Just heard a story that has pushed me over the edge!

So if my griping turns you off, you can forget about reading any further. Because I have two gripes, short and sweet, or rather not so sweet...

Gripe #1: No more free TV. I never thought this day would come but it's here now. Even though we all have pretty much accepted it, I personally think it stinks. Like a skunk. I used to be amazed, when reading about how, in the UK, the citizens have to pay a TV tax or they couldn't have TV. I don't know how their set-up is there now, but I used to feel really priviledged at living in a country where you could buy yourself a fairly affordable TV set and just plug it into the wall and get TV reception. Well, no more. You have to spend, spend, spend on all kinds of other contraptions and services these days to watch the old formerly free TV. And that gripes me a lot.

(BTW, I am taking literary license here and not making my grammar or sentence structure comply with the rules I usually adhere to so violently.)

The above gripe is an old one, though, and one I have learned to accept, albeit not love.

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But gripe #2 has just thrown me over the edge of the cliff and I am in freefall right now.



Gripe #2: The new-fangled "green" energy-saving light-bulbs that we all must have if we want to do any kind of living after dark are now on the market for --- get ready --- over $50 per light bulb. In fact, the woman on TV just quoted them at $55 per bulb.

W H A T?

We are now going to have to start a savings account in order to afford to buy light bulbs and this is not far down the road... this is NOW! They're saying that the old incandescent ones are "flying off the shelves" at all the big stores and once they are off those shelves, they are not coming back. Anytime soon. The day of the $50-$55 light bulb is here!

Crap.

Now if we had only one lamp in our house, yes, I could see buying the one bulb that is said to last 25,000 hours, but we don't have only one lamp -- there are 5 lamps here in just our living alone, there is an outside lamp at the front door outside and another one at the side door, oh, yes, and one at the rear cellar door and also on our deck out back. There is a lamp in the dining room and in the chandelier over the table there are several, maybe 6 or 8? In the kitchen there are 6 in the ceiling lights not to mention the under-counter lights. In the breakfast room there are 2 lamps and an overhead light on the ceiling fan.

Upstairs I have 2 lamps on my expanded desk area, 1 small lamp on my bureau, and 1 swing lamp beside my bed. Paul has 3 lamps in his room, as well.

In the bathrooms, of which we have 1-1/2, there are 5 bulbs, no, 6 bulbs in the first floor loo, and there are 3 bulbs in the lamp over the sink upstairs in the half-bath.

So let's summarize here. My math may have gone awry counting all these lamps/bulb holders but I get a total of 44 here at Crow Cottage. Of course, they don't all get turned on at once, but as we need them, they are there.

If, as the powers-that-be want to happen, all the light bulbs in this country are changed to these high-priced energy efficient types, that will mean I will need to spend approximately $2,420 (that's TWO THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED TWENTY DOLLARS) just to replace my light bulbs here as they burn out.

So the question comes as to how many of you have been in that number of consumers who have been furiously buying and stashing the old-fashioned type of light bulbs so that the rest of us can't find them anymore on the store shelves? Anyone want to admit this to me here?

I wonder how much it would cost me to go out and buy 20 years' worth of the old fashioned kind and to hoard them in the basement so I will never have to fork over $55 for one light bulb to some rich-creep-in-the-1% group who has the nerve to be doing this to the rest of us way down here in the 99%.

I will need to take out a loan to replace my light bulbs. Whose idea was this anyway? And where can I find the little twat? (Note: It seems that we, the 99% taxpayers paid this entity a prize of $10 million to invent this little baby that is going to wipe out all our savings in the coming years. Oh, that's a good use of our tax money!)

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There. Those are my two gripes for today. I will be interested to see who supports this new policy and who is ticked off about it as I am.

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And God said, "Let there be light..." but no one over all the land had enough in the bank to afford light bulbs, so the Earth stayed dark for the rest of eternity...

Jeers for progress,

Bex

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