You’ve seen those cartoons in which a light bulb with rays bursting outward appears above someone’s head.

New ideas shed light on a situation.

It represents an idea, usually a new and brilliant one!  And sometimes we hear certain people described as “dim bulbs,” meaning they’re not terribly bright.

But can such metaphors work once the gaudy, porcelain-white glow from today’s halogen, fluorescent, and LED (“light-emitting diode”) bulbs lights up the globe?  How can you fit a bright, new cartoon thought into a spiral-shaped CFL (compact fluorescent) idea bubble? And I thought the CFL was a football league.

'Opto-electronics' means op to no good!

These new lights, pasty-white in the main, have all been created by something called “opto-electronics.”  Scary.

How many (fill in here) does it take to change one of those day-glo-white CFLs?  If you’re talking about me, the answer is one — as fast as I can.  Give me the warm, yellowy glow of an old-fashioned, Thomas Edison-inspired incandescent, not something that gives your office the ambience of an emergency room.

My last motel room.

Cheapskate motel chains have gladly replaced cozy bedside bulbs with chalky high-tech ones.  The room has all the warmth of a crypt.  But the housekeepers still put a mint under your headstone.  Or stand beneath one of today’s pallid street lights — humming menacingly — and watch cats and children run screaming.  No wonder.  They make you look like an extra in “The Night of the Living Dead.”

Like those street lights, many new and “improved” bulbs take their sweet time turning on.  They’re not “warming up.” The bulbs are cool — clammy, if you ask me — to the touch.  Prodded by Carol, my efficiency expert, I put one in a socket next to our garden and turned it on at dusk.  Roosters were crowing before the thing gave off enough light to reveal the possum eating our petunias.  Made him look ghastly, too.

Note the cozy, comforting glow of the new bulbs.

I guess you can tell by now that I’m not a fan of these cool, pale lightbulbs.  And I see from news reports that I’m not alone. With a mandated phase-out of incandescent bulbs, beginning with 100-watt varieties next year, people across America are stockpiling the things!

Incandescents’ days are numbered because governments around the world have ordered manufacturers to get with the CFL and halogen program in the name of efficiency. Compact flourescents are said to use as much as 75 percent less electricity than the old filament bulbs.  Or is it 125 percent? 2,900 percent?  All kinds of data have been marched out to promote the new lighting technology.  Unscrewing the old and screwing in the new saves energy, we’re assured.  You’re helping the planet cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.

That’s funny, the only bulbs I’ve seen in greenhouses are fluorescents or heat lamps. 

And speaking of a roasty-toasty comforting glow, doesn't this warm your heart? (Mushroom and Rooster, Flickr Creative Commons)

I’m so not getting with the program.  Above my head in my VOA office loom four opaque-glass rectangles beneath which stretch 16 long, fluorescent tubes.  Not a one of them works, because I got up on a chair and twisted them out of their sockets after bringing in three lovely desk lamps from home.  (Don’t tell.)

“I can’t see a thing with the new bulbs and can’t afford them anyway,” Sue Larkin of Tulsa, Oklahoma, told the USA Today newspaper.  A CFL typically sells for three or four times the price of an incandescent.  Supposedly, though, it lasts for 10,000 hours or something.

Of course, I’ve never met anyone who added up all the hours that a given lightbulb was on find out if this is true or promoter baloney.

This is more my style.

“I have stocked up on enough incandescent bulbs to last for the next 50 years,” Susan Drake of Marietta, Ohio, informed USA Today.  You go, girl! I’d do the same thing, but I can’t bring myself to throw out the 1,900 beauties in my beer-bottle collection.  There’d be nowhere else in the house to stash all those 100-watters.

“Unless you prefer paying higher electricity bills, there’s no reason to hoard old incandescent bulbs,” scolded the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Noah Horowitz.

Right, like anybody prefers higher utility bills. But tell the truth.  Who likes reading or typing or applying eyeliner under bluish-white blobs of CFL illumination?  You can talk CFL, LED, “green” to be trendy, but these creations can’t, um, hold a candle to the warm — all right, sometimes hot to the touch — lightbulbs of old.

I doubt pasty-white light was what he was after.

After years of experimenting, Thomas Edison was quoted as saying, “We now know a thousand ways not to build a lightbulb.”

He’d have a thousand more if he’d walked out of the lab with a twisty CFL.

****

KIO (Knock it Off)

Speaking of initials and modernity, I read a newspaper story about the spread of texting lingo — “OMG,” etc. — from handheld devices to our day-to-day speech.   We’re starting to actually say “LOL,” for laugh out loud,” out loud!

Grampa, laughing out loud. (Mr TGT, Flickr Creative Commons)

Then I got one of those humor messages that races around the Internet, announcing that we SENIORS now have our own texting codes with which to express the indignities of old age.  For example:

ATD              At the Doctor’s

BTW             Bring the Wheelchair

CBM             Covered by Medicare

COC             Coffin or Cremation?
CUATRH       See You at the Rest Home

DWI             Driving While Incontinent

GG               Got Gas

NPA             Not Prunes Again!

SWS            Say What, Sonny?

WIA             Where Am I?

WYNA          What’s Your Name Again?

And there was a good one that may need a little context.  The person referenced was an older North Dakotan of Norwegian descent.  He directed a television orchestra and singers who lilted through sentimental ballads and accordion-accompanied waltzes while bubbles billowed to the bouncy tune.  He was a favorite among the older set. Here’s the text code:

LWO            Lawrence Welk’s On!

You just tell Junior, 'BTA-HTF.' (Carol M. Highsmith)

But I believe texting shorthand can be a helpful tool for bridging the communication gap between generations.  No need for the wise family patriarch to prattle on when it’s time to pass along stories from the olden days or helpful tips to guide a young sprout through life.  Instead, toss out a few of these useful texting codes to replace tired clichés that make the young’ns’ eyes roll, and you’ll be done in no time:

AAAAL          An Arm and a Leg

ABB              Age Before Beauty

ABNB           All Bark and No Bite

AOME           Apple of My Eye

ATCF            As the Crow Flies

BIAB?           (Were You) Born in a Barn?

BIMD            Back in My Day

BSTS            Better Safe than Sorry

BTA-HTF      (The) Bigger They Are, the Harder They Fall

BBT-TTR      (It’s) Better to Give than to Receive

BOB             Bottom of the Barrel

BTH              Bury the Hatchet

BTSSB         Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

CBH             Cart Before the Horse

Good try. CBNC. (Cigar Jack, Flickr Creative Commons)

CBNC           Close, but No Cigar

CGYT?         Cat Got Your Tongue

CBT-JT         (If you ) Can’t Beat Them, Join Them

CNG             Cleanliness is Next to Godliness

DAD             Dime a Dozen

DIAR            Ducks in a Row

DITB            Drop in the Bucket

FIF              Fit as a Fiddle
or Forewarned is Forearmed

FOCB           Fish or Cut Bait

HF               Horse Feathers!

HOTH           High on the Hog

HYH             Hold Your Horses

IR                I Reckon

LBYL            Look Before You Leap

LIB              Love is Blind

LS               Last Straw

LTSO           (You Don’t Have a) Leg to Stand on

MDGGOT     Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees

MHHC           (A) Man’s Home is His Castle

MHWSS       Make Hay While the Sun Shines

MO              Midnight Oil

MPQ            Mind Your Ps and Qs

MU              (A) Monkey’s Uncle

NB-DFI         (If it’s) Not Broke, Don’t Fix it

NRTW          No Rest for the Weary

OBTS            Once Bitten, Twice Shy

OOF-ITF       Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

OOS-OOM     Out of Sight, Out of Mind

OSTD           (Waiting for the) Other Shoe to Drop

PCTS           (When) Push Comes to Shove

PFYT            A Penny for Your Thoughts

PIAV             Patience is a Virtue

Is this a PIAP? Not exactly. A 'poke' is a sack or bag. (jackmalvern, Flickr Creative Commons)

PIAP             Pig in a Poke

POC             (a) Piece-o-Cake

PS               Persnickety

PSPE           A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned

PWPF           Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

PWYP          Practice What You Preach

RCD            (It’s) Raining Cats and Dogs

RKS             Real Knee-Slapper

SC               Spring Chicken

SOL             (Variety is the) Spice of Life

SS               Straight Shooter

TCW            (My) Two Cents’ Worth

TISTF          Truth is Stranger than Fiction

THAW          Time Heals All Wounds

TIC              Talk is Cheap

TLY              That’ll Learn Ya!

TOKO           Takes One to Know One

TFP              (I Wouldn’t Touch that with a) Ten-Foot Pole

This TRTH is at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's former estate in Virginia. (thegardenbuzz, Flickr Creative Commons)

TRTH           Tough Row to Hoe

TTC              Third Time’s the Charm or (It’s the) Thought that Counts

WBTE           Wet Behind the Ears

WWBWB      What Will Be Will Be

WNY            (The) Whole Nine Yards

WPNB          (A) Watched Pot Never Boils

WYS             Worth Your Salt

Can you give us GAs (golden agers) some more helpful abbreviations?  Or send me texting codes that a young person might use to reply to Granny and Gramps.

Sorry, but a WTNB. (Infinitely Curious, Flickr Creative Commons)

Ted's Wild Words

These are a few words from this posting that you may not know. Each time, I'll tell you a little about them and also place them into a cumulative archive of "Ted's Wild Words" in the right-hand column of the home page. Just click on it there, and if there's another word that you'd like me to explain, just ask!

Diode. In electronics, a two-terminal component that passes electrical current in one direction between them.

Incandescent. Containing a filament that turns white-hot and gives off light when electric current passes through it.

Persnickety. Fussy and demanding about every little detail, often in a snotty or snobbish way.