I will start by saying I am an idiot.
I went to bed while upgrading from 11.04 to 11.10. When I woke up I realzed the power had gone. (where I live they 'take light')
Initially, booting up showed me several versions of Ubuntu and their 'safe mode' versions. (I have no idea where they came from).
Selecting one of them brought me to a screen saying
"Waiting for Network fonfiguration"
Then after a while
"Booting system without full network configuration"
After waiting for forever, I restarted my system. I now get to a blank black page.
How do I get out of this mess?