"Dear God, My Power's Disconnected!"

What To Do, What Not To Do, What Not To Not Do,

Why, and Why Not, In No Particular Order.

Never Pay Another Electric Bill--Ever!

Is that you crying out, weeping uncontrollably? Unpaid bill cut you from the gigawatt grid? Congratulations! Never pay the voltage-vending vultures again! Ever.

A massive human majority has lived without one microvolt, millliamp, or megawatt meandering through their mud hut, unless angry gods struck it with lightning. You easily can too.

Without billions of electrons screaming through your modern digs, your soul begins to merge with the Ancient Ones’. At night, lights out, the appliances quietly dead, you do what folks did in the dark nights of eons past: lie pleasantly, thinking your own thoughts until you fall asleep. (If roommates are twitching and babbling due to Electronics Withdrawal, bring back Bedtime Stories.)

The silence is bliss. No beeping microwave oven! (Why the five shrieking beeps when zapped? After the first beep the rest fire impotent beeping rage, OK, I get it, you’re done, shut the beep up!) No consciousness-shredding blenders or grinders, no vacuum whine, no televised liars loudly scrapping for the last pennies of the poorest. No butt-rock or fake country pop radio, no frightening refrigerator groans. What Heaven Sounds Like: Nothing.

Why wait for the local Global Fornication outlet to pull your plug? Pull it yourself! Life without electricity is free, and will save you exactly 100% of your electric bill. Here’s how:

1. Forget the ‘fridge/freezer. If anything, the refrigerators of the pampered United States contain out-of-date condiments, left-overs of unknown provenance, wilting/rotting vegetables, industrially produced farm animal juices and chunks, and vacuum sealed beverages with little or no nutritional content. Eat or toss. Condiments are for psuedo-aristocratic blow-hards; leftovers should go to the neighbors, the dog, or the neighbors dog; always eat vegetables immediately; drink only human milk (preferably from the breast); better to eat your neighbor's fattened dog than some anonymous corn-fed beast; and warm drinks get you just as drunk or sugar-buzzed as cold.

   Freezers take questionably processed food and add ice crystals to make it taste worse. Ice dilutes drinks. Unplug and hose it out, make it a toolbox or storage shed or vanity. You can live on beef jerky, peanut butter, bread, fruits, vegetables, beans, and rice.

2. Never vacuum the floor again. Sweep it, no matter what kind. It will still be cleaner than old school mud, straw, and dung floors.

3. Blenders, food processors, and mixers can be replaced with knives and some rocks. Be creative, and quit being so picky about everything.

4. Eliminate the electric oven. Most of your new diet will be raw, for the rest get a little gas stove, or a barbecue grill. Open a few windows if you do this indoors, or you will die. Or, go ahead and die, carbon monoxide poisoning is painless and leaves a fairly clean corpse; electricity becomes, properly, meaningless.

5. In cold weather wear all your clothes at the same time, in hot take ‘em off. Use that stove again if it’s freeze-to-death cold, though the latter is more “energy conscious.” Or move south, sit in the shade, and drink lots of liquids, naked.

6. All electronic amusement devices can be replaced by story telling. Or “conversation,” an ancient inter-human data transfer ritual. The electronically addicted will quit complaining in a generation or two.

7. Cell phone users: smash it with a hammer. Be grateful that none of those jerks can call you any more. Did you really want to be available to everyone on the planet? And who is so important that you must call them constantly? Plan ahead for once. Visit friends instead of yelling into a doo-dad at them. Your lazy kids can walk home from their boring school activities instead of calling for a ride. Or make ‘em stay home and read and do homework and clean the kitchen, like in the just-as-bad old days.

It has been said that “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” But most work must stop if it’s dark, every lover is beautiful in the dark, and Lily White’s Birthday Party (sleep) is always better in the dark. So instead, “It is better to be grateful for the darkness, and go to bed.” No power? No problem!