The Luv Doc: A Blinding Amount of Light
If Jeff Bezos can launch a $5.5 billion dollar penis rocket into suborbital space, he can surely put a dimmer switch on a floodlight
By The Luv Doc, Fri., Oct. 20, 2023
Dear Luv Doc,
Even though your column is called "The Luv Doc," I know I have seen you respond to all kinds of questions so I hope you can help me with this one as well. For our 20th anniversary, my husband and I took a two-week trip to Italy. Yes, it was wonderful! We ate amazing food, we drank wine, we looked at lots of great art and beautiful scenery. When we got back late Sunday night, the exterior of our house was lit up so brightly we could see it from the end of the block. We were immediately scared something bad might have happened while we were away, and it turned out that we were right. For some reason, our new neighbors decided to install a security light on the side of their house that faces our bedroom. Worse yet, it has a really sensitive motion detector that makes it go off regularly with a blinding amount of light that routinely wakes me up several times a night. This morning I went next door to complain and the husband told me that his wife was "hearing strange noises on the side of the house" while he was away and so he installed a Ring security camera/lights. I asked him if he could dim them somehow and he simply said, "No, I can't." What do we do? There has to be some way to dim those lights. They are ridiculously bright but our neighbor seems to be a bit dim. Can you help?
– Flooded Out in Allandale
I will agree with you wholeheartedly that your neighbor might not be as bright as his security camera. However, unless he got that thing used on Craigslist or out of the trunk of some shady-looking dude's car at the Circle K, that Ring security light should absolutely come with a dimmer adjustment – especially if he only bought it a few weeks ago. Look, if Jeff Bezos can launch a $5.5 billion dollar penis rocket into suborbital space, he can surely put a dimmer switch on a floodlight, can't he? OK, upon doing some research, he apparently put off that dimmer switch thing until sometime in 2020, but he did get 'er did. Will Ring Floodlight Cam users be able to create the dusky ambience of a St. Louis Italian restaurant? Probably not, but I'm betting they can tone them down from the default "Gitmo Interrogation" setting. Whoopsy! I just realized I'm going to need to pause for a second to send Jeff Bezos a Venmo invoice for product placement. I'll be billing Venmo, too, because let's be honest, it's no PayPal … and Zell … do they even have invoicing? Let's hope so because I'm not wasting precious ink on shameless corporate promotion without getting my beak wet.
The good news is that no matter how deep my shame for adding to the Bezos penis rocket development fund, at least I can declare your problem officially solved … YOU'RE WELCOME … unless of course your neighbor doesn't know how to download the Ring app or negotiate the available settings therein. In that case, you might need to invest in a roll of masking tape and some aluminum foil or – and this is a slightly pricier option – an extra thirsty lawyer with crippling student loan debt. There's probably a couple thousand of those on the Texas attorney general's payroll because otherwise why even? That said, I would never recommend suing your next-door neighbor. That's pretty much the epitome of shitting where you eat. Rather than solving your problem, you will only create a thousand new ones. I know it's not nearly as satisfying as watching a thoroughly disillusioned, deeply indebted, morally compromised, moonlighting, state-salaried lawyer go to town on a flustered defendant, but the smart neighbor hack is to always use empathy, understanding, and compromise to seek an equitable solution.
It's not easy and not everyone can pull it off. Israel comes to mind, but there are countless analogs. Hell, that's why Texas was invented – so that crazy, blood-feuding Appalachian hillbillies could safely distance themselves from their murderously hateful kinfolk. Crazier still, they wanted an extra large piece of this ridiculously spacious dirt furnace so badly they were willing to battle roving bands of pissed off Comanches and the entire Mexican army to get it. Texas is a 268,597-square-mile monument to how desperately people don't want to try to get along, and yet, somehow, we're the friendship state. That's a good thing to keep in mind when dealing with difficult neighbors. The friendship state is a state that needs careful, regular nurturing. I think you're up to the task. Oh, and happy anniversary!
