My power went out in the middle of a wicked electrical storm last night, so I shut the computer down, silenced the insane bleeping of the UPS back-up battery tower and went to bed.

As I lay motionless in the dark, I noted the deafening silence inside the entire house. No humming, buzzing, ticking… not a single vibration. It was a vacuum of sound made even more obvious by the occasional claps of thunder outside and intermittent squalls of rain pinging against the windows.

It is amazing how much ambient noise all our electrical devices create. We tune them out on a conscious level, but you have to wonder what all that racket is doing to our inner psyche.

I drifted off to a light, restless sleep in the uncomfortable stillness and slammed full force into a nightmare of epic proportion.

If all of a sudden they stopped making electricity, how would I ever be able to enjoy my crispy bacon strips? Even gas ovens require the gas company to have electricity in order to deliver their flammable product.

Use a camping stove? No way! Cook it on the grill and the resulting grease cascades into the flame resulting in a fireball that could burn the house to the ground. Use a pan and the delicious strips of fat and salty pig muscle are rendered greasy and limp.

I like my bacon CRISPY!!! And then it came to me (in the nightmare, of course). I’d trot out to the garage with a trusty flashlight, crank up the old ‘67 Rambler, hook one end of the jumper cables to the battery and the other to each side of a fresh piece of bacon. Fat is an INCREDIBLE conductor of electricity. In seconds my cold, limp, slippery strip of pig meat would be crisp and delectable!

I awoke refreshed and confident, whistling as I journeyed through the house resetting clocks, power sources, modems, routers, and my computer. I had a bullet-proof back-up plan for bacon in a Power-Company-Free world!

And not just ANY bacon… Crispy, delicious electric bacon!