My duvet died. It was a nasty death. The problem with low thread count Indian cotton is that once it starts a rippin’, it’ll keep on going like the damn Energizer Bunny. I really should have sewn the initial tear immediately, but I’m easily distracted…(or is that lazy?), and that tiny hole soon turned into an ugly gaping maw. D’oh! We had eight lovely years together, ol’ friend. May you live on as a beautiful collection of dust rags.
So where can one buy an affordable, durable, not baboon-ass-ugly duvet in a specific shade of blue to match the bedroom curtains? Did someone say Ikea? Oh, I think they did...Welcome to my efficiently modern Swedish nightmare.
The road trip north was fairly innocuous, making me completely unprepared for the onslaught of Ikeadom I faced upon entering the store. I should never have attempted this trek alone. Always take a buddy when going to Ikea. Better yet, hire a Sherpa. Despite the relatively low altitude, one might experience light-headedness, disorientation, and palpitations when encountering a Dante’s Inferno of home furnishing.
Where the hell am I? I spent the first hour circling a labyrinth of bathroom fixtures and living room sets, with nary a pillow or mattress frame in sight. In hindsight, I should have stuck to the path of little lit arrows along the floor. They just might be there for a reason, like guard rails, bars, and warning signs on a polar bear exhibit at the zoo. All I know is that I ended up in some nowhere land surrounded by a group of emaciated suburbanites who, by the looks of it, had lost their way a long time ago and gone completely feral. I had to beat back one grup with an Einklienschtochenblockin Lamp to keep him from eating my skin.
After a rather thematic encounter with Georges-Antoine Kurtz, rescue came via a “yellow shirt” (which totally blew my mind because I thought they were the stuff of legends, like unicorns and hinklepunks). He asked if he could help me find something, and when words fail me, I always resort to blurting Simpson quotes: “I’m somewhere where I don’t know where I am!” He regarded me in much the same way one would regard a retarded kid hugging a tree, but graciously guided me to the rather pleasant land of bedding. At this point, I was going to buy a goddamn duvet, even if it looked like a pile of puke on the kitchen floor from that one friend who always overdoses on Jell-O shots. I was, by fortune or favor, able to procure something substantially less caustic to the retinas.
But I still had to find my way out of Wonderland. Trying to get out of Ikea is just as harrowing as getting in, because it just keeps…on…going (Seriously, I’ve had gyno exams less irritating). Every time you think you’ve finally reached the end, you’re confronted by more piles o’ crap in every unimaginable perversion of geometry. I experienced an overwhelming temptation to just curl into a fetal position and chant “there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home” before eventually crawling my way back to the light of day, by which point I'm convinced that more souls have been lost to Ikea than Mt. Everest.
Sheesh! What a technicolored mindfuck. Stick a dancing midget in the middle of this and it’d be a David Lynch film. You know, the kind everyone watches but no one really knows what the hell is going on.
So where can one buy an affordable, durable, not baboon-ass-ugly duvet in a specific shade of blue to match the bedroom curtains? Did someone say Ikea? Oh, I think they did...Welcome to my efficiently modern Swedish nightmare.
The road trip north was fairly innocuous, making me completely unprepared for the onslaught of Ikeadom I faced upon entering the store. I should never have attempted this trek alone. Always take a buddy when going to Ikea. Better yet, hire a Sherpa. Despite the relatively low altitude, one might experience light-headedness, disorientation, and palpitations when encountering a Dante’s Inferno of home furnishing.
Where the hell am I? I spent the first hour circling a labyrinth of bathroom fixtures and living room sets, with nary a pillow or mattress frame in sight. In hindsight, I should have stuck to the path of little lit arrows along the floor. They just might be there for a reason, like guard rails, bars, and warning signs on a polar bear exhibit at the zoo. All I know is that I ended up in some nowhere land surrounded by a group of emaciated suburbanites who, by the looks of it, had lost their way a long time ago and gone completely feral. I had to beat back one grup with an Einklienschtochenblockin Lamp to keep him from eating my skin.
After a rather thematic encounter with Georges-Antoine Kurtz, rescue came via a “yellow shirt” (which totally blew my mind because I thought they were the stuff of legends, like unicorns and hinklepunks). He asked if he could help me find something, and when words fail me, I always resort to blurting Simpson quotes: “I’m somewhere where I don’t know where I am!” He regarded me in much the same way one would regard a retarded kid hugging a tree, but graciously guided me to the rather pleasant land of bedding. At this point, I was going to buy a goddamn duvet, even if it looked like a pile of puke on the kitchen floor from that one friend who always overdoses on Jell-O shots. I was, by fortune or favor, able to procure something substantially less caustic to the retinas.
But I still had to find my way out of Wonderland. Trying to get out of Ikea is just as harrowing as getting in, because it just keeps…on…going (Seriously, I’ve had gyno exams less irritating). Every time you think you’ve finally reached the end, you’re confronted by more piles o’ crap in every unimaginable perversion of geometry. I experienced an overwhelming temptation to just curl into a fetal position and chant “there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home” before eventually crawling my way back to the light of day, by which point I'm convinced that more souls have been lost to Ikea than Mt. Everest.
Sheesh! What a technicolored mindfuck. Stick a dancing midget in the middle of this and it’d be a David Lynch film. You know, the kind everyone watches but no one really knows what the hell is going on.
2 comments:
Ikea and the cast of Twin Peaks will now forever be linked in my mind. I fully expect to see Agent Cooper next time we go. Perhaps one of their hyper-efficient room designs will feature red curtains and a black and white tile floor. Quoth the midget: "theees eesa foremica thable."
Hahaha, I love the comic. I was really kind of ambivalent about going to Ikea before, but now I have to go. I’ll make sure I use the buddy system though.
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