David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. The Five Stages of Coping with Power Outages
Your Mayor remained silent yesterday because the high winds that plagued L.A. managed to kill the electricity at his compound at the Naval Observatory (sorry, but don’t bother trying to find it on Google Earth. Can’t be done). Power was out for a full nine hours, by jiminy.
Interestingly, coping without electricity is the exact opposite process of coping with one’s imminent death. In 1969, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross listed the stages of accepting news of one’s own mortality as Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and, finally, Acceptance.
Losing one’s electricity while working goes precisely the other way:
1:35 p.m.: Power goes out; Acceptance: “Awww, too bad; I can’t get anything accomplished. OK, Wally, let’s go to the dog park.”
3 p.m.: Power still out; Depression: “Damn, I have a bunch of calls I need to make. Whose stupid idea was it to make phones today reliant upon electricity?”
5 p.m.: Power still out; Bargaining: “If it comes back in time so I can watch ‘Countdown with Keith Olbermann,’ I promise I’ll do a little work during the commercials.”
7:30 p.m.: Power still out; Anger: “I’m missing the #$$%#+*&= Lakers/Clippers game!”
10:30 p.m.: Power returns; Denial: “I missed the Clippers coming back from 17 to beat the Lakers?”
Comments
Well, Mr. Mayor, you could have skipped Stage 2 if only you had one of them newfangled cellular-type phones I hear all the cool kids have now.
Posted by: Suzy Q | April 14, 2007 2:11 PM
Article IV of the Television Commissions Act (which also allows for the waterboarding of certain reality-show producers) decrees that I make all calls from secured, land-locked lines lest radical dissident groups attempt to monitor them.
Posted by: The Mayor | April 16, 2007 12:56 PM