Killer Nesting Instinct
Today, one of the cable new channels that beams itself into my humble abode, in an uber-annoying News Flash (which didn’t really flash and isn’t, come to think of it, truly legitimate news) is reporting that 4000 people were trampled and one person stabbed (!) in what was supposed to be the grand opening of a new Ikea superstore in North London.
This has (almost) rendered me speechless. I just don’t know where to begin. For starters, I’d have to guess that it must have been a slow day on the news creep because, well, all the news that’s fit to crawl across my TV, in that oh so annoying news creep, appears to be from London and what, pray tell, can I do about a 4000 Londoner strong mob of Ikea shoppers from one continent and six time zones away? It’s not like I can quell their nerves by inviting them all in for a spot of tea now, can I?
So I sit and home, imagining throbs of Londoners dashing, mad rushing, and body checking their way through aisle upon aisle of cheap melamine furniture, pseudo-Skandi coffee tables on wheels spinning about, shelving thrashing to the ground, shoppers throttling each other to floors covered in kitschy-colored cheap wool rugs, all in a store where they provide free baby sitting and serve Swedish meatballs. Bouillabaisse anyone?
“That’s MY side table”
“Bullocks! I saw it first!”
“Krimie! Get off my rug!”
I’m guessing that, in the ensuing melee, the meatballs were really flying this time.
White-washed maple laminate trees and naugahs, once hunted to near extinction for their hydes, are now breathing a sigh of relief, however, as the Brits saw fit to close the store on opening day because of the incident. Just in the nick of time too, although one has to wonder where will Londoners now go for uber-cheap, oh-so tacky, knock off Skandi furniture when the mood hits them.
I always used to joke about Death by Ikea but never thought it might actually one day come to pass. And, somehow, I’d imagined my lifeless body crushed under ten million mail order catalogs, a sea of environmentally friendly flat furniture boxes, and directions written in pseudo-Swedish with pretty pictures, surrounded by bag after bag of unopened Allen wrenches and wood screws of varying size, while all the meatballs in the general vicinity had been long since eaten up or rolled away by the power of their own free will. But, hey, that’s just me.
In related news (or not) the most annoyingly ugly British scion to ever walk the planet, Prince Charles, is set to marry his one true love, Camilla Parker Bowles, sometime in April. (Please don’t confuse her with his other, true love, Princess Diana, whom, rumor has it, he had killed, although not, as far as we know, by any ugly furniture-shopping mobs.) Gosh, I hope they didn’t have their hearts set on redecorating any of their palaces in cheap, white-washed Swedish knock-off furniture because, well, they’d just be out of luck now.
Somehow, I think the free world as we know it is still safe but, it goes without saying, look out for low-flying meatballs.
Until next time…