An inconvenient truth about lightbulbs

Trophy Wife asked Rocky to replace a dozen burned-out lightbulbs in their home.

A routine request, except that Rocky replaced all of their old incandescent bulbs with new, expensive, energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs 24 days ago! (Rocky’s massive bulb-change was in celebration of the wildly succesful Boost-The-Economy-Buy-A-Lightbulb-Day.)

Was this mass bulb burnout an innocent quality control failure? Or was it more sinister? (Perhaps a conspiracy to shorten Rocky’s life using tall ladders and electricity?)

Rocky naively believes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. And that Princess Diana’s death was just an accident. Not surprisingly, Rocky is skeptical that the Mob “put out a hit” on him (via faulty lightbulbs). Today’s New York Times bolstered Rocky’s non-conspirarcy-theory theory with a story about widespread lightbulb quality control problems. (Click on: “Do New Bulbs Save Energy If They Don’t Work”)

“Some experts … blame the government for the quality problems, saying an intensive federal push to lower the price essentially backfired by encouraging manufacturers to use cheap components,” reports the NY Times.

“Ah,” Rocky thought, “It’s ALWAYS the government’s fault.”

Since the new bulbs are more expensive than incandescents, consume energy to manufacture, and disperse toxic mercury during disposal, it begs the timeless question: “How many people does it take to change their opinion about the efficiency of a compact fluorescent lightbulb?”

Rocky’s readers are invited to share their lightbulb experiences in this poll: