Lamp Massacre of '08

Something strange is happening in my house. Something electrical and peculiar. If I were a more superstitious person, I'd say it was ghosts messing with me. I'm not, though. I'm rather practical. I live in a thirteen-year-old apartment that has already killed two blow dryers (one it melted the prongs of the plug right into the socket!). I thought I had the apartment's MO down. It just didn't like blow dryers. No big deal. I don't use that particular socket anymore. We'd reached a compromise.

In the last two weeks, the body count rose, and if I was an FBI agent (and a very weird one at that), I'd say the killer's profile changed. Or maybe this is a copycat that doesn't know all the true facts of the original crime. Either way, my blow dryer has been spared, but there's been a surge in lamp murders, almost like there's a serial light killer on the loose. First it was one socket in a three-socket floor lamp. Then it was the second socket. Fine, I thought. It's just the lamp. It was cheap and now it's giving out on me.


When my favorite (and relatively new) table lamp in the shape of the Eiffel Tower blew a socket, I could no longer attribute the deaths to old age. Interestingly enough, the Eiffel Tower lamp is located in my career section. (For those of you who don't Feng Shui, the career section of your house is the center front section of your house on the same wall as your front door.) I say interesting, because while the other floor lamp has slowly been dying (the first socket stopped working almost a year ago), the Eiffel Tower lamp stopped working the very week that I had a perturbing experience at my 9-5 job (the one that currently pays my bills). Was this actually something to be superstitious about? Was my apartment reflecting real life events?

No sooner had we (Cody) replaced the socket in the Eiffel Tower when my desk lamp in the office stopped working. Coincidentally (or not), the lamp was situated in the career section of my office room. Now, that poor lamp had been with me longer than Cody--which is saying something--and had been painted by me several different times to update to my current tastes (it had a lovely painted grass base and some yellow sun writing on its top). It was a bedside lamp/desk lamp for me when I lived with my parents. It was my only non-ceiling source of illumination when I moved into my first studio. It has provided illumination for me for every writing project I've ever worked on.

We weren't able to save it.

I need light to write by. I need light to read by. So off we went to a local lamp store that claimed to have lamps up to 50% off. Shortly thereafter, we went to Target to find lamps under $350. We ended up with this lovely Thomas O'Brien lamp. In the designer's picture, my lamp is the one on the left with the swivel arm, only I selected a white shade instead of black. I searched all of Target.com to find a better picture and they don't have one, so either this is a new item or I just got the last one. I feel a little like a traitor, because my previous lamp was so very childish and old, and this one is so sleek and modern, glass and metal (two of my favorite things to stare at when I'm lost in thought), and I love it so much already. I'm sure my old lamp would have wanted it this way.

Feelings of lamps aside, there's still the unsolved mystery of the serial lamp killer. Is it ghosts messing with my mind? Is it my energy and emotions reflected by the energy of the house? Is it cheap lamps and too much use? Is it faulty wiring in the apartment? I suppose only time will tell.