The Light-Bulb Conspiracy is Finally Illuminated

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Originally posted: 2009-06-26

Your intrepid, TG reporter reports on a conspiracy so immense that it boggles the mind. I mean — even Somer can hardly believe it!

The Light-Bulb Plot is Finally Illuminated

By Somer Knight


 

This story starts in the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China, and ends in a Wal-Mart store in New Jersey. It illuminates a conspiracy to change the way we look — indeed, to cast us all into harsh shadows. You thought my first story was big? Well, this one’s humongous. It will change fundamentally the way you see the world; that’s my humble, humble opinion.

I know that my first sortie into investigative journalism persuaded most — well, some — of the visitors to this website that John, the super-cute apostle and Jesus disciple, was a transsexual. (See my investigative report on the Da Vinci Code) Yet even that rhetorical triumph must leave many of you, dear readers, wondering whether I can pull it off — can I really connect the dots between the death of the First Emperor, who lived in the third century B.C.E. (that’s Orwellian newspeak for B.C.) and my visit yesterday to the light bulb department at Wal-Mart? (Hey, Wal-Mart executives, that’s the second plug — you owe me!)

Those of you who drool over Kevin Bacon (I’ve collected every known version of Footloose!) have probably learned that anyone — even an old-time, “first emperor” who stored a terra cotta army in his tomb for defense in the after-life and an old-time insurance salesman who, informed by AIG that “he’s cotta retire early,” has spent his first after-Bush year greeting an army of Wal-Mart shoppers — are linked by six degrees of separation. As far as I can figure, that expression means that six people with a university degree could, if they really tried, locate the thousands of dots that join any two people.

Alas, I was not able to get the Bacon strategy sizzling because I no longer know anyone with a university degree. (It seems that my deciphering of the Da Vinci Code was the last straw-man for my educated friends.) But it turns out — miraculously, you might say — that I have been able to concoct a story that is so simple — mind you, simple doesn’t mean simplistic — so simple that guys who lived almost two thousand years apart can be linked by just two or three dots. And the “dottiest” of the dots (by which I mean the most important) is little ol’ me, for it was my trip to the emperor’s terra cotta army in China upon which this tale hinges.

Does that excite you? Do you find the introduction stimulating — as stimulating as the baby doll (and that’s all!) that I’m wearing as I write this story? Here’s what it looks like:
 

sub1.jpg

 
I suppose you are wondering about the picture. Is it of me? No, it’s from the advertisement that stimulated me to pay $35 (my entire royalties from my story on the bisexuality of the Lost Ness Monster) for a black-lace baby doll. As I’ve used forms and padding rather than hormones to create my body beautiful, I look a bit different from the model. For one thing, I prefer to be a blonde. Even so, my shoulders and arms are almost as slight as hers (thanks to a lifelong aversion to hard work) and, as I age, I have developed a bottom even larger than hers. So you have my permission to envisage the fashion model as being the half-naked doll who is writing this story.

Are you confused by this digression? Does it puzzle you that a published, investigative reporter would interrupt an important piece of journalism in such an unprofessional, cheesy way? Well, the detour we just took into my boudoir is an attempt to plug a gaping hole in my report — at least for those readers who demand a tighter fit between the avowed mission of this website — to seminate transgenderism — and my own selfish need to scatter my ideas about like a modern Onan. Try as I might, I have not been able to discover a transgendered angle to the conspiracy that I, Salome-like, unveil here.

I am sure there must be one, for T-girls have — like the Muslims in the USA — been present since the Creation. Consider this — the Light-Bulb Conspiracy has its ultimate origins in ancient China at the court of the First Emperor. We all know that the Chinese emperors surrounded themselves with eunuchs. You just gotta know that one of these males, once he’d been sacked out, dressed and lived as a female whose charms the emperor couldn’t resist — especially in the sack. But, after all these centuries, I haven’t been able to recover the eunuch’s tale. Therefore, to make this a transgendered story, I’m including photos of the clothes that I, a genuine T-girl, wear whenever I am trying to stimulate … my mind.

At this point those of you with logical, linear minds probably expect me either to introduce and provide a brief explanation of the Light-Bulb Conspiracy or, at the very least, to tell you how my trip to China enabled me to uncover one of the most heinous, dastardly conspiracies ever conceived by man born of woman. Well, linear thinking is hopelessly old-fashioned in this electronic age. As info whizzes about the web-o-sphere, all we can do is grasp a bit here, a byte there. What’s linear about that? And so, I shall start where I think best — in the 1930s! Sure, that may be briefly confusing, but I solemnly promise that the tale will make some sense at its tail-end.

So what happened in the 1930s — other than wars, depression, and dance marathons? In 1938, the General Electric Company started selling the first fluorescent lamps — these stimulated a gas to give off a white light (just as my eyeballs go white when I get gassed). According to a big-time Dutch professor named Bijker, the public loved and the power companies hated the new lamps because they were more energy-efficient and longer-lasting than incandescent light bulbs. This was the decade of the Great Depression and the power companies were already producing more electricity than they could sell (in part because Roger Rabbit was closing down electric railways); the companies wanted nothing to do with energy-saving lamps.

They were mad as hell with General Electric, which was not a good thing because they normally bought lots of expensive GE stuff — you know, stuff like transformers, turbines and toasters. So General Electric and its major competitors met with the US power companies in 1939 and agreed to replace the high-efficiency lamp with a new one — one that didn’t yet exist — the high-intensity “daylight” lamp. It would keep everyone (but consumers) happy by sucking up energy while producing so much glare that generations of folks would grow up despising the harsh fluorescent lighting they were exposed to at school and work.

I don’t know about you — but those last two paragraphs were so heavy that they exhausted me! But there’s one surefire way to revive myself — and that is to put on an especially pretty outfit. The one in the next pic cost me only $29.50. I bought a short blonde wig to complete the look. While she and I have physically much in common -
 

sheer_babydoll.jpg

 
(don’t scoff — we’re both human beings, after all), her waist is, alas, appears to be a foot narrower than mine.

Still, it is exciting to think how much I look like her in my sheer pink baby doll and matching panties….

And dear readers, just think of how brilliant you’d look in that baby doll and panties ….

Suitably revived, we can skip lightly over the next seven decades. Only one thing happened of importance to this story — the demand for electricity grew faster than supply. Maybe that imbalance changed minds: the light-bulb and power companies maybe questioned the wisdom of keeping high-efficiency fluorescent lamps off the US market. But, as I have learned, conspiracies are never as simple as that. Indeed, who believes in a conspiracy that isn’t labyrinthine in its complexity? To steal a phrase, any decent conspiracy is a riddle, wrapped in a Mercury, inside a four-stroke enigma, with a puzzle for pistons and foolishness for fuel.

It was now time for me to go to China. Intent on keeping a low profile (for reasons I shall soon reveal), I flew into Peking on a light plane that I had borrowed (along with its hunky pilot) from a group known as Gong Fella — or something like that. For some unknown reason, the reception was hostile after two jets forced our Cessna to land at an air force base near Peking. The Communists actually strip-searched me, which was slightly embarrassing because of the underwear that I was wearing beneath my tailored Mao suit:
 

Versailles_Boy_Short.jpg(Not a photo of my legs)

 
True, my white silk camisole and boy-short panties were first class ($88 for the set) and only moderately soiled (which wasn’t bad considering that the North Koreans almost shot as down as we crossed their air space).

Yet I did wish that I had picked something more contemporary to wear. I had chosen my underwear because it was silk (and I was going to China, land of silk, seramics and sake), but now, as I stood shivering in my dainties in a cell, I wondered whether I was sufficiently stylish for the New China (you know the one — the China that amazed the world with the first Olympics done in computer graphics).

You may wonder how I got to stay in China with such old-fashioned underwear, and whether they suspected me of being a crossdresser. That suspicion did briefly occur to them, but after a short delay of four hours I was able to convince them that I was a male dressed in appropriate male attire. “Do you not see the label?” I asked, “It says that these are boy shorts. Got that, Commie? They’re made for boys to wear.”

The Communist challenged me, “What sort of boy would wear white lace and silk?”

“Why, boys from San Francisco,” I replied triumphantly. I knew I had him there, for he had already admitted that he’d seen a documentary about the Gay Pride Parade in the City by the Bay. One Communist, taking command and firmly overruling the unanimous opinion of the others, finally admitted me into the country with a thirty-three hour visa after I had promised not to go to anywhere near a list of bars and outdoor cruising sites that he seemed to know by heart.

Once released to the streets of Peking, I headed immediately for Tinyman Square. You’ve all seen it on television -- it’s the one with a giant picture of a balding Chinese guy over a doorway (which is odd because generally the Chinese have great hair) and it’s the place where hundreds, maybe thousands of students lost their lives in June 1989. Ever the intrepid, investigative reporter, I had gone to China to interview as many of the deceased as I could find in the square on the anniversary of the carnage before the Communist cops hauled me off to the gulag.

Alas, there were police guarding every entrance to the square. They seemed friendly enough, but they were keeping close watch on me, and I dared not pass by them. After all, there was no point in becoming a martyr if I wouldn’t be able to record a single complete interview, right? So I defiantly turned on my heels and, my visa rapidly expiring, headed off to the Great Wall for sightseeing. It proved a great bore — I hadn’t realized it stretched endlessly off into the horizon. Not only wasn’t it brightly painted with graffiti like the wall in Berlin, but it lacked a single fire-eater or juggler! There weren’t even any coyotes trying to tunnel under it. So I headed off to X’ian to see the famous Terra Cotta army.

It turns out that China, being one of the bigger countries, does things big (how about those Olympics!) — things such as walls and tombs. The first emperor of China was buried, we’re told, with 8,000 larger-than-life Terra Cotta warriors (along with 130 chariots and 670 horses) to protect him from zombies in the after-life:
 

warriors.jpg(Note: the picture doesn’t show them all.)

 
Even though the buried warriors were first discovered by farmers in 1974, Communist China claims that it hasn’t unearthed them all yet. Is that likely? And what about the emperor’s actual tomb? An emperor’s tomb has been located on the site, but the Chinese Communists say that they haven’t yet opened it. Is that likely? Have they no curiosity?

Well, I, Somer Knight, am curious and curiouser. In search of an answer I prowled the back alleys of Peking, ducking into doorways whenever I saw a uniform. Finally, deep in the heart of the financial district, I stumbled into a poorly-lit bar. Filled with brawling foreigners, it had a name that evoked old Hong Kong -- “The Emerald Isle”. After downing several of the featured brew — a drink so black and thick that you could stand chopsticks on end in it — I fell into a conversation with the oldest man in the bar. He was also the only one there who looked Chinese, as even the waiters were redheads. But not Chan Char Lee, his yellow skin as wrinkled as a lemon and his hair, long, droopy moustache and wispy beard as gray as the Peking sky. As words still fail me to describe his clothes, I am including here a drawing of him that I doodled while we spoke of First Emperors, lost empires, and mercury: TangGaozu.jpg
 
An elegant man, no? And exceptionally learned as well, for he told me that a historian, writing only a century after Qin, the First Emperor, bit the dust, related that the tyrant’s body was surrounded by 100 rivers of mercury to succor him in the afterlife. It seems that Qin drank mercury for health reasons on a daily basis and so died as crazy as the Mad Hatter. (I assume that the ancient Chinese didn’t have access to healthier products like coca and tobacco leaves.)

100 rivers of mercury! Think of it — it would be almost like having the sun liquefy a planet! (A genuine planet, not that Pluto fraud!) But had the mercury survived into modern times? Yes, said Chan. A geo-biochemist and private detective by professions, he had tested the soil in the vicinity of the imperial tomb and had found it to be oozing with mercury. Chan figured that the river mercury might be worth, best case, billions of Hong Kong dollars. (That’s trillions of dollars Zimbabwean or American — for those of you reading this account in 2011.)

At first, I found the story plausible, but dubious. Yet as the two of us consumed several more glasses of the pitch-black, exotic Chinese elixir (its name was something like Gui Ness), his story gained credibility. More than that, we began exchanging confidences about things that really mattered — namely, about our underclothes.

It turned out that Chan was a cross dresser. He had first worn women’s clothes, he confided, as a disguise for his detective work. But, liking the way he looked en femme, he now spent most of his time dressed as a female. At that point I stupidly (I blame that black Chinese potion) blurted out that, given his advanced age and sissified taste in men’s clothes, I didn’t see much point to his changing his gender. “Would anyone care or notiche” I slurred?

“Wait here,” Chan said, “and you will see.” Well, I was too stunned by his appearance when he returned as “Carlotta,” even to attempt a drawing. And lacking a camera, I have no photographic evidence of the remarkable transformation; but I swear that Carlotta (aka Chan) was the spitting image of this model — clothes, complexion, and age and hair color:
 

Kristy-pic-image-content-28864.jpg

 
She was stunning. I was stunned.

I had never seen a more complete transformation. Entirely forgetting that Carlotta was in fact an elderly Chinese man, I consented to spend the night in her arms and in a borrowed teddy. While I had feared that Carlotta would lose her femininity, youth and sexual appeal when she stripped down to her dainties, so total was Chan’s mastery of makeup and masking that it wasn’t until I had consumed several redeyes the next morning that I appreciated that I had actually had wild, passionate sex with a grizzled, paunchy Chinaman.

I still swear that Carlotta had a vagina. And if that wasn’t her clitoris, then what was it?

Ever since that night, I have been obsessed with two things: first, filling out the necessary forms to adopt Chan so that I may bring Carlotta to America; and second, to discover what, if anything, the Communists were doing to drain and sell the 100 rivers of mercury at their disposal. I now understood why they had kept the discovery a secret from all but Chan and his confidantes: to avoid having news of the discovery crush the future price of mercury. If news got out that an endless supply of mercury had been located, its price in world commodity markets would drop as fast as the price of a tract house with a sub-prime mortgage in California.

In addition to keeping the rivers of mercury a state secret (which was relatively easy to do in China because there’s so much State there), the Communists had to find a way to prop up demand for mercury, which was then (in 1974) already being undercut by environmental concerns. Ever since mercury gave Minamata disease to Japanese fisher folk in the 1950s, restaurants have stopped using it as an additive in sushi.

In 1976, the Environmental Protection Agency in the USA banned pesticide use of mercury (even loathsome vermin shouldn’t have to die of mercury poisoning!) and since 1990 its use has been banned (in the USA) in paints and coatings, and since 1996, in most batteries). And dentists worldwide have stopped using mercury amalgam to fill cavities. Yes, regulators have decided that it is better to have gaps in our teeth than in our brains.

The stuff is deadly: in Lincoln Park, Michigan, four members of a family died when one of them attempted to refine dental amalgam in their home in an attempt to extract the silver. The house ended up so contaminated with mercury fumes that it had to be demolished and thrown into a hazardous landfill. Elsewhere schools have had to be closed for weeks after a child innocently brought a vial of mercury to show-and-tell.

Understandably, environmentalists used to be the first line of defense against mercury. Therefore, the Chinese Communists decided to infiltrate the movement to order to divide and confuse it. Do you want evidence of the Chinese conspiracy? How about the names of leading lights in the campaign to protect the climate against “global warming”: scientists such as James Han Sen, Tim Bar Net, Aiguo Dai, Susan Solo Mon, Martin Beni Ston, John Chris Ty, Ben San Ter and many, many others with names that, despite attempts at camouflage, virtually shout out their Chinese origin.

Especially revealing are the environmentalists who betray not only a Chinese origin but also some evidence of mercury poisoning (which affects the mind). Consider this picture of a leading environmentalist, who actually admits to being Chinese:
 

tree_hugger.jpg

 
She has literally become a tree hugger — full-time. Fortunately, food is brought to her. And could anything be sadder or more instructive than this photograph of Canada’s best-known environmentalist, David Suzuki:
 

David_suzuki2.jpg

 
Though he claims to be Japanese, everything about him — from his name to his nipples — yells out “Chinese”. Even the leaf. As for possible contact with mercury, it suffices to say that poor, addled David has forgotten that Canada has a cold climate.

And yet, not every environmentalist is willing to bare his … soul to help sell Chinese mercury. One of the chief conspirators came to his door dressed this way:
 

facemask_39.jpg

 
He knows that it’s dangerous to live with mercury.

How about the rest of us? Have environmentalists continued to protect us from mercury poisoning as ardently as they did before the Communists began their subversion? Any answer must get the timing right. Let’s see: it was in the 1970s that China discovered rivers and rivers of mercury; and it was in the 1970s that concerns about mercury brought about the first significant bans. What was the environmental movement then saying about the climate? It was warning us about global cooling and an imminent ice age!

Since then the tune has changed. Yes, the new emphasis on global warming did owe somewhat to the rising temperatures (the 1990s being the hottest decade since the 1930s), but world temperatures peaked in 1998 and temperatures have definitely been sliding downward since 2002 while the Arctic ice pack has grown during the past two winters. So why do environmentalists continue to believe in global warming? Who benefits from this delusion? That was the question that Carlotta whispered into my ear at three o’clock in the morning: Who benefits?

How about the manufacturers of compact fluorescent lamps? They benefit. They use so much mercury that governments around the world have issued scary notices on what to do if a fluorescent lamp breaks. The details are tedious but they basically consist of getting your kids and pets out of the house as quickly as possible. And if you make the mistake of trying to clean up a broken bulb with a broom or vacuum cleaner, be ready to meet your maker! Your maker, not the bulb’s. Incandescent lights don’t come with similar warnings. So why is the environmental movement telling us to bring this poison into our homes and later into our landfills?

You’ve guessed it — because of the Chinese Communist plot to sell rivers of mercury. But the Chinese are not all powerful (despite their exemption from the Kyoto Accord) and they’ve needed help to promote the myth that we either fill our homes with deadly mercury fumes or one day we’ll be forced to live in a planet as blazing hot as Mercury. And who would help them other than their dupes in the “sky is warming” movement? (I just finished watching a soccer game in South Africa and the players were literally wearing mitts.) Why, the manufacturers of compact fluorescent lamps (CFL’s), of course. The modern CFL was invented in 1976 by Ed Hammer, a General Electric engineer. Notice the timing — just two years after China began to swim in mercury, a US corporation came up with a lamp that — unlike good old Tom Edison’s incandescent light bulb —needed mercury.
 

hammer1.jpg-- The lamp invented by GE two years after the Chinese find

 
Surprisingly, the compact fluorescent was slow to spread despite backing from major corporations like Philips and Westinghouse. Since demand was weak, mass production wasn’t possible and a CFL cost $30 (current dollars) in the early 1980s. But then, in the mid-1990s just as mercury was being phased out of pesticide and batteries, “Large orders from governments and electric utilities, who then offered the lamps to customers at sharply reduced prices, gave producers an incentive to make the needed investments.”

You may have noted the quote marks. Usually, you’ll note, I quote mainly myself. (Who knows better than I what I want to prove?) So, who said that government and big business promoted fluorescent lamps as eagerly in the 1990s as they stifled them in the 1930s? Why, the Smithsonian Institution, that’s who. It’s one of the more honest branches of the US government (even if its air museum does credit Americans with aviation firsts that properly belonged to Tsarist Russia or ancient Greece.)

In summary, in the 1930s, big business suppressed the energy-efficient fluorescent lamp (look it up on the Internet like I did); then, in the 1970s — and more particularly in the 1990s big business, changing its strategy, began promoting compact fluorescent lamps despite the fact that these polluted the world with poisonous mercury. Obviously, the compact fluorescents would get nowhere if environmentalists still insisted on defending the environment. And this is where the Chinese mercury find came in. Determined to sell rivers of mercury, the Communists infiltrated the environmental movement to sell the idea that the burning of carbon (by anyone but China) so threatened the future of the Earth that it was crucial to buy compact fluorescent lamps — the mercury in them be damned.

There you have it — the fluorescent light bulb conspiracy since the 1930s. Once upon a time THEY made sure that fluorescent lamps were expensive and scarce. Now, they’re determined to have your kids and girlfriends surrounded by them. And it was in Wal-Mart that I fully understood the implications of filling our world with fluorescent lighting. Think of the glare!
 

800px-Fluorescent_lamps_artistic.jpg

 
Oh, I feel a headache coming on! Come on girls, rally against the conspiracy! Who can look their feminine best under such harsh lighting? At the moment, you’ve got to go to Wal-Mart to have you world become devoid of shadows and grace. But the conspiracy wants your home to become as ugly and poisonous as an opium den. And why? To make the marketers of mercury and fluorescent lamps rich, that’s why.

Sure, sure, I know that my ingenious report will be dismissed by the POWERS THAT BE as the ravings of a mind deranged by having to live without Carlotta. But I swear that these pages tell the truth — as I see it. And you can count on me for the truth, just as you can count on the photo below, Bob, as being your long-sought photo of me in a dress —
 

larue_1414315a.jpg
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Comments

I Have To Ask

Are you paranoid?

    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine
    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine

All reporters are suspicious characters

Me, paranoid? Why are you asking? Who put you up to it? Stanman -- is that a Chinese name? Your beard does remind me of Chan's. Well, even if you are an agent of the harsh Fluorescent Empire, I thank you for leaving a comment.

Somer Knight

I tried to grasp your logic

I tried to grasp your logic but it has escaped me and is now sitting over in the corner growling at me and munching on a shoe.

Battery.jpg

Are You Related?

joannebarbarella's picture

To that ancient family, the Somer Set Mor Hams? They also spent their lives wandering the Far East and pretending not to be Chinese,
Joanne

Light bulbs

Want to know what really scares me?

IT ALL MAKES SENSE!

DiDi

the greatest light bulb conspiracy tale...

laika's picture

since Thomas Pynchon gave us THE STORY OF BYRON THE BULB in Gravity's Rainbow. Zany, like Dave Berry on steroids (a disturbing thought- Dave Barry all shirtless swollen and green, ripping your door from its hinges to storm in and jabber a barrage of wackadoo blitherage at you); captures the funhouse logic (I'm sure Project Mercury & 60's rockband Quicksilver Messenger Service are tied into this somehow too...) & flaky digressionary style of conspiranoia culture; and I also dug how it sent up those t.g. picture stories (I see them at FM more than here...) where the borrowed illustrations bear very little resemblance to the text.

~~~Watch your back, they're not called the Illuminati for nothing! Laika

Just out of curiosity...

Have you accidentally broken any CFLs recently? :)

Either that or you like sampling the delights of Gui Ness :)

Or alternatively, you're perfectly sane and sober, but like several people here, have a highly warped imagination :D

Anyway, regardless of your state of mind, this was a highly entertaining tale that had me in giggles pretty much all the way through!
 


They're coming to take me away, hee hee, ha ha! To the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time!

As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!

Well, this was certainly a

Well, this was certainly a bright new way of offering us an illuminating story.
It was so charged with watts of knowledge, and I felt so completely juiced up; that I just know that everyone who reads it will find themselves "buzzing" with the glow of a florescent light bulb. :) :)
*giggle*
Janice

Relative Derangement

Bravo! This exposé shows all the signs of authorship by a product—or frequent visitor to—such institutions of higher, Oh, well, whatever, as Payne Whitney or Langley Porter!
I actually suspected the story might have been the work of Laika Pupkino, but then, one shouldn't pry too much about author's names on a free Website. Your wackiness simply beguiles me! Now I have to go away for a bit and chew on
my toilet seat...