Cell phone service went down here at the same time. A few seconds later, Mac read me the crawl on MSNBC. In 9 seconds, 50 million people lost power from NYC to further out than Ottawa. What a story. All other stories around were overtaken by this hot story on a dog day afternoon in August.

As the sun set into a sticky still summer night, I chatted with some of my associates. With no Internet connection, TV, CD, DVD, VCR, or what have you, we swapped stories. It reminded me that this was how folks typically communicated before all the media stuff drew our attention away from each other.

What is it about storytelling? If I had to guess, we've been telling stories for so long as a species it's become second nature to us. The storytelling code is part of us. We tell each other stories. We tell ourselves stories. So it's only natural to use storytelling telling as a marketing and selling tool. I now understand more fully why this medium of storytelling has DM copywriter David Garfinkel so fascinated.

It's hard to argue with a story, as they say. Good DM copywriters often address the story or narrative they think is going on in the minds of the reader or viewer. Eugene Swartz encourages you to engage the reader in that dialog. If you don't, they probably won't pay attention.

At the time of this writing, power has been back on for a bit over a day. New Yorkers are very blasé over this sort of thing. Compared to what happened here nearly two years ago, it's just an inconvenience, nothing to get overworked about. Anyway, New Yorkers like an excuse to open up and reach out to others.

We're now in the process of figuring out what story to tell ourselves about how it all got started. The last major blackout was 25 years ago. I'd say that's a good run. Now, with the power back on, we can all get back to watching Reality shows.