While this week's dag nasty heat wave forced many New Yorkers to take refuge in libraries, cooling centers, and public beaches, others tried to cool down with the power of spoken word poetry. Poor Woodside resident Erma Dinis, who had been out of power for days, gave the quote of the week to Eyewitness 7: "We can't take this no more. Yesterday my head go so numb, I couldn't hear anything and I thought I was in a plane from the heat. I mean why should we suffer like that?" Con Ed blamed the suffering on "feeder cable failure," and high demand.

As of last night at 10 p.m., 662 Con Ed customers were without power in Queens, 1,946 were out in Brooklyn, 105 in the Bronx, 3 on Staten Island, and 2 lonely souls sweated through the night in Manhattan. (Will they find each other on Craigslist Missed Connections?) Yesterday's high was a record-breaking 103, but today's high temperature is only expected to hit 92! But the balmy forecast is no comfort; if you've been outside this morning, you know how muggy it is, like the meteorological equivalent of Bernie Mac. The heat advisory is still in effect until noon, and there's a 20% chance that a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.

Yesterday Con Ed distributed dry ice to customers without power in Sunset Park, where CBS2 reports that "about 200 customers on 50th Street in Sunset Park were blacked" on Tuesday night, and 6,000 around the neighborhood were deprived of juice at one point during the day. "Right now, we stay outside, because inside it's way too hot, almost hitting around 100," one local told the news show. "Some light now, but that's from the outside. But when you walk upstairs, you just kind of hang on to the rails and make your way there."

The Times hung around Con Ed’s headquarters in Manhattan yesterday, getting a neat up-close look at the company's "Big Brother-like ability" to "periodically shut off central air-conditioning units in some 20,000 homes and businesses to ease the burden on its system." They even canceled a Little League game by turning off the lights to conserve megawatts. "A megawatt here, a megawatt there can make a difference on a day like today," says the company's senior V.P. of electric operations.