Thursday, January 20, 2011

You Dim Some you lose some

You know I can accept that the world is not flat and eggs actually DID come before chickens ( or is it the other way around?), but one fact I cannot grasp is that the light bulb as I once knew it is CHANGING??? Oh sure those freaky squiggle and LED bulbs may save some energy but I am not sure that they are either better or less costly in the long run? All I know is they sure look dumb sticking out of the ‘in the door’ lighted refrigerator water and ice dispenser.

I like my old fashioned bulbs. It was the one constant in my life that worked just as well when I was a kid as it does now. To this day I never tire of switching between all three levels of a 3-way bulb and basking in their warm glow as I am trying to spy through the neighbor’s mail. Now those squiggle lights start-up a little dim and then burn hot and glaringly stark for my taste.

I am also not a big fan of having to evacuate the premises if I drop one of the loopy lights due to the poisonous gas prize inside. LED lights are safe but always have a kind of cold bluish tint to them and can’t cast a wide beam. Why would ANY wife need something other than their husbands, when having to put up with something that is ‘dim’ and emits killer gas when treated improperly?

I hate buying light bulbs that are made in China over good ol’ fashioned globular American bulbs. We Yanks still love wall to wall carpeting and our space program is more mature than the Chinese, so logically we should know more about vacuums than anyone right? Now even though these new bulbs last longer and use a few cents less energy every day, when they do burn out they cost $5 to replace paid to a foreign manufacturer over a traditional 50 cent light bulb built domestically.

If this losing ‘False economy’ thinking continues to catch on, I expect we can export chopsticks to China at ten times what they are paying now (assuming we leave out the costly poison gas). Sadly I forgot though, the world is still not flat AND the Chinese are not 'dim' enough to ‘see the light’ my way - who would have 'thunk' it!