ikea horror
lea pointed out to me that i have been lax in posting to my website. it’s true. i’m lazy.
lea and i went to ikea this past weekend. (we went to the chicago branch, but i will assume that all of this applies to the twin cities version that recently opened, and that more of my friends and acquaintances will be familiar with.) it was an experience, to be sure. the building is huge, a cavernous edifice that flaunts its size with an open floor design and unfinished ceilings. there’s a lot of stuff there, and, almost invariably, one or two of the twenty-seven types of any given type of furniture struck me as aesthetically pleasing, while the others reminded me more of the less polished aspects of college dorm life than anything else. this is not such a bad thing, i suppose; it is, at least, to be expected. it was the people of the republic of ikea that really got to me. the vast swarms of people seemed to me a cross between the diverse and entertaining throng one generally finds at a mall, and the docile-yet-loudmouthed clusters of people clogging the lines in front of you during your infrequent visits to mcdonald’s. it’s the kind of crowd that shuts me up immediately; i feel compelled to hold my tongue, lest i loudly inform the two idiots arguing over which stupid-looking mirror frame looks better that both frames look awful. it’s also the kind of crowd that shuts me down; there was entirely too much noise, too much activity, too much hustle and bustle for my brain to handle. ikea is fast, cheap, and reliable, a poster-child for industrialization in general. the easiness of purchasing a piece of ikea furniture is as seductive as fast food, and probably about as good for you.
this is not to say we were not active participants in and contributors to this system: we walked out of the store with a small haul of our own, culpable to any blame or derision i would levy against the herds exiting with us. that being said, we still had several laughs at the expense of the idiot rednecks sitting on the back of their white (!) couch they had just purchased, swinging their grubby feet against it.
idiots.