No Light

So today was such a scorcher I spent it in bed. Many of you will, quite rightly, deem this reaction to the recent elevated temperatures as a tad extreme, especially since I have gone on record as saying that air conditioning is an affliction of the weak. The reality is, of course, a tad more complex, and you should ascribe the first sentence to my love of surprises and other staples of hack writing.

Dayjob central was located well within the zone, bounded by Fifth Avenue, 14th street, 40th street, and the East River, which was today roiled by threats of blackouts. It has become quite apparent that these feeder cables, and not a lack of suitable generating capacity, are at the root of the power shortages that have accompanied our 100 degree-plus weather. Which means that, yes, it's all ConEd's fault. That's not quite true, actually, it's the fault of whichever genius thought that one could square installing the redundancy in electrical systems required to meet such weather conditions with being a Fortune 500 public company.

Parts of my building were asked to perform voluntary evacuations, and since the company-wide email stressing that it did not apply to the able-bodied of our number arrived rather late in the day, I opted to work from home. Before you snicker at this, I will have you know that I produced quite the masterwork about financing infrastructure in the middle of World War III. (It is, needless to say, quite easy to insure it as well)

There's yer horrible heatwave story - a morning spent with the lights dimmed, a half-arsed evacuation, a jolly ride home on the Q, and an afternoon propped up in bed with the AC on low.

You may also wonder who Gumby Fresh supports to be the next Democratic candidate for US Senate from Connecticut. I know I do, even though such an endorsement, if it represented a monetary figure, would be forbidden. In one corner you've got this sweaty pompous moralistic old timer, Joe Lieberman (think of a less principled Roy Hattersley), and in the other you've got this slightly goofy, slightly more charming, slightly less snotty version of John Kerry, which is to say, he's still pretty awkward but means well, called Ned Lamont. Lamont would have had this sewn up, except for the fact we're a) scared of the FEC, and b) dismayed by the fact that Ned once drew a salary from the arch-clowns at Cablevision.

And a note on the use of blackface in lazy election-related blog invective. It's enormously retarded, much more retarded, say, than using "retarded" to mean "stupid" in lazy blog posts. Got it? It has to be retired. It didn't work last time. Won't again. If saying "you are engaged in cheap racial pandering" doesn't do the trick, time to move on.

Ahem. Right, time for the nightly puppies. Hang in there Mrs. Cutesome!



[Picture courtesy of flickr user mphoenix