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This post is for all you 8125ers out there who have been braving the experience like me. I'm positive this is a common issue, because when it happened to me, I was able to find a lot of people with the same issue, but it took a while. So heres the first part of both DIY solutions.
Anyone out there with an 8125 has probably had this happen to them at least once. Cingular is very quick to replace the battery, and when they send you your replacement, or you make the swap in store, the new (refurbed?) battery comes with roughly a 15-25% charge out of the box. This basically solves the issue for the short term, however those of you, like myself, who don't always have the chance to charge up, or your car charger broke, or you forgot to shut down or you're just downright irresponsible - whatever the case may be, you just don't have the chutzpah to show up at Cingular's door every few days to swap batteries. It's just not cool, and it totally negates the inherent coolness of the phone your trying to heal. This is the only solution Cingular offers, and they don't really want to hear about the other ways of doing it, nor do they need to.

This brings us to solution # 1 - keep a spare battery, or at least stay close to one -
Unfortunately, the operating system controls routing the power from the mini-usb port to the battery. If the battery drains low enough that the OS can't do what it has to do, your looking at a dead phone. A lot of times the phone refuses to start up or route charge to the battery because it's in a frozen state of sorts, usually in the middle of a notification. In my case, it was my morning wake up alarm.
Step 1- Get a battery - You can buy one to keep, or Cingular's store should be able to let you borrow one for a few minutes so you can perform these steps in the store with wall charger in hand.
Step 2- Swap the battery to the partially charged battery you got.
Step 3- Power up the phone and wait until it fully loads to the Today screen, it rids itself of whatever notifications are waiting in line. Let the phone sit, turned on for a while, to be safe.
Step 4- Shut down the phone, by holding the power button until it prompts you and accept the prompt.
Step 5- You can then swap to the original (discharged) battery while keeping the phone connected to its charging cable the whole time.
Step 6 - Quickly start up the phone.
At this stage, if the orange light doesn't come on or the phone doesn't start up after a few seconds of pressing the power button, try unplugging and re-plugging the mini-usb charger from the phone, and then retry the steps above.

If the orange light comes on, it should start up normally, and the screen will light up in all it's brilliance, and your in business. If this solution works for you, the way it does for me, charge the phone through the night after that ordeal and the original battery should be fine, no matter what Cingular says. Theres even something on their site that says that if the battery is discharged, its rendered useless, but its not true. I've brought the same battery back to life this way and the other way (see Solution # 2, coming soon) many times, and the battery is just fine. If you've committed to this phone, or you just got it because the price on Cingular's site has gone down drastically, (50 bucks after rebates or something like that) then you definitely want to invest in another battery for this rare but crippling situation.
So that's it! You've successfully jump-started your battery by clearing the 8125's notification queue. Enjoy.

Stay tuned for Solution # 2 to this problem, which is a little more technical, but cheaper and easier than running to the store. And it's strangely reminiscent of how my first car had to be jump-started after it's cheap old battery died.

yours truly,
Commodore 64 (the one you played Bruce Lee on)