Lamp information

Hello friends,

I am telling you about lamps.

Reader Eliza G wanted to know about lamps.

Okay so in nature where all the dogs and frogs live, you've got Day and Night. During the Day the sun is out and you can see stuff super easy, that's nice for us, but during the night time...not so easy. The moon cover up the sun and we only get a little bit of light. It's not absolute darkness unless you are somewhere the moonlight can't penetrate at all but it's not as nice and bright as sun time. When apes digivolved into humans which is alleged to have happened because we started getting high as hell off nature mushrooms and having ideas like “what if there was a cave but like...we MAKE it so it's NICE,” we figured out fire that was amazing because you could have Light during Night. Then we invented houses and subsequently invented and fell in love forever with Inside. Then we were like okay what if we had....an inside light??? This was how we got to have Lamps.

The first lamps I think had oil in them to make a little bit of fire? Then we figured out yoooo what if we put glass around it so we aren't constantly wanting to touch it so we can experience the Ecstasy of becoming one with the fire and we made lots of really beautiful glass lamps that you can see in museums and shitty ones you can also see in museums and a million others that broke because we weren't thinking about if anyone in a thousand years would wanna see them. Then I think we invented candles? Maybe candles came first it would be wild if I knew that honestly, we figured out you can put glass around candle too and that's a nice lamp you don't gotta have Oil Money for. We figured for about 3000 years okay we have completely perfected the science of lamps it's a Known Tool and then a bunch of little fuckin freaks, almost none of whom were Thomas Edison, figured out lightbulbs and that Upped the lamp game significantly. We started making tons of lamps with lightbulbs in them and lamps in the ceiling that we don't even think of like lamps but guess what honey that's absolutely lamps. That's completely lamps. Now theres extremely sophisticated electric lighting and all kinds of lamps. Here are the kinds you can expect to run into:

FANCY REGULAR LAMP WITH CLOTH LAMP SHADE

Okay so this is not necessarily a thing of millionaires but it always feels a little Nice compared to just flicking a light switch. This is sometimes going to be made of like a beautiful ceramic situation or metal or sometimes a nice plastic? Sometimes it is squat with a low center of gravity like a friendly teddy bear and sometimes it is thin and spindly, it uses the same amount of wires either way. I think you could use wood and I'm sure people do but I can't think of a time I actually saw that so it remains as theory. This has a huge hat on it named Lamp Shade and what that does is it makes it so the light comes out very politely instead of burning your eyes when you look at it. Sometimes it is just smooth tube, sometimes it is kind of pointy and crinkle cut? It is an ancient piece of imagery that at a sufficiently wild party someone will put this on their head, but I don't know if this has ever happened organically.

FANCY REGULAR LAMP WITH GLASS LAMP SHADE

Whenever you see this its like oh my god. Oh my god you can just have things you can just buy things that are really good oh my god I should be BUYING OBJECTS! And then you either remember you don’t got money like that or you buy some objects. You have to make sure nobody in your house is a clumsy baby or malicious cat before you get one of these or it could get knocked over Badly but these are so beautiful, like the ones where it is an oval of just very good green is nice but sometimes they do like a stained glass type situation? This creates lots of beauty, which is good to experience during your life.

SHITTY UGLY LAMP

This is the kind of lamp at a hotel it is plastic or made of like the same ceramics as the plates my mom bought me in college that my friend saw and said oh wow these plates are made by the company that my dad has been fighting all his life to have shut down because their ceramics are intensely radioactive. It is a likely a shade of taupe designed to make you not want to steal it or even touch it and there might be plastic wrapped around the lampshade like they don't trust you not to do something disgusting to it. Sometimes you will see someone actually has this at their house and you're like what the hell. Don't you know you are alive. Did a traveling lamp salesman tell you he'd kill himself on your lawn if you didn't buy this? That's just a standard pitch they never actually do it.

TALL LAMP

Sometimes a lamp is Tall to make light above you! These can have all the attributes of either fancy regular or shitty ugly, rarely glass lampshade but I'm sure it happens. When you turn it off it can be where your coats live! Sometimes there is a variant of these that is like a hydra with many bendy necks you can point all over the place which is extremely fun.

DESK LAMP

This is a little tiny lamp small enough to live on your desk that you shine on your papers so even at night you can read the book of poetry your professor's friend wrote that you've been assigned or if its in a business office a memo about how everyone has to stop treating the bathroom as a social space because its inconveniencing people who actually gotta poop. These often have articulated necks and a little metal shade that makes it almost impossible not think of them like they are a beloved pet. You see this and you're like okay you're some kind of cat or bug that I am taking care of. I promise I will never hurt you desk lamp.

HEAT LAMP

You can use these lamps purely for making Warmth! This is nice for things like eggs with no mother beast to sit upon them or hamburgers that need to remain hot in a time of no demand or even if you are my partner placing in your bathroom to have a Red Dimenion Bath where you are so totally warmed up in all ways wow!

STREET LAMP
These are beloved in the world because they create light outside at night, which if you live in a fancy city like me is no big deal there's a ton of light always but if you live in a regular town its quite helpful if you gotta walk back from convincing your dad his house isn't haunted he's just got a possum living in there and he REALLY fights you on it until the middle of the night. They had these back in olden times of history with the lamps that were just some fire and it was a whole job for people maintaining them.

LAVA LAMP

This is a special lamp with goops and oozes inside it that float around separately in a colorful and blobby fashion all changing shapes, its impractical and creates very little helpful light but it's an awesome thing to see. I don't know if this costs like 9 dollars or 300 dollars.

SALT LAMP

This is a lamp where its like a lightbulb with a huge fuckin thing of salt all around it and I think when it turns on its supposed to make you more healthy? Like the light comes through the salt and makes your body good? I got no idea if that’s true but I know it’s the only kind of lamp that you can accidentally melt without trying very hard.

SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER LAMP

You turn this on if you are having a lot of sadness in winter because the sun isn't blasting you with joy particles, this is a real thing and not quackery even though it sounds extremely made up. Like its fucked up this is real and actually works and is important for some people to have because the "if this is true what else is true" of it is a big ass wedge in the door for people who want to like sell you a laser that makes your more sexually potent or whatever. If you are mega sad in winter might be worth looking into! Worst case scenario you have an orange color lamp.

NIGHT LIGHT

This is little lamp for scared babys of night time, although my roommates also plugged some in around common spaces for I assume night urination? Or they are just very scared of the living room? We don't talk. They make these in a lot of fun shapes for the babys so instead of being scared by night they can be thrilled by a frog.

LED LAMP REGULAR

This is a lamp with an LED light in it that doesn't have a shade or anything and is just straight beamin' light, they make this usually in such a way that the light is not too bright or horrible or at least they give you a remote so you can make that choice for yourself. Because its LED you might have lots of control over the color of the light which is really cool and fun. It's amazing to have a lamp creating Purple in your room.

LED LAMP MAGIC

There are lamps that project like moving fractal patterns and galaxies and ocean waves and stuff on to your ceiling? That’s so amazing. You can turn one of these on and just feel so happy from looking at it blasting shapes all over your ceiling or walls. You can feel like you are in a magic place and you have a magic object, which like, imagine telling the first cavemans to try and do inside fire what you're getting up to. They'd be so scared of you because they would think your shirt and pants are really horrible skin.

Thank you for reading my big lamp email! If you would like to find out about something, tell me and I will try to already know about it.

Love,

Ryland Duncan