Dear reader(s),
I came up with two different introductions to this essay, one optimistic, one pessimistic. Guess which is which:
- Why is it we can put a man on the moon but we can’t design Christmas lights that last more than one season?
- The Christmas lights are broken again, which means I get to learn about electrical engineering.
It’s not unreasonable to me that a washing machine doesn’t last thirty years anymore. Yes, planned obsolescence is a thing that exists to make more money. It is also a fact that lots of thirty-year-old things would not have features that are pretty nice to have today: to wit, the current washer will ping my phone to tell me when it’s done. I don’t even have to look at the webcam I installed in the laundry room.
You think I’m kidding.
It’s also a lot more energy efficient than the Maytag I remember from growing up. Certainly a lot less Avocado Green. Lot easier on the clothes, too. Helps them last longer. Which would be great, except, fashion.
It’s almost, like, a cycle, man? You know?
So. Stuff breaks, but also, we get new features. Some of those features are nice, and some actually help in measurable ways (e.g. less water/electricity, faster, cheaper to run).
Ok. Back to Christmas lights (or outdoor LED lights, or holiday lights, or whatever. I’m fully supportive of the secular version of Christmas; it was a Solstice long before the current religious aspect, and anyway, it’s about being nice to each other and appreciating each other in the dead of cold dark except-for-skiing-this-kinda-sucks capital-W Winter. It can exist as a thing outside of the origins of the current popular name. It’s like speaking English. It’s not as easy as Esperanto, or, like, pretty much everything else that isn’t an Eastern Asian language or Russian, but it is what it is.)
Ok. Back to Christmas lights.
The connector is the failure point. The funny thing is, it breaks right where the wire meets the strain relief—that’s the official name for the part of the wire that connects to the connector and is reinforced to allow the wire to flex and thus, avoid breaking—which makes it an Alanis-4 on the Ironic Scale.
Of course, the transformer—the actual plug thing that plugs into the outdoor outlet—has a proprietary two-pronged connector, so, when the end of the LED part of the lights breaks off from the connector, you’re SOL, and that doesn’t mean sunny. And of course it’s not easy to find these proprietary connectors, because, the definition of the word.
So. I want to fix some of my Christmas lights. The LEDs work. The wires work. When the LEDs stop working, or when there are multiple breaks in the wire, I’ll get new ones. It’s ok. I’ll buy the same brand. It doesn’t matter; they all use the same images on their Amazon pages and probably come from the same factory.
As an aside, it’s not like there some kind of “golden age” of Christmas lights. There’s no “good old days” here. The last generation of LED lights were harsh, cold white and looked like the aftermath of Elsa getting dumped at the Prom. Before that, we had incandescents, which did in fact get hot and did in fact occasionally start fires and did in fact guzzle electricity like I would slurp McDonald’s Hot Mustard sauce if given the opportunity. Before that, “if one goes out, they all go out!” as it’s said in the song.Before that, huge bulbs you had to actually screw in. I think. Actually, that’s before my time.
Anyway! LEDs are great. They’re warm white, they use a trickle of electricity, they’re cheap, you can hook them up to all kinds of smart home automation devices and you can walk in the door and say “Device! Christmas on!” and after repeating it nine or twelve times because it keeps playing the song “Chess Mess” by a Slovak techno band called “Device” and then setting a “second timer” (?) for some reason for an hour and a half and turning on the garage light which is weird because that’s not connected to a smart plug but may explain why your elderly neighbor is worried about ghosts or the homeless living in her garage, all the lights are on Full Yule Mode, with a minimum of fuss.
I’m buying some new lights. I have to. I need more than what I have (which is either a statement about survival of the fittest or a capitalist anthem or a new Nine Inch Nails song). However, I am also going to try to fix my existing lights. That has involved me purchasing some new tools and new repair supplies. The total cost for the tools and repair supplies does, of course, naturally, as expected, as you might surmise, to the surprise of no one, indeed, surpass the price of new lights.
However. It will afford me the opportunity to learn a new skill, to wit; getting angry while trying to reconnect what I imagine are something like 100 gauge wires (approximately one molecule wide) in a plastic tube containing “tin” which means “lead from recycled American capitalist pig-dog batteries” and then heating them up with a small hair dryer thing such that the plastic melts and immediately causes lung damage and probably cancer before creating a permanent, impenetrable seal: like wood glue, it will be stronger than the original material ever was.
Also however, the original material broke when a crow sneezed last summer and the vibrations went into my attic, so that is “not saying much” in the parlance of our times.
Maybe we should take a cue from the airline industry: just make the Christmas lights out of the same stuff the black box is made of.
It will be fun, and it will look good, when it’s done. Also, I won’t care, because it’s done. Just like this.
—jr
P.S. I couldn’t do the “cool walk away” thing. I hope you’re good, I hope this was enjoyable, and I hope you come back soon to read more. And most importantly, I hope that the upcoming holiday season is a good one, especially for the many people who find it challenging…I think we all do, in our way, but some have it harder than others. I hope we all help each other out. It’s Winter Solstice, after all.
P.P.S. I kinda am thinking of writing a new industrial techno song for one of my side projects called “I Need More Than What I Have”. If you have one of those new Akai Minikey Mk-IV models that you want to donate to the cause, DM me. Or, email me. Text? Whatever the kids do.
