Ikea week concludes!

I know I called this Ikea week, and here I am after only three days concluding it. We'll just say that it was a Scandinavian work week and call it good.

Today I bring for your reading pleasure, a post from the first month that I'd created this blog. I wrote it when I first found out that Ikea was going to be building a store here in Portland. Let's grab hands and together stroll down memory lane...

Cue wavy special effect and time-travel sounds. A clock running backwards appears and flies straight at you. A calendar goes in reverse, eventually stopping on October, 2005... We're here, back in those halycon days of yesteryear... when gas was only $2.10 a gallon... Boris Yeltsin was still alive... and the national debt was only 9 trillion dollars... ah, the good old days.

October 25,2005--This week, Ikea announced that they will be opening a store here in Portland. I'm experiencing mixed emotions about it, though. On the one hand, I'm totally excited about the prospect of having Swedish meatballs and cheap lighting only a ten-minute drive away, but on the other hand, I'm not looking forward to everyone I know 1) knowing that our house is an Ikea catalog ad as seen in the movie Fight Club, and 2) will have the same stuff that we do. Right now, the closest Ikea is in Seattle--which is a big enough deterent to keep all but the elect from embracing the Ikea lifestyle. We drive up occasionally... ok often... but not that often... umm, anyway, I'll just say I know the route well. We've filled our house with chairs, tables, rugs, bedding, lighting, and decorations from the Disneyland for Adults that is the Seattle store. We've proselytized all our friends and family, extolling the benefits of, coolness obtained, and fulfillment possible from Ikea--and I'm proud to say that I've had a much better conversion rate than my proselytization in Norway. I'm at almost 100% conversion (I say almost, because even though one couple goes there every time they're in Seattle now, they still bristle at how consumeristic it is--classic self-loathing Ikeans). I get a warm feeling in my heart when people confide in me that they are having some home furnishing problem and I am able to get out a copy of the Ikea catalog and tell them "I've found answers in this book, and I know that if you browse through it, really ponder the design ideas that it shows, and follow the examples contained therein, your home problems will be solved, too." Following one trip to Seattle with Kelli, she left the store bearing her testimony of Ikea, saying, "I know that Ikea is true." It's stories like that that tell me that I'm helping change people's lives for the better. Now with a store in Portland, I'll go from being an Ikea missionary introducing people to its wonders to a pesky stake temple coordinator, encouraging people to go do something that can easily be put off--it will be like when a new temple is built--prior to that, people sacrifice to go hundreds of miles for the opportunity, but build one in their backyards and voila! they always have an excuse.

Well, the new store isn't slated to open until spring 2007, so I can wallow in my self-righteousness, er, I mean continue to proclaim the blessings that Ikea promises to all who visit with a non-maxed-out credit card.

Well, here it is--2007... the world of tomorrow! Isn't it GLORRRRRR-IOUS? I guess it's time for me to completely shift my persona and personality and start wallowing in self-righteousness. Man! I don't know if I have it in me.

Mistaken identity

We just got through the security line at the airport and the woman checking ID's looked at me-wearing my Buddy Holly glasses-asked if I was the Verizon guy! While that guy looks like a nerd, I prefer to see myself in these glasses as a cool hipster. Right? RIGHT? Why isn't anyone answering me? Maybe it's my phone. Can you hear me now? How about now?

Ikea week continues!

Okay, first of all, I hope I'm not driving you away with my sycophantic praise of Ikea. If you've been to one before, though, you'll know it is completely justified. And if you haven't been yet, well, I don't know if we can still be friends anymore. I think Nostradamus himself fortold the auspiciousness of this month's conjunction of two pivotal galactic events: the Ikea opening in Portland and the iPhone release. (People thought he was prophesying about the discovery of North and South America, but he WASN'T... this is BIGGER!) I haven't been looking forward to something this much since the Council in Heaven© only this time they'll serve meatballs! Okay... take a deep breath... you can get through this... it's only a few more weeks... go to your happy place... the Halmstad bedroom set.... Ahhh! Okay, where were we? Oh yeah, today's Ikea-related item. Below are the lyrics to a Jonathan Coulton song called, no big surprise here, "Ikea:"

Long ago in days of yore
It all began with a god named Thor
There were Vikings and boats
And some plans for a furniture store
It’s not a bodega, it’s not a mall
And they sell things for apartments smaller than mine
As if there were apartments smaller than mine

Ikea: just some oak and some pine and a handful of Norsemen
Ikea: selling furniture for college kids and divorced men
Everyone has a home
But if you don’t have a home you can buy one there

So rent a car or take the bus
Lay your cash down and put your trust
In the land where the furniture folds to a much smaller size
Billy the bookcase says hello
And so does a table whose name is Ingo
And the chair is a ladder-back birch but his friends call him Karl

Ikea: just some oak and some pine and a handful of Norsemen
Ikea: selling furniture for college kids and divorced men
Everyone has a home
But if you don’t have a home you can buy one there

Ikea: plywood, brushed steel
Ikea: meatballs, tasty
Ikea: Allen wrenches
All of them for free
All of them for me

I’m sorry I said Ikea sucks
I just bought a table for 60 bucks
And a chair and a lamp
And a shelf and some candles for you
I was a doubter just like you
Till I saw the American dream come true
In New Jersey, they got a goddamned Swedish parade

Ikea: just some oak and some pine and a handful of Norsemen
Ikea: selling furniture for college kids and divorced men
Everyone has a home
But if you don’t have a home you can buy one there

You can download the song (for free!) here.

Ikea week!

In honor of the July 25th grand opening of the Ikea store here in Portland, I have several Ikea-related items I'll be posting in the next few days. Today's item is from today's newspaper.

'Ikea': a play in four acts
The Ikea shopping experience is as powerful as a piece of theater--hopefully, for the company, a comedy.
Act I: This is the big-box store even liberals can love. You enter and grab a yellow shopping bag and a scorecard on which to write the Swedish names and shelf numbers of things you want. (And for someone who speaks Norwegian, those names are pretty boring. For example, the LUFTIG pillows, which mean "fluffy" or the MJÖK bedding, which means "soft." Come on. They could get more creative than that. How about KVELE pillows, which means "smother" or FRISKJONLØS bedding, which means "frictionless?") If you have kids you can exchange them for a beeper (And with some kids, the parents wish it could be permanent.)and leave them in the playroom. Swedes are big on free child care. The restaurant, with its subsidized prices and exclusive use of Ikea wares, has the feel of a Cuban vacation resort.

Act II: Following the arrows, you wander in a mazy formation, officially known as "the long natural pathway," which takes you by the "inspirational settings" where whole rooms are furnished with Ikea products. The intoxication of total branding takes effect. There are shortcuts for experienced shoppers, but mainly Ikea wants maximum exposure of consumer to product, like the oxygenation of blood. Chipper young assistants at kiosks let you know whether your dream sofa is actually in stock. (And the likelihood of it being out of stock is directly proportional to how much you want the specific item. This is how they keep you coming back to check, only to buy more stuff... or so I've heard... I've NEVER done that...)

Act III: After the furniture, you pass through the housewares section, which has pallets of impulse purchases--tea lights, picture frames, potted plants--at ridiculously low prices. (It's a psychological impossibility to NOT buy 100 tea lights for $2... even if you hate candles, you just have to buy them because you can't afford NOT to! It's the same principle that supports Costco's bulk nutmeg sales.)After sweating the big stuff, it's tempting to load up a cart with lamps, mirrors, and cookware. And why the hell not? Everyone hates shopping for this sort of stuff, so get it all at once.

Act IV: At home you sit on the floor inhaling the smells of fiberboard and Styrofoam, trying to follow the instructional drawings and sizing up the bolts. After that you start noticing your stuff in other people's homes. (Now that the store is opening, people are going to see that my office isn't as creatively designed as they think it is. There goes my street cred!)

iPhone ready to come off the mount

All I can say is, "C'MON ALREADY! I WANT MINE NOW!" This is going to change my LIFE! Make calls, listen to music, watch movies, browse the internet, solve world hunger, AND dispel ennui. Although we're going to be on vacation when the iPhone comes out, so I have to wait until we get back. (I COULD buy it in Utah, but since it already costs a fortune, I don't want to add 8.25% sales tax on top of it.)

Can't... stop... popping!

Given the two-times-the-size-of-Texas floating plastic island floating north of Hawaii, I'm all for finding ways to cut down on plastic usage. In response to this problem, those wily Japanese have created a disposable plastic product to replace disposable plastic... only this one has batteries and a MICROCHIP, so you know its better. The new product, called "PuchiPuchi" is the "infinite bubble wrap toy." Puchipuchi is the Japanese word for a little pop and the word for bubble wrap (how efficient). The product is meant to simulate the feel and sound of popping bubble wrap. Now this is something that can have world-changing ramifications! Imagine dropping loads of these over war zones and having the fighting come to a complete halt as soldiers drop their weapons to be completely overwhelmed with the compulsion popping bubble wrap (and don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. If you have a pulse and human DNA, you are unable to stop your fingers from eliciting that satisfying pop that comes from bubble wrap... maybe it's a carry-over from our evolutionary past when we were on the African savanna and had to squeeze engorged ticks to kill them. We might never know.). But the madness doesn't stop there! Every 100th pop emits a sound effect instead of a pop. Some of the special sounds include "door chime," "barking dog," "fart," "sexy voice," "money getting flushed down the toilet," and "the environment dying." To add even more hysteria surrounding the product, there's a 1 in 1,000 chance that you'll get a "lucky" PuchiPuchi that has a heart-shaped bubble. Oh man! You're friends would be soooo jealous if you got one of those! It's all so much to handle. Stop the insanity! The company producing them partnered with an actual bubble wrap company, so you know the sounds are authentic and not those totally artificial sounds that are so obviously fake that come out of Paris Hilton.

State Quarters

Okay, I'm sure you all know about the state quarter program. Some of them have been hits, other horrible wastes of the metal they're cast from. Being a westerner, I've been anxiously awaiting what the last few states admitted to the union would submit for their designs. I had imagined that my home state of Idaho would have some mountain vista, our state flower the syringa, a wild river, or (gasp!) even an INDIAN. For Utah, I'd imagined a covered wagon, handcart, or maybe one of the arches in southern Utah. Well, all those hopes have been dashed to pieces, just like my dream of starring in an NBC sitcom.

Well, all these years of waiting culminated in this morning, when I got an Idaho quarter at Noah's Bagels and to say I'm disappointed is an understatement. I haven't been this underwhelmed since I saw the new and improved quilting on Bounty paper towels (despite all the hype on their commercials, it really wasn't that impressive). The quarter has a hawk on it... Yes, a frickin' BIRD! You've got to be kidding me! Even a potato would have been better. I mean, it's not like we're the only state in the union that has BIRDS! Geesh! Have you ever talked with someone and brought up Idaho only to have them ask, "Is that the state with hawks?" (Actually, more often it's "Is that the state with white supremists?") And to add insult to injury, they included the outline of the state with Boise starred. Once again, Boise gets all the glory while North Idaho just sits up there in obscurity (with our hawks and white supremists). And don't even get me started on the lame Utah design. At least the Wyoming one is cool.

Eat your vegetables!

Last night, Margaret and I got sucked into one of those Learning Channel shows... you know... the kind that trick you into learning. Well, the show was called "I eat 33,000 calories a day." (Talk about sensational 'journalism') And all I can say is YIKES! One guy didn't even have any shame, he just let the cameras roll while he lay on this specially designed recliner/bed that he couldn't move from wearing only a diaper. He weighed almost 900 pounds, and several years prior had to go to the hospital and wouldn't fit through the door, or even a window, so they had to break out the bricks around the window frame to increase the size of the opening enough. Then, to make matters worse, the 8 firefighters couldn't lift him and they had to bring in a FORKLIFT! He was really into sweets and ate over $14,000 worth of candy bars a year. How do people even AFFORD that? That particular guy recently refinanced his house and ate 1/2 the proceeds. One thing that was telling was when they laid out all the food each person ate in a day, the predominant color was beige: chips, french fries, fried rice, fried chicken, fried fish, bread, eggs, Twinkies. None of them really ate any vegetables, or at least any fresh vegetables. The show didn't really help them, either. They confronted the subjects with all the food they ate but didn't show a comparison of how much a healthy person SHOULD eat, and didn't show appropriate portion control.

Which reminds me of an experience in Norway. Now Norway is a land of pretty healthy people who walk everywhere and get lots of exercise, so it was the rare experience to see really obese people... and most of the time they were American tourists. Well, one time, my companion and I were helping an old lady mow her lawn. It hadn't been done all year and was quite large, so it was like cutting through a jungle. It took us all day and so when we finally finished around 5, she invited us to dinner... which we were thankful for, since we were famished. Her son, who lived with her but whom we'd never met, came home around that time, too. He was the biggest Norwegian I'd ever seen. Well, when the old lady dished up the rice with meat sauce, our portions were generous (we had been working all day after all), but the son dished himself up and easily served himself 5 times what we had on our plate. There was lingonberry sauce that accompanies most Norwegian meals and my companion and I took the typical spoonful, after which the son took the jar and poured enough out to completely cover all the meat sauce. When we started eating, my companion and I were mesmerized by the son, who was eating so fast that he was breathing heavy. I think lifting a fork was the most exercise he got.

Reproductive capacity

I'm surprised that the person nerdy enough to make this stroller would have the social skills to find a mate and procreate. Maybe he keeps all his Star Wars action figures in it?

Actually, here in Portland, it's not surprising to see a couple covered head to toe in tattooes pushing around a stroller with their baby clad in Winnie the Pooh clothes. Or the couple who drive around in a hearse with a skeleton in the front seat with the child safety seats in the back seat. Good old Portland!

Pride weekend

This weekend were all the gay pride events in Portland. We didn't go to the parade since it conflicted with Margaret's piano-playing duties at church (and she let them know that she was missing all the debauchery for Primary and that they'd better not forget it!), but the day before we went down to the "Gayest Dog in Portland" show. There were dogs in tutus, boas, etc., etc. We'd expected it to be a lot campier than it was, but being that Portland is dog-town, there were all these straight people just looking for an excuse to show off their dog. You could TOTALLY tell that their dogs weren't gay! We watched as one male dog sniffed a female dog's butt! Fakers! This is one of the dogs in the show, and I don't know if it won the top prize, but I think he was definitely the gayest dog there. A straight dog would have gone with a blue or green feather trim on his muumuu.