...The swine.
I have not fuliminated about the Babysitter-Nation ban on Mr. Edison's incandescent lamp because once I pried myself out of Christmas blues* I've been in too good a mood to be vexilated but for the record: I plan to flaunt the ban. I'm gonna stockpile light bulbs. I'm gonna buy me some g-dd-mn CARBON-FILAMENT bulbs an' burn them, too.
Yep. Past the cut-off date, I'll still be screwin' 100-watters and 75s an' 60s inta' sockets, chortling like an ape with a new way to fling poo. I'll still be runnin' 40s and 25s in my nightlight and by golly, my Arts&Crafts lamps will have loopty-loop, tipped-teardrop carbons in 'em.
Come an' get me. If you dare.
(I've got a sawed-off hurricane lamp, too, an' I'm not afraid to use it!)
Weasels. Retromingent meddlers.
L. Neil Smith is right: when it comes right down to it, these pantywaists are afraid of our race's most basic energy technology: fire. Guns, cigarettes, internal-combustion engines, nuke plants, incandescent light bulbs, they're out to ban fire in any form they can find. --Good luck freezin' in the dark, damn you. I've got some rope to twist and a scaffold to build.
______________________________
* My Dad was a Christmas baby. He would have been 80 this year; he almost made it. My life story's pretty easy to read between the lines but oh, how I miss him.
Personally, I plan on using a LOT of candles, and oil lanterns, and other majorly polluting sources of carbon dioxide. Just to tweak them off.
ReplyDeleteShucks, I may fire up a few arc lights powered by a gasoline generator... just to light the deck while we broil fat laced beef steaks over a charcoal grill!
My friends and I might even.... dare I say it.... light a cigar or two!
Yep yep yep...cigars, pipe tobacco, pickup trucks (no green vehicles for me!), and incandescent lights that I have saved up, in addition to all of your ideas listed above.
ReplyDeleteRoberta, if I didn't know you really do believe these things, I would swear you just wrote a parody of my rant on The Libery Sphere.
Yes, I admit it...I totally blew my stack yesterday over the actions of the feds this week on several fronts...
It's no parody; I'm irked! (So are Breda and Oleg Volk and many other good people) And your ire was well-communicated. I hope reactions like yours and mine are widespread; I fear people are looking at the reports and goin' "Meh." 'Cos it's just one more chain on the collar they've worn so long they'd fear to take it off.
ReplyDeleteYou know...Christmas lights are incandescent, too.
Well, I have symbolically flipped the proverbial finger at them so much over the last few days, perhaps I have said enough.
ReplyDeleteBut needless to say I was and still am pissed beyond measure.
No one has said anything about *vacuum tubes* yet! (Duck!) Maybe someday there will be a Bureau of Aspartame, Tungsten and Fat. And speaking of dim bulbs incongruous, did anybody see Rep. Ron Paul on Meet The Press this morning? I watched it 'cause my own show was boring.
ReplyDeleteAw, shit. This is not really going to happen is it-- I mean, the ban? Morons! Effing evil!
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light
ReplyDeleteI have often wondered, as Franklin did at the rising-sun chairback, how that 106-year light bulb in Livermore would meet its end. And now we know. Will the last one to leave please turn it out?
And here is a holiday toast, to the long-dead filament winders of the Shelby Electric Company. Well done.
I had to look up 'retromingent', and was pleasantly amused. Nice pejorative, there.
ReplyDeleteAnd they can have my 12ax7 when they pry it from my cold dead hands.
I want to add "retromingent" to my MS Word Thesaurus, but what's a good synonym?
ReplyDeleteturk, see:
ReplyDeleteKennedy
Schumer
Clinton
Boxer
Feinstein
Brady
or, more generally:
Congress
Fire. Ohhh fire.
ReplyDeleteI cannot tell you how many moments I've whiled away filling plastic bottles with butane to light so they turn blue with a "Whooeeeze" and jump across the table, or sitting with two lighters, setting one off the other pop-pop-pop-pop...
Have I ever mentioned I have a bit of a firebug streak? Other little side-habits include heating wire with DC to red hot just for kicks, trying to make homemade light bulbs, and inventing new (practical) ways to light campfires...
Doc, that's why we love you so much and watch you so closley. :)
ReplyDeletePhlegmmy: DTV will happen, probably right on schedule on Feb of '09 and so will the Death Of The Incandescent Lamp...but I think it's slated for 2014 and we all know the world wil end promptly late in '12, just as the Aztecs precidted and they knew all. You can be sure 'cos they hacked out the heart of taxp-- er, human sacrficies live on stage, which Congress thinks is kewl but lacks the grit to actually try for themselves, mostly.
Turk: try, "cowardly" with a side of "pants-wetting" when used in the perjorative sense.
The stupid part is that I was already using CFL bulbs where I needed a lot of light but couldn't put up with the excess heat of an incandescent. They really didn't need to be forced on folks and neither will the LED bulbs that will probably supplant them in many applications over the next few years.
Stuff that does work, will work; that which does not falls by the wayside. Unless some meddler makes a law.
Hrmm.
ReplyDeleteThe Doc foresees a product that looks like an ordinary frosted white lightbulb except for three rings just above the base, one each red, green, blue. Turn the ring for the corresponding color change in the spectrum of the LED bulb...
Sold, Doc! We need to do a patent search; I'd hate to have to pay royalties.
ReplyDelete--I seriously would buy that product. Better still with some dentents for "warm" and "cool white" settings. Or a single ring labelled "color temperature" with clicketies at the popular points. The CFL is doomed!
I'd pay $20 each for a 100 watt LED bulb with those features, as long as it had standard LED longevity, and buy a dozen of them.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a proper use of skull sweat.