“Psst!” she said, interrupting my reverie in the aisle of a local supermarket.
I looked at the person who had come into my space and seemed to want my attention. It was a rather elderly lady. She had been watching me rustle through the vestiges of old-timey lightbulbs down on the lower shelves. The eye-level shelves, you see, are now dominated by the imposed upon us curly-top CFL bulbs with the clear message being “You MUST buy these and ONLY these! If you insist on buying the vestigial remains of the ‘evil’ bulbs, then we are going to make you scramble around at gutter level in the shelving. Ve haff vays of makink you comply!”
“I’ve heard,” she said, in subdued tones out of the side of her mouth, “that you can still get 100-watt bulbs at the Dollar Store in this mall.”
Woo-hoo! Just like buying dope, I thought. Not that I go around buying dope as a practice, but I realized that clandestine information conveying calls for the sort of hushed voice she was using. That’s right, the state is forcing a decent granny to transport herself in public like a tweaking drug dealer all for the sake of maintaining access to a product that has served her all her life.
This year they are forbidden to make any more 70s and 100s, so to find a supplier is like scoring the best Acapulco Gold. Good old Dollar Store, thwarting the obsessive determination of the Ministry Of Retrograde Liberty – “Our motto: We know better than you about everything!”
A few days earlier I was checking out some items from a builder’s supply place, amongst which was an assortment of 40 and 60 watters (they will be joining the verboten list next year). Man in front of me comments: “Oh, lightbulbs. Must remember to get some the next time I’m in.” I told him I was attempting to get enough to last me until I die. “I have the same motivation,” he said.
But, if you insist on extolling the false enviro propaganda pertaining to the CFLs, demand that the ubergauleiters of the Ministry of Truth come clean about the mercury pollution thing. So far, they haven’t really. They just mumble phrases like “tempest in a teapot” and “paranoia” and the like.
What would happen if people en masse just said “No?”
But, we won’t. Too bad. But, I’ve got my stash, so don’t come running to me when your ‘good stuff’ is all gone.
And I still think so 