California Power Shortages

She Needs More Power, Captain!

Electricity. All of us need and use it constantly throughout the day. In fact, most of us have been using electricity for so long that, like our relatives and loved ones, we've learned to completely ignore its existence. However, electricity is present in almost everything we own, especially in products which require some kind of power source to operate. Without electricity we would have no phone or phone service which allows people from all across the globe to call us up and con us into purchasing their credit card which has an APR in the mid hundreds. The recent power crisis in my state of California has really helped drive home this point into my thick skull.

If you've been "out of the loop" or "visiting another country" or "in a coma" or "dead" for the past month, let me explain the power-shortage situation, this quarter's deadly crisis in California. If you've lived in California for some time, you'll undoubtedly know that the news media chooses to distinguish the four seasons of the year by giving them different natural disaster threats. A typical year is described by the following TV news blueprint:

Those quarterly-crises are usually complemented with an assortment of other "YOU'RE MORE THAN LIKELY GOING TO DIE" investigative reports such as:

The current media crisis in California is this whole power fiasco. Each side has their own story regarding this situation; according to the power companies, California has no power left. According to media watchdog organizations, California has gobs and gobs of power left, but the companies are trying to manipulate the system so they can charge more. According to the California news services, drinking tap water gives you brain cancer. I personally don'tknow who to side with here, because I find all sides equally stupid.

First off, the power companies. After playing games like Command and Conquer and its smash hit sequel, Dominion: Storm Over Gift3, I've learned that everything revolves around power plants. I find it really hard to believe that these giant billion-dollar companies, who have been in business since the days when a computer took up 80,000 square feet and used punchcards and ran on human souls, can't grasp the simple power plant-building technique. It's simple guys: the bigger your "base" expands, the more power plants you need. As far as I know, California hasn't been attacked and destroyed by an army of Orcs within the past 20 years, so there's no damn reason for them to be lagging behind in the ratio of existing power plants to coffeehouses.

Then there's the consumer watchdogs. Their duty is to basically claim every company that employs more than one person and their dog is a lying, greedy, deceitful pack of wolves. For the most part, this is true; nobody really needs a third party to inform them that their boss is a crook bastard. However, they seem to be desperately grasping at straws in this case. Their whole argument seems to be based around... well, nothing. Any time an electric company executive appears on television to explain how they're $502 trillion dollars in debt and they're broke and they have to shove rocks in their daughter's mouth because they can't afford braces, the consumer watchdog group spokesperson will be given two seconds of airtime to shout that the power companies are lying. The interviews usually don't last longer than two seconds because the spokesperson often runs off looking for the mothership to whisk him back to his home planet.

So to sum up the whole mess, there's a power problem. Too many people are using too much power and the companies just can't keep up with demand. As a result, the ever-helpful news media takes it upon themselves to release informative and educational tips, supposedly to help curb consumers' use of electricity. The only problem with this is that their tips are completely stupid and obvious, like "when leaving your house, turn off all lights" or "if you're not using the oven, make sure it's not on." Anybody with the least bit of common sense knows the crap they babble about on television. To counteract these blatant displays of obvious they peddle on the news shows, I will present to you a short list of things that I'm doing to conserve electricity in California. While they might not be as apparent as the ones that the news media crams down your throat, let me assure you that they're just as effective. Okay, they might not be effective at all, but they take up a lot of space and justify me sitting in front of a computer for extended periods of time.

Good luck all you power-conscious Californians out there! With our help, the power crisis will soon pass and the news media will go back to their scheduled 600-part investigative report explaining how a popular, naturally-occurring atom that floats freely around in the air may be silently killing your kids. AND IT MIGHT RAPE YOU TOO!