Some have noticed the profusion of spiderwebs all about my house in photos and wondered why there are so many. The simple answer: I
need them.
You see, in 2007 Congress, in its infinite wisdom, passed laws to
phase out the production and sale of incandescent light bulbs in the United States@. Other nations, like Canada and the European Union started getting on the ball about the same time. Cuba stated their bulb bans a full two years earlier (
that's very telling). These laws, dubbed light-bulb socialism" by some, called for manufacturers to begin equipping their plants to produce and distribute compact florescent lights-- those little "curly-noodle" bulbs instead.
Besides questions of mercury levels in the CFLs (because no one can seem to quite agree on how
much is toxic) and the danger they may present if broken, the level of light they give off is pitiful in comparison to incandescent lights. I'm told that the low levels of illumination you see in my room may be contributing to my gradually worsening eyesight- -well, that's why. Our government won't allow us
real light bulbs because of piddling "
environmental concerns".
The new bulbs also don't give off as much heat, which supposedly saves a few dollars in our light bills -- but the old bulbs served another function besides lighting a room: they killed the mosquitoes. I miss the days I can turn on my reading lamp for a few hours before bed, leave it burning awhile, and come back to see a pile of dead 'skeeters lying on top of my desk, fried by the white-hot heat of sixty watts of pure burning fury. I can't stand smelly sprays and citronella candle are a fire hazard, so at night, once it falls dark, the little bloodsuckers make a meal of me. I can't sleep most nights for the biting, so I sit awake, huddled before my lamp with its pitiful little CFL heart, and curse that toxic little abomination burning weakly within. If not for all these sticky webs to catch the little pests, I'd be bitten from head to toe, and spend July and August as an itching, pus-filled mess of welts.
I've been looking for a dodge to get around this not-so-bright idea by our government. In
issue #121, a subplot involves two characters driving up to Canada where, thanks to a loophole in the law, thousands of boxes of incandescent lights sit deep in the snowy bosom of our neighbor to the North, stockpiled within rumored secret warehouses, just waiting for some enterprising soul to sneak them over the border. I've also heard that five years ago in Germany a couple of brothers tried to get around the law by labeling a shipment of incandescent bulbs as"
heatballs@"-- for use in poultry farms and home heating lamps-- and smuggled a cache of them out of the country. Those two crazy krauts almost got away with it too-- they unloaded about 4,000 units, had back orders for ten times that, and were in the middle of making a second run when customs caught up with them.
So I'm thinking, why not do something like that here? A lot of my neighbors have converted chicken coops that they uses as storage sheds. Does the coop actually have to have active laying hens in it? There must be loopholes galore in that German law for us good ol' boys to roundly exploit. Simply toss a couple of chickens in your tool shed, call yourself an egg farm, and get a special hotball waiver from Obama. The government will give youall the incandescent bulbs you want, and you can toss out (properly, of course, because, you know,
mercury) those socialist CFLs. Fry mosquitos under the unforgiving heat of Edison's brainchild to your heart's content, and give
Charlotte@ and her spinning sisters the rest of the summer off.
Although, I'll admit, come Halloween, those webs hanging in the foyer do look pretty cool and spooky.
