For several years now, I have been stockpiling light bulbs. I prefer the Reveal 75 watt, but if it's a 2-fer deal, I'll grab anything as long as it's a normal light bulb. Some of my friends and I have all been closely following Big Brother's campaign to outlaw incandescent bulbs so we all look like shit indoors. It's true, people. No one has ever said, "This fluorescent lighting makes your complexion look amazing!" And as my friend Nancy says, I only need enough for my lifetime.
But the husband is a tricky man and he just loves the idea of a light bulb lasting 27 years. So, in what I think was a premeditated plot, he offered to put more lighting in my utility room. It is currently lit by one 40 watt dangling bulb. I live in a hundred year old house with one of the world's creepiest basements. In addition to the utility room, our TV room is down there too and, I have to say, it lent authenticity to this past season of American Horror Story. All it lacks is a guy in a latex suit.
Anyway, that is how I found myself in front of the Phillips compact fluorescent bulb display in Home Depot. The husband said he would put up some new fixtures, but it would have to be florescent. Winston and some dude in an orange apron started giving me the hard sell.
They last forever!
They are safer for the environment!
They use almost no energy!
I calmly and reasonably told them that they look like shit. And they flicker. And the flicker makes me twitch. Like I'm having a seizure. And furthermore, cigarettes are bad for you but they don't outlaw them! No, they just tax them! Why the hell don't they just tax my beloved Reveal bulbs and stay the hell out of my private life!?!?! (I may have threatened to hold my breath until they stopped talking at me but I was very calm.)
To save our marriage, I agreed to take home an assortment of compact fluorescents with different watts and brightness, and give them a try in the recessed lighting in the TV room part of our basement. Winston assured me that they had come a long way and that these ones were way better than those curly fry shaped flickering ones that make me twitch.
I laid on the couch with a beer while Winston patiently swapped out all the bulbs and I proclaimed my opinions.
50 watt office light: "Piss. It's like a piss light is raining on the corner. No."
100 watt natural light: "T.B. In this light, you look like you have T.B. No."
60 watt daylight: It's "Being John Malkovich" light. You know, that movie where they made John Cusak and Cameron Diaz look like shit? No."
100 watt Bright: "Will we be performing back alley abortions in that corner? No."
Shockingly enough, he got all pissed off. He sat down in his LazyBoy and said, "Fuck it." But he had already swapped out most of the lights in the room with random shitty bulbs and refuses to take them out because I am unreasonable, apparently. And now it looks like someone is filming a low budget horror movie/snuff film down there. And because they are all different watts, they all flicker at different speeds, like a passive aggressive strobe effect. And I'm twitching. Have you ever had that nightmare? Where you're in a dim room, and you try to turn on the light, but all it does is flicker and go out, over and over again? That's what's going on in my basement. Oh, and guess what? These damn bulbs will last FOREVER.
~dana
