The main reason I posted the previous message was to avoid being put on Mark Hoback's Death Watch. It's been a couple of strange days down here in bucolic and normally Mayberry-esque Carolina (when John DiIulio, down by the schoolyard, talkin' out of school, referred to "Mayberry Machiavellis", most people here believed it to be an exaltation. If you haven't memorized the dialogue to all the B&W Mayberry RFD episodes, the locals call you Gomer).
Stern repeated warnings about the carbon monoxide dangers of burning charcoal indoors reduced demand and made it the only thing that burned that wasn't sold out. Saints were being sold for their flammable quality, people lined up 50 deep. I got the charcoal, but shortly after I got it burning in the fireplace, the lights came on.
Blessed Electricity. Sweet sacred warm juicy electricity. With your hot polarized outlets and relentlessly throbbing heat pumps keepin' me warm all night long. I love electricity.
And light, which is to electricity what the Christmas manger is to Christianity. It is better to light a fucking candle than to curse the god damn darkness, as Eleanor Roosevelt used to say. I cursed the darkness for 36 hours, even with candles. A good supply of "virgin candles", the ones in the Mexican food section with Saint Guadalupe, usually, on them for a buck twenty-nine. I have a dozen left over from Hurricane Fran when I had no power for a week.
The most interesting food I made was toast, in my fireplace, over cheap charcoal, in an improvised basket. It toasted in seconds. It was good because it was warm. It never got below 55 in my living room, but it threatened to get below 20 last night. Maybe it did. I don't care. The power came on.
I think I owe a large karmic debt to the universe for my good fortune the past few days and I will pay it. Cable and my cable modem are back, like the electricity returning when I'd developed a plan B. I will pay my bills to Duke Power and Time-Warner. That is money though, not karma. Do not trust "all-electric" homes.
7:13:25 PM 
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