Prohibition -- The Lights Are Going Out

I read a reminder that as of 2012, the incandescent bulb design we've all known for so many years will become illegal, and we'll move into a yellowish future of little spiraly things. Even the designers of the ban seem to understand the idea of the lights going out -- first they'll take away out 100 Watts, then our 75s, then our 60s. By the time they take away our 40 Watt bulbs in 2014, we'll all be so used to it, we won't know the difference.

Oh sure, the new bulbs give light, and they're spiraly, and they last a long time and collect dust in fascinating ways. And I'll get that little surge of evil when I throw them in the trash instead of taking them to the hazardous waste dump, but I know that after a few years of prohibition I'll become desperate. I'll go to an unmarked door in a run down brick building and give a password, and enter a windowless brick room lit entirely by bootleg incandescants hanging bare by their cords from the ceiling. Their glowing filaments will burn little green and blue squiggles into my vision, and I'll sidle up to the bar, take off my fedora, and ask for a Scotch on the rocks. When I'll lean back and watch as the gangsters and their molls dance in the harsh white light of bare incandescents.

"Hey buddy, you look like a guy who can appreciate a good light, you know wad I mean? You have any interest in a case of 120 Watts? I got a guy who brings them over by the truckload from Mexico. Real stuff, you know wad I mean? You could heat your house with these things."

And I'll picture my house, blackout curtains down, with those round, curving bulbs radiating brilliant white light from every socket. But it's not to be. Going to the speakeasy is one thing, but bourgeois virtue prevails, and I'll shake my head. When the g-men raid my home, there will be no incandescents found.