Dim bulb.

Sometimes I get very angry over things that properly call for an angry response -- although fury is seldom a useful feeling, even for things like injustice and cruelty. At least it's appropriate. Sometimes I find myself mad enough to strike out over things that I can only characterize as stupid. Here's one that really got me worked up, and it's something that involves me not in the slightest.

What you see below is a picture from a house that was built in 1959 that had been empty for a few months before a flipper bought it. I thought he might have it knocked flat and build new, but apparently not. No, he is having it renovated and is apparently he is being exceptionally cheap about it. Rather than have the old, patchy wooden siding pulled off and replaced, he's having vinyl siding slapped on right over it. Holes, termite damage, rot, who cares? Just cover it up. This strikes me as execrable foolishness -- careless parsimony that could come back to haunt him.

But that's not the stupid part. It's the light:

Next to the front door are these four glass panels over the staircase, the kind of thing that makes the house unique and even a little awesome. And what did he put in for the new light fixture? A goddamn shaded lamp, the kind you hang over your kitchenette table, and not just that but the cheapest one he could possibly find.

This goes beyond stingy and straight into stupid. It takes the single most eye-catching part of the exterior and turns it into a cheesy flashlight. A space like this needs a large hanging light, the kind of thing that is itself an attraction. Here's a piece from another building, contemporary to this one:

Not a good picture, but you get the idea: Large, colorful, stylish, artistic, practical for the space but dead on for the aesthetic, the kind of thing that helps make someone fall for the house as he or she is getting out of the car. By going cheap on the fixture, this nincompoop is going to lose buyers he could have grabbed right away, and P.S., is leaving the stairway underlit. It's so dumb I want to slap somebody. He's not just fishing with no bait, he's fishing with no hook.

I'm no decorator. If it were a bachelor I probably would have furnished the house with clearance-sale stuff from the furniture store. But I know that a great space needs a great light, and this dumb-ass blew it. What adds the willfulness to the stupidity is the penny-pinching, and willful stupidity should be punished quickly and effectively. There's no excuse for this.

GAH!