My Last Thirty-Three Thoughts as the World Was Ending
"Making light" of a national emergency
This past Monday, a funny thing happened in Portugal. The same funny thing happened in Spain: The power went out. All of it. For eleven hours, there was no energy to be had on the Iberian Peninsula, thereby putting electricity on a par with good Mexican food.
Here in Lisbon, I tried to do as the Portuguese do during crises, which is to remain surreally calm. Below is a record of thirty-three thoughts that I had, over the course of eleven strange hours on this suddenly flaccid peninsula.
11:37 AM
OK, that’s a long enough walk; got some nice pictures. Let’s head home. Oh, look—what’s that tram doing stopped in the middle of the street? Maybe it’s out of gas? No, silly—they’re called elétricos! They don’t run on gas, they run on electricity!
11:42 AM
Oh, man—both elevators and the lights out? OK. Hmmm, walking up four flights of stairs in total darkness is less scary than I expected... until, of course, my finger goes into someone’s nostril.
11:48 AM
The porteira, who is like 200 years old and never actually goes out, says the power cut is all across Lisbon. How could a blackout be that big? Well, I guess there’s nothing we can do. I feel totally powerless—ha ha ha.
11:55 AM
At least I still have a 5G connection and some battery power. Holy crap! It’s ALL OF PORTUGAL. The Portuguese government is informing the public as best it can, but it keeps repeating that this event “did not originate in Portugal”, which makes me wonder what the government’s mother was like.
12:10 PM
They’re now saying that ALL OF SPAIN has lost power too! I guess the drain in Spain isn’t mainly on the plain. But what is this? Are we all going to die?
12:20 PM
There’s a sort of cosmic mercy in the fact that this happened on a beautifully warm and sunny day. The only problem with that, is that it makes it much harder to get all hysterical about this. It’s an actual Third World problem that somehow still feels a bit like a First World problem.
12:32 PM
People are asking whether this is a Russian cyberattack. Why would Russia want to do that? What I would believe is that it’s an attack by the Trump administration on Russia, which they screwed up so badly that they hit us instead. What a way to go.
12:35 PM
My best guess is that this whole thing was caused by a false rumor on TikTok that Taylor Swift was announcing a new tour, and one billion people attempted to buy tickets at the same time.
12:44 PM
Or maybe this is just Europe being a bit of a drama queen. North America has been getting all of the attention lately, so Europe decided it was time for a little hysteria over here and had a fainting spell.
12:55 PM
I had a meeting scheduled for today that I didn’t really want to go to. Am I allowed to be happy that it’s canceled? There should be a word like Schadenfreude that applies when a bad thing happens to you, but you’re secretly pleased about it—something like Whoopsiefreude.
1:00 PM
For a moment there, I looked at my coffee maker and totally panicked. But then I remembered that my stove runs on gas and I have a moka stovetop coffee maker! Halleluja! Rainbows and unicorns! I can’t use the electric coffee grinder, but hey, a Japanese suribachi has a multitude of uses!
1:10 PM
Wait, my fridge! What if it warms up? I have WHITE WINE in there—what will I do if it gets above optimal serving temperature? To be safe, should I just drink it all now?
1:11 PM
Hey, what if I drank until I also had a blackout—that would be so meta! Though, maybe not the best idea.
1:16 PM
And my freezer! What will happen to all of my... wait, might I be forced to eat that whole pint of Häagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream in one sitting? Oh, the sacrifices!
2:10 PM
Even my oven runs on gas, which normally annoys me, but today—fresh bread! Take that, all you sleazy contractors who rip out the gas and put in electric because “that’s what people want”. What they’re gonna want today is some of this delicious bread!
2:30 PM
I have an awful lot of books. I could just sit and read one. But it’s still working hours. How guilty would I feel if I did that? Maybe I could sit and read with a concerned frown on my face, in case anyone sees me?
2:44 PM
Google and Meta must be laughing their asses off right now. “Sure, go ahead and use a European alternative... if you can manage to supply it with some electricity! Har har har!”
3:00 PM
Luckily, my hammock does not run on electricity. In fact, it doesn’t run at all. What hammocks do is kind of the opposite of running. Hmmm, maybe the turtle and I need a nap.
4:00 PM
Oh shit, now the Internet’s gone out, too! Looking down at my phone, I suddenly realize that it is in fact... a phone.
4:10 PM
Losing Internet access is focusing my priorities. I’m like, “Instagram, you can go post a vignetted picture of yourself taking a flying leap. But how will I check Substack?!?! 😱”
4:20 PM
Portugal losing electricity was bad enough, but no more 5G? I mean, without Internet, how will all of the millions of married men get sexual satisfaction?
4:21 PM
Wait—there’s always that old backup plan: make love to the wife! I wonder how many Blackout Babies are going to be born at the end of January next year. You heard it here first! Here in Portugal they’ll probably call them filhos do apagão—“children of the blackout”, which is very funny when translated literally: “children of the big turn-off”.
5:05 PM
Damn, I was sitting here enjoying the relative peace and quiet, when a neighbor on the ground floor across the way decided to fire up a chainsaw and cut down a lemon tree. Look, dude, I don’t care how addicted to TikTok you are—who cuts down a lemon tree?
5:20 PM
I’m starting to think that this is all God’s way of telling me that it really is time to sort my papers.
5:33 PM
If I need to, I can always go sit in my car. Yeah... Why would I need to do that?
5:50 PM
I actually just got out a mop and cleaned my back balcony, so I could sit outdoors but out of the sun. You should have seen the looks I got from the pigeons across the way. They were all, “Whoa, man, you’re like never out here—are you sure you’re OK?”
6:18 PM
I bet they’re meeting in Geneva right now, discussing whether or not to grant everyone a Duolingo streak freeze.
7:04 PM
I just went down the dark stairwell to take the recycling to the funny little igloos. In front of the next building, there was a knot of people on both sides of a glass door. Apparently the ones on the outside couldn’t open the door to get in, and the ones on the inside couldn’t open the door to get out. I tried to tell them I had lots of tools and offered to go get them, but they just looked at me kind of strangely. Probably I said something akin to “How would you like to see my tool?”
8:10 PM
My 5G is back! My friends in other countries have been texting me, asking whether I’m OK, and also where Portugal is exactly. I feel like I should respond dramatically—like I’ll lose their love if I tell them I’m sitting here drinking beer and writing jokes. I found some blood on my finger after I took out the trash—maybe I should foreground that?
8:50 PM
I just started cooking dinner. Nothing fancy—chicken, zucchini, rice—but I was thrilled by the delicious smells wafting through the kitchen… until I realized that the neighbors below were grilling meat on a charcoal grill, and that was what I was smelling. Now the smoke is arriving on the heels of the aroma; I’d better close the windows if I don’t want to turn into bacon.
9:30 PM
Hey, it’s getting dark. Really dark. Rather than coming to life, the city is just disappearing into a puddle of gray. I see people are lighting candles. It’s like the end of a concert, and they’re asking for one more song. Hmm, I wonder how you say “Freebird” in Portuguese?
10:10 PM
My neighbors and I are all standing at our windows with our heads protruding like sea anemones, watching for any signs of light. On the far shore of the river, there are some industrial facilities with generators, shining like they’re coming to take us away to another planet. I hope that won’t be necessary. This is Elsewhere enough for me!
10:20 PM
Throughout all of this, I keep looking at my turtle, who’s like, “What’s the problem? Look, how about I just sleep on your hand?” So I essentially just spent the day as a turtle pillow. I guess there are worse ways to do an emergency.
At 10:30 PM, the lights came back on in my neighborhood. Just in time for me to turn them off again and go to bed. Here you can hear the people cheering:
Good night, Portugal! Thank you for taking care of us!
If you would like to read some other accounts of the blackout, here are a few by other Portugal-based substackers:
- ’s A Life in the Day of a Zombie Fanatic, also done as a timeline (because great minds), but this one with the Zombie theme that was sorely lacking here
- ’s Lessons on surviving a Zombie Apocalypse (learned from yesterday's power outage across the Iberian peninsula) (because great minds)
- ’s Off Grid and SMUG in Portugal, gloating deservedly about how being off-grid finally paid off
- ’s When the Lights Go Out, a much more serious take
And from nearby Madrid, Rachel Drummond’s 🎉 A Party on the Precipice of Apocalypse
And if you would like to read some other funny-ha-ha posts by me, allow me to recommend the following:
Ha ha! These two were my favorites!
"People are asking whether this is a Russian cyberattack. Why would Russia want to do that? What I would believe is that it’s an attack by the Trump administration on Russia, which they screwed up so badly that they hit us instead. What a way to go."
"I bet they’re meeting in Geneva right now, discussing whether or not to grant everyone a Duolingo streak freeze."
This was really funny, Gregory. Thank you for sharing it. (It was also interesting to get an insider scoop on what it was like to survive the blackout!)