NYC power company Con Ed has the highest electricity prices in the nation—"more than twice the national average price." Fuckers.

Brownout! ConEd says it's decreasing voltage to some parts of Brooklyn by 8 per cent.

Guess what? It's brown-out season! Power outages are expected across the Upper East Side tonight. DisasterReadyNYC—the scariest site on the Internet?—recommends filling your bathtub with water. Ha ha ha that won't protect you from the looters and Cloverfield monsters! NOTHING CAN. An Upper East Side hospital sent the following warning to its staff today, in case you need to hear it from Con Ed themselves:

If you feel like killing someone, make sure you do it in Jersey—starting today all you'll get for it is a roof over your head and three square meals a day for the rest of your life. (Also: the inability to walk more than 6 steps in one direction.) If we were us, which we may very well still be, and in a particularly vengeful state of mind, which we also may be, we'd want dibs on whoever miscalculates our ConEd bill every single fucking month. And maybe that little smart mouth from our fourth grade class who taunted kids by saying "I'm not laughing with you, I'm laughing at you." Also totally worth it—people who don't seem to understand that sidewalks in New York City operate the same way as major highways. Dawdle in the passing lane on the left at your own peril, got it? But surely there are better candidates for a one-way ticket to the afterlife under our sister state's friendly new policy?

The majority of New York's timeless manhole covers are made by shoeless workers earning dollars a day in an anachronistic West Bengal, India foundry. The workers, pouring 2,500 degree molten metal into those classic ConEd molds, are usually stripped to the waist and bereft of anything resembling protective gear. New York City's Department of Environmental Protection, naturally responding to the world's increasing flatness, said only that "state law requires the city to buy the lowest-priced products available that fit its specifications," and apparently the Indians undercut their competitors, Fagin's Bedraggled Ragamuffin Concern Ltd. of the UK.

"My dog Mushy," Post Bronx Criminal Correspondent Denise Buffa reported yesterday, "a 100-pound Italian mastiff, died yesterday after an encounter with an electrified light pole - and I'm confronted with official bumbling and denials over what happened. ... How many dogs - or people - will die before the city and Con Ed make its electrical system safe?" Our deepest sympathies go out to Ms. Buffa, and we'd like some answers from Con Ed too, especially now that they've killed again. Extra points for going above and beyond the call of duty: We have a hard time believing that if our canine companion was in his death throes we'd be able to summon the whatnots to call a friend from work and say, "Hey, you wanna come take a picture of this?"

Good news on the power front!

• On the scene at 72nd Street yesterday, Anderson Cooper looked just like a real reporter. Even off-camera, he's always in character. Intensity! [Flickr]
• Ellen Barkin is finally free of those troublesome jewels, netting herself over $20 million. Her 22.76-carat diamond ring was responsible for $1.8 million of that. Jesus, people — do you know how many African babies you could buy for that kind of money? [The Daily]
• Oh thank you, merciful God: Fashion Week is allowed to stay in Bryant Park. [Papierblog]
• If Ugly Betty is just too, well, ugly for you, don't give up: Fox TV Studios has bought the rights to The Devil Wears Prada and is developing it into a half-hour comedy series. From what we can tell, Lauren Weisberger is not involved in any way, so we've no objections to this new development. [Dark Horizons]
• YouTube hates vaginas. [The Apiary]
• So does the Tokion conference, for that matter. [Wooster Collective]
• Page Six's star map: a rousing success! [Star Map]
• That NYU tuition goes towards making porn available in an academic environment. [The Reeler]
• Con Ed finally places blame for July's massive blackout: not their fault. It was fate, they swear. [Crain's]
• Good, clean fun with gerbils. [Google Video]
• And finally, just because, our favorite lede of the day: "A woman has suffered severe burning to her anus after being struck by lightning which hit her in the mouth and passed right through her body." [News.com.au]

More than a few versions of the following e-mail have made their way to our inbox:

If you're on the East Side between 14th and 30th Streets, there's a chance that you might not be reading this right now. According to a bulletin from ConEd, "Four of 24 feeders are out of service in the Madison Square network, which serves approximately 29,400 customers between 14th Street and 30th Street, from Fifth Avenue to the East River.Crews are working on three of 12 feeders in the Kips Bay network, which supplies electricity to approximately 23,700 customers between 30th Street and 40th Street, from Madison Avenue to the East River."

Mike Bloomberg does sarcasm:

Northwest Queens, the severely power-damaged New York borough which became the subject of an intense legal and political battle that drew responses from the local representatives to Mayor Bloomberg to the Vatican, died today, after 8 days of attempting to repair a blackout on the order of a state court judge. Con Ed had restored power to almost all homes in the area as of last night, but after Astoria residents continued to experience sporadic power outages, the neighborhood's feeding tube was removed.

The payoff on this clip comes about thirty seconds in: As Mayor Bloomberg praises Con Ed chief Kevin Burke for, we don't know, not allowing Queens to be consumed by an apocalyptic fireball, the pols behind him visibly roll their eyes in disgust. We're surprised no one stuck two fingers up behind the mayor's tiny head. Quote of the day goes to Assemblyman Michael N. Gianaris, who said, "Someone should ask the mayor why the guy playing solitaire deserves to be fired but Kevin Burke, who denied hundreds of thousands of people electricity and lied to the people about it, deserves to stay in his job."

In a news conference this morning at City Hall, the mayor defended Kevin M. Burke, the president and chief executive of Con Ed...
"I think Kevin Burke deserves a thanks from this city," Mr. Bloomberg said. "He's worked as hard as he can every single day since then, as has everybody at Con Ed. And it's easy to go criticize but once this happened, Con Ed has been doing everything they can to bring it back. And I don't think that I could have gone in and done any better."

As powerless Queens alternately descends into Stone Age darkness or emerges to the withering gaze of the sun-god, them manholes continue to explode. Enjoy this WNBC morning news footage of a not-on-fire ConEd worker lethargically rolling across the street — until you see the flaming hellmouth he just barely escaped.

Today at Gawker, we choose to finally acknowledge the borough of Queens, which now enters the second week of an apocalyptic blackout that has even the oldest Greek grannies using AK-47s to get their rationed ice chips. So while you may have spent your Saturday night slumped over an overpriced Stella in the air-conditioned watering hole of your choice, the Astoria warriors were fighting the ConEd Hezbollah: