If you do not live at or near the Black Hole At The Centre Of The Universe, your lights are still on and you have uninterrupted internet service.

You also have air conditioned grocery stores and gas stations where the pumps still work and elevators that go quickly to your floor when you push the button.

Bully for you.

Here in the BHATCOTU our lights are all flickery and our computers keep switching off and there's nobody in the shops to sell us batteries or blankets or vitamin C or whatever it is you are supposed to buy when the power goes off.

Our elevators mostly stay still, even if you are stuck inside and you really, really have to go to the bathroom and not just a little wee either but totally number Two and even if you are about to cross the point of no return.

So we are a grumpy lot and we are looking for somebody to take some lumps.

Here are two candidates:

New York Governor George "bitter tears" Pataki		Ontario Premier Ernie "Dar Heatherington" Eves

Messers Pataki and Eves have spent much of the past 24 hours blaming each other for the BHATCOTU.

"You started it," says Mr. Pataki.

"Did not! You did!" says Mr. Eves.

"Did not! You did!" says Mr. Pataki.

"Did not! You did!" says Mr. Eves.

Etc. We all know that the moment the cameras are switched off the two of them will fall hungrily into each other's arms, but for now the charade continues.

Right. So who gets the lumps? Let us consider the facts:

1. Mr. Eves and his Ontario government thought privatizing the electric system was a great idea even though similar experiments completely faceplanted when they tried them in California and Alberta. Today, Ontario doesn't have enough juice and its nuclear plants are still not up and running and a bunch of upgradey stuff that was supposed to happen never happened because the private sector was going to take care of it but it's never a smart idea to use the phrases "take care" and "private sector" together in the same sentence.

2. Mr. Pataki is a crybaby.

3. Mr. Eves has dumb hair.

4. Mr. Pataki won some prizes for being all cheery about wind and biomass energy and for being all sour about leaving the refrigerator open to chill the kitchen.

Advantage: Pataki.

That is not the end of the discussion. For the real culprit has already taken his lumps. His name is Michael Gent. He is the CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Council, or NERC. Here is what he said this morning:

"My job is to make sure this doesn't happen and you could say I failed in my job, so that's why I'm upset."

Boy did you ever fail in your job, buttface.

On the plus side, there was no TV last night so presumably a lot of people totally got laid.

Posted by Bret at August 15, 2003 02:40 PM