Light Bulb Blather

In case you've been living under a rock, which as far as I know only I do, you know that the 100 watt incandescent light bulb will be phased out over the next year. The biggest tangible casualty of the new regulations is the Easy Bake oven, which will have to be redesigned with a *gasp* actual heating coil instead of running off of the byproduct of something that was originally intended to produce light.

Now, if you're a sane person, you would read this and say, "So what?" and move on with life. But apparently, most of the country is not sane. The illegalization of 100 watt bulbs has thrown the United States as it is represented electronically into an indignant tizzy. People say they're going straight to the store and stocking up so they can deliberately waste their money and the earth's resources as they please. How dare the government take away their freedom to burn their fingers off trying to change a bulb! It's communism! It's fascism! It's whatever else means "bad," because I can't tell the difference between political ideologies!

This is the sort of reaction people generally save for things that actually matter. But it seems we have a lot of pent up rage doesn't have anywhere to go now that the economy is stabilizing and there are no juicy stories about the president shaking hands with the leaders of other countries instead of leaping on them in a red-white-and-blue frenzy and gobbling them up whole. Either people are emotionally dependent on the brand of their light bulbs, or they have cabin fever from being shut up all winter and need some dire threat to freedoms to funnel it towards.

Consider what life would be like if the media focused coverage on every product that went off the market due to new trends and regulations. I haven't seen too many lead-based paints, books printed on high-acid paper, or candies dyed with Red No. 2 on the shelves lately. I also don't see screaming headlines about the death of the 6-DD-battery-powered boom-box. Just switch on the television to HGTV or some cop show and listen to all the ways they can identify when a building was constructed or what model the car must have been based on new codes implemented in such-and-such year. But lightbulbs, well, that's just going too far!

To all those who vehemently oppose the move to less inefficient lighting: it is indeed your freedom of choice to pour your own cash down the drain. Men in black coats will not come to take your bulbs from you. If you want to put on a really strong and united front, you can go into your kitchen and rip out the dangerously government-supported fluorescent fixtures, replace your Energy Star refrigerator with one from the 1960s, and heat your dinner in a fire-wood stove to stamp your carbon footprint firmly into the ground.