then 3:21...3:22...the minute hands clicks over to 3:23 and sure enough, with an indescribable roar the ground twists and rears itself and then everything...east of the San Andreas Fault slides into the ocean.

And up in the helicopter, Schatzwalter slaps his palm to his forehead and groans in frustration, "Oh, @#$#, I got the sign backwards!"