tonight when i got home my apartment was pitch black. the power had gone out. my landlord came over and shined the flashlight right on the magazine photo of a guy's bare ass, which happened to be stuck on top of the fuse box. no comment. he called his electrician and they spent hours speaking in croatian tongues to each other. it turns out that when con-ed came to disconnect a non-paying tenant's power, they accidentally did me in instead. i had a cafe au lait at the creperie next door and read my book while the nice asian french waitress with a tattoo on her right shoulder blade hung out with her biker boyfriend behind the counter. then i tried in vain to find a movie to see (this is freaking downtown manhattan and all the theaters are closed at 11. what's up wif dat?). finally i get home to find my landlord stringing an extension cord out my back window to the garden three floors down. a lamp, the fridge, and my alarm clock are soon plugged in and i'm off to my third world bed.