Let there be light... or don't

Agnes Repplier once said, "humor brings insight and tolerance.  Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding."  Well my friends (try not to hear John McCain's voice when reading that preamble to this sentence... the MF'er), I have been struck with this very sense of "deeper and less friendly understanding" tonight.  Irony has come back to haunt me as it is wont to do. As most of you know, I somewhat routinely complain about American complacency that in many cases is attributable to our worship of convenience over quality.  Tonight, as irony has it, I could go for a little more convenience.  If the serious tone of my previous web log musings has led you to believe I have been wronged with the injustice of a thousand starving children, then you have not been led astray - this is indeed a somber issue at hand.  

Let's say your lightbulb in your desk lamp burns out.  And let's say the desk lamp looks like this:

Pretty straight forward right?  I went to the store to pick up my provisions for the day and was happy to find a small but sufficient section for light bulbs.  I was fastidious to select a bulb of no more than 60 watts as indicated on the inner rim of the metal lamp shade (as seen in photo). So far so good.  Upon my return (and after an unexpectedly physical bout trying to extricate the now obsolete bulb from the lamp), I opened the bulb box and extracted the new glass globe, anxious to restore my desk lamp to it's former illuminative glory.  We're all familiar with the process so I'll cut to the chase.  The new bulb would not allow itself to be screwed into the lamp.  No matter how much I swore, or how much I begged, the bulb refused to mate with the lamp.  Dismayed, I sat down to reassess the situation.  I took a closer look at the discarded light bulb, and suddenly the light bulb in my mind switched on

found the following:

Note the smooth metal circumference around the base interrupted by the pins on either side.

The problem of course is that the new bulb looks like this:

Note the corrugated base that in no way resembles the base of previously observed, burned out bulb.

Dear England, PLEASE MAKE SOMETHING EASY ON ME, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!*

*If this seems like a disproportionate response to a seemingly trivial situation, then you haven't heard me complain about any and every obstacle I've encountered in trying to get things done since I've arrived in this city.  For details, feel free to email me.