All right, BrendanLoy.com readers, you’ve seen my blackout pictures and heard my audio posts (and if you click on the “Read the rest of this post” link below, you can read pretty much my whole story). Now I want your stories! SHA girls, assorted family members and friends, readers who find my site at random, I want to know: Were you affected? Where were you when the power went off? How did you react? What did you do? How long was your power out? Leave a comment here and tell me!

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My dad, a.k.a. Mr. Gnostic Watch, has posted several items (1, 2, 3) over on the Mom & Dad blog noting and criticizing the “never again” cries that are echoing through the land today. I take issue with his criticism.

I don’t take issue with it in its entirety — I’m not saying it’s totally invalid — but I think, with all due respect to my dad, that his almost automatic urge to criticize what he calls Gnosticism is just as much a knee-jerk reaction as the Gnosticism itself. Whereas true “Gnostics” will contort (or downright ignore) the facts of any situation and proclaim that it should never have happened in the first place and now must never happen again, I believe the Gnostic Watch has a tendency to slant the facts toward an interpretation that downplays official accountability and assumes the worst about the public.

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It’s been just a few minutes more than 24 hours since the power outage began, according to the local NBC affiliate. Parts of the city are still without power, and Mayor Bloomberg’s foolishly optimistic statement late yesterday afternoon that the power would be back on throughout the city within “hours, not days,” looks even more foolish now.

It’s been 8 hours and 8 minutes since the power came back on here, according to the flashing alarm clock.

Mayor Bloomberg says there were 80,000 calls to 911 last night, twice the usual number. What I find remarkable about that statistic is the usual numer: New York City gets 40,000 911 callls on an average night?!?

If we assume, for the sake of doing the math, that each New York resident calls 911 an equal number of times, that means the entire population of the city would call 911 every 200 days!

I just got back from a neighborhood-wide search for newspapers — a success, as you can see. And I didn’t even have to get on a bus. Yay!

Here are five of my best photos of the blackout from my walking tour of a darkened Manhattan last night. (Click any photo for a larger version.) I will post a full album later. (UPDATE: Here is that promised full album!)

The Empire State Building, which is normally brilliantly illuminated at night, is dark as night falls.

These people were among the thousands milling about outside Penn Station.

Firefighters help keep the peace along a darkened Seventh Avenue.

Times Square with the lights off! (The building at right had a generator.)

The moon and Mars shine over the darkened skyline of northern Manhattan and the Bronx, as seen from the roof of my 190th Street apartment.

Stay tuned for more photos! (Click here!)

I just got off the phone with Becky. Watching the news from Arizona, she notes the incongruity between: 1) officials publicly urging everyone who has power to please conserve it; and 2) reporters gleefully noting that the lights are back on in half of Times Square. TURN OFF THE NEON LIGHTS, YOU IDIOTS!!! :)

Becky also reports that she saw a former energy secretary on CNN accidentally slip and use the “f-word” on-air. Apparently he said something like, “The energy companies f***ed us.” Apparently CNN’s censors — probably not expecting such antics from a former government official — didn’t catch it in time to bleep it. Hee hee.

Becky, in Arizona, has posted her observations on the blackout. Among other things, she says:

But ya know what people do when the lights go out, wink wink nod nod. I’m telling you, there’s going to be a baby boom.

Yup. I heard someone mention this on TV, and I think it actually did happen in ‘65 and ‘77. So get ready, around mid-May of 2004, the Blackout Babies should be arriving en masse. :)

Becky also brags:

Buffalo (the city) never lost power. It’s like, yeah, we might have lost 4 superbowls and a stanley cup final, but bungholes, we have air-conditioning and y’all don’t even have lights! Nyah nyah!

And she sticks up for Niagara Falls’s honor:

I can tell you unequivocally that the rumor that the Robert Moses power plant in Niagara Falls, NY was tagged by lightning is FALSE. The plant was definately NOT struck by lightning. My ‘rents were playing golf in Ontario and said it was sunny all day. So, unless lightning can spring from a cloudless sky, I think we have a retarded rumor on our hands.

Heh. Well, of course it wasn’t a New York power plant that started it — the Canadians are obviously to blame! Blame Canada! Blame Canada! Hee hee.

The New York Sun did not arrive on my doorstep this morning, and neither the local stores nor the local newspaper boxes here in Washington Heights are selling any of today’s papers.

But the Associated Press reports that the New York Times was able to publish a paper using its back-up printing facility, and the websites of the Times, Post, and Daily News all have electronic versions of their printed front pages available. How many editions were actually printed, or how widely available those editions are, I have no idea.

Anyway, here are the aforementioned front pages:

You know things are getting back to normal in NYC when… people are double-parking along Cabrini Boulevard, waiting for a spot. :)

Ah, cash: Sweet, beautiful cash! (I was walking around yesterday with nothing but four quarters in my pocket, and no way to use ATMs or credit cards, of course. But power, and ATMs, are back up now in Washington Heights.)

I’ve got my computer running, and will try to turn the webcam on momentarily. I tried to call my office but got no answer, which suggests their power is probably still down (their phone system requires electricity, apparently, because it went down as soon as the power cut out yesterday). I e-mailed my boss, but unless I hear back, I’m assuming I won’t be going to work today — which is just as well, because taking the bus all the way from Washington Heights to Tribeca and back is not something I would look forward to, especially given how crowded it would be today, with the subways shut down. So, hello, three-day weekend!! :)

I’ll post more as the day goes on. Right now, I’m going to walk down to the one of the grocery stores three blocks away to try to buy some food — and newspapers.

Correction: computer is NOT fried. Yay!

Good news: power is back on at the apartment (came on at 8:20). Bad news: it looks like my laptop was fried (or, re-fried) by the outage.