Every time someone says lightbulb I think about the guy who invented it and how people said he was a failure and he said--im not a failure, I just found 100 ways that don't work-- or something like that.
There are a lot of lightbulbs out there different shapes different sizes some long and some fat and some quite large--there are these huge lights at my work and the bulbs are 80 dollars and they are as big as my head and the store has a hundred of them to light everything up and they have all this stuff on the inside of them, they look like rigid curled telephone chords stretched between crystal curves and metal railings--those long light bulbs the fluorescent ones have no internal stuff going on at all--just tightly packed molecules of electro-conductive-illumination gas--reminds me of this time when I was really young like 9 or so and my mom told me to clean the bathroom mirror While I was cleaning that I saw the lamp above it was really dirty So I cleaned the outside of the lamp and when I looked inside I saw the light bulbs were filthy dusty so I sprayed them to get them clean--they were on and hot and they Exploded showering me with glass--I remeber feeling so bad that feeling that I had screwed up in only the degree that I could--now that I think about it it didn't explode it imploded because they only work in a vacuum and those tube lights are pressurized so those explode--but that reminds me of this time when I was making hot water for mom around the same time and I made it too hot and was told to cool it down so I took the glass measuring cup of boiling liquid and placed in a lukewarm pot of water and it shattered just like that lightbulb
light bulb
Such a strange thing--pear shaped usually with some kind of milky residue on the inside and curly tungsten that lights up in a vacuum when electricty passes through it--reminds me of a lightbulb burning out infront of me once--another time I thought I did a bad thing--so I told dad in tears that the light had burned out and it wasn't my fault and he went in to investigate--and he explained to me that it "Nova'd" which comes from supernova, to describe the brilliant camera flash and the ensuing darkness that follows--so then he unscrewed it and shook it next to his ear and said that it was bad--I thought that was magic that he could do that--he could come to any lightbulb shake it next to his head and know if it were good or bad--when I asked him how he knew he put it next to my ear and shook it and I heard the faintest rattling around inside of it--but it was white and frosted so I couldn't see inside and I remember being so curious to see how it looked now--it was a whole world contained in that little thing and I couldn't see it so I asked to see inside and he said it would just shatter and I asked why and he said it was because of the vacuum and walked away to get another bulb to replace it--and I thought it was weird to have a vacuum inside the light bulb--I never heard it turn on and they always stayed so dirty so it must have been a pretty poor vacuum to miss all that dust or as my mother said--you just weren't trying hard enough--light bulbs were an enigma to me--once I replaced a refrigerator bulb with a house bulb just to see what would happen and dad opened it up at night and pure divine, angelic light shined out of it and he jumped back and slammed the door--then he looked right at me--he knew-- I could never get away with anything But I always tried
light bulb
Once I was working on my car when I was 16 and I saw this tiny bulb the size of a jelly bean inside the dashboard that lights up all the gauges it was so small and it got really hot when it turned on--oh but when I was much younger I had a great idea and that was the solution to the energy crisis because the sun didn't always show itself for solar power plants we could just use a lot of light bulbs because they always shine and weren't effected by clouds and weather and stuff but no one thought it was as clever as I did so I kept it locked away until now
There is this light bulb in my room that is a tube-fluorescent kind twisted into a pear shape--I think thats pretty cool--we got them because they last longer than regular bulbs and require much less energy to work--but they sure are bright I have gotten use to it now and I almost require that any room I step into be brilliantly illuminated replacing bulbs with the newer ones when ever I can--I even alert other people about the new bulbs--they smile and nod saying they had better check that out--but I feel like such a freak to key in on their lightbulbs and tell them more than they ever wanted to know about light bulbs to the point it's uncomfortable and they will say anything just to get me to relent--I know it and they know it I just wish they could call me out for being such a weirdo and I could thank them for being honest
But light bulbs-- so the incandescent bulbs have this tungsten filament in there and tungsten is super hard--they use it to cut diamonds and drill massive holes in the earth--and the tube ones are full of a gas that lights up when electricity passes through them--they also have mercury in them and if you break one you are supposed to have a HAZMAT team come down and clean it up--which is funny if you talk to people in their 4o's and fifties because the dentist would give them globs of mercury to play with--I have always been so jealous of that especially listening to grown men and women talk about how cool it was laughing and sharing mercury exploit stories-- a whole world of playthings I can't be a part of--anyway yeah so those long tubes have mercury and some gas in them that lights up with current--so one side applies current and it passes from molecule to molecule and lights the whole thing up to the other end completing the circuit--but sometimes they flicker and make noise and such--thats from gradual leaking when the molecules are no longer as tight as they once were--not as dense as they were and it takes some time to make the jump between molecules--and then there are these headlights inside the fancy cars like BMW and Ferrari and such that are called HID's which means high intensity discharge--they have two prongs with NOTHING between them and one side builds electricity until the other prong looks so appealing it causes the charged prong to makes the electricity jump the gap like those gizmos in the old Frankenstein movie inside the doctors lab that Jacob's Ladder except this thing holds this tiny lightning bolt between two prongs indefinitely and the brilliant blue light is focused with fancy reflective surfaces--they are expensive and they piss other people off because they are more than twice as bright as every one else and they are of European design which means they point up and out more to illuminate twisty cobblestone streets-- but light bulbs
oh yeah back when it was invented you know how they got the bulbs to be in a vacuum--they filled the whole thing up with mercury then sealed it then pulled it out with pressure and put a cork in it to keep it pressurized--more mercury again all the cool stuff has mercury in it--mercury is a poison and people are afraid of it and its in fish and I found out why--our coal plants burn coal and there is mercury in coal and it gets burned and blasted into the sky until it drifts down onto the water and mixes with the nutrients and then little dinoflagellates eat them and plankton soak them up and krill eat those and anchovies eat those and baby tuna eat those and juvenile tuna eat those and sailfish and sword fish eat those and sharks eat those and then we eat sharks and sword fish
But if they had a light bulb...Like that one deep sea fish that has a bioilluminescent thing on its head that it dangles to attract food
I want a lightbulb on my head that attracts food how cool would that be--I would have to wear sunglasses all the time though
Dreading it... another update
8 years ago
