hither and yon

Sorry.

OMG the two Alabama 5th graders on the Yahoo front page thing are incredibly endearing to me. I don't know why. I think the "LITTLE HEROES!!!" story is blown up a good deal, and I think the two kids know it too. They're all stiff and polite in the face of the sick blaring of the newscasters. I don't know why they look so much alike though. Or why television personalities are so soulless and disgusting.

Every time I come back to UCLA after experiencing any kind of joy, I am reminded anew of how those two happenstances will never overlap. I hate this fucking place. College is a four-year long exercise in tolerating misery and learning how to bend over and take it. THANKS, UCLA!

I was seized with a desire to get some books for reading to-day. I rather like looking up books in library catalogs and writing down the call numbers on those scraps of paper they give you and then hunting them down all over the library. Wot I borrowed:

Dave Barry's Dave Barry Turns 40
Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way
Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things
Gordon Korman's A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag
Sandra Tsing Loh's Depth Takes a Holiday

I tried to be unambitious wif my book choices, since out of any 10 books I ever borrow I only read more than 5 pages out of 3 of them. Still, I predict that I will not get halfway through Mother Tongue. Or tbh the Korman. Yes, it is an elementary school-level book.

I put a request out on Patricia C. Wrede's Dealing With Dragons because I wanted to re-read it. I first read it in 5th or 6th grade and I really liked it. Actually I should re-read the sequels, since I remembering Dealing quite well and the sequels, not at all, but LOL WHATEVER!

Additionally I am sort of in the middle of re-reading Paul Gallico's The Silent Miaow and reading Martin Amis's Experience. Guilt is attached to both these books: The Silent Miaow because I liked the book so much that I just kept Stanislaus County's only copy and paid the fine instead of doing all that tiresome "going to the bookstore and paying full price" business, thus depriving future cat-lovers the joy of discovering this delightful unsung gem of a book (I'm not being sarcastic! the book is a gem!); Experience because I was supposed to have finished it 2 years ago, as it was what I ~ostensibly~ wrote my extended essay on (along with Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work which I also have not finished). The furthest I've ever gotten has been page 25, and I only got there yesterday.

Okay now I'm going to type up Sandra Tsing Loh speaking some truth about IKEA:

... the bottom line is, shopping IKEA is a complete, spiritually rejuvenating experience.

[...]

Gay blue-and-yellow banners out on the boulevard herald your arrival, as if to some world's fair. Enormous signs tell you where to park, where to walk, where to load: one half expects to see a monorail whizzing up above.

In the IKEA foyer, you are seized with a feeling of indescribable happiness. The general feeling -- of bright colors, big windows, educational displays -- is of having entered some marvelous Montessori-type school for creatively gifted children. (For some of us, being named a "gifted child" was the last happy time we can remember, before endless adult temp experiences disappointed.)

On your left are some enormous metal bins with bright yellow carrier-bags in them. Pencils are also provided. To your right is the "ball room," a glassed-in room full of colorful balls! In fact, it is for one's children. You can sign them in and leave them there for hours. Just ahead is the "diaper room."

A wave of liberal emotion sweeps over you. Good God -- American corporations cannot even provide on-site child care for families and mothers. And here is IKEA, a home-furnishing store, bending over backward to provide free diapers. Surely on-site, IKEA-sponsored medical care cannot be far behind.

Across from the diaper room is a quasi-scientific exhibit of more clever "child-proofing" doodads than one could ever imagine. But underneath is the kicker. Image after image has been piling up, but what takes the vision of a whole New Democratic Order over the top is a shiny, brand-new Volvo with a big bow on top.

Of course. Scandinavian ingenuity. Safety meeting design; the Volvo; the very sanctuary of the modern family. Atop the car -- under the bow -- sits a special removable IKEA luggage rack with which you can haul your furniture home. Price: twenty-two dollars. (Needless to say, a full refund will be cheerfully given upon the rack's safe return to mother ship IKEA.)

Because IKEA is the mother ship; IKEA is a mother, a good mother, whose white pine and goose-down comforters sing the song of Sweden! IKEA stands for incredible human goodness, of a certain long-forgotten standard of Western morality. The Italians have had their ugly moments, and God knows the Germans have, but never the Swedes! The Swedes are a neutral people, a fair people, a moral people!

It is all we can do not to throw ourselves down on the floor and bow before the image of the slightly balding Ingvar Kamprad [founder of IKEA]. Not so much a nerdy dweeb as, really, an honest guy from the little town of Almhult who sold matchbooks and had a simple dream...

"To create a better everyday life for the majority of people."

How many Republican politicians can say they've done that? How many Democrats?

That's an inelegant place to end it but the following section is not relevant to my point, which is I LOVE IKEA. And I don't want to type anymore. Anyway. I LOVE IKEA. It's a coincidence that I found this essay thing on IKEA because my fambly and I went to IKEA on Friday for a delishous dinner and an invigorating shopping trip. I don't understand the shame Sandra Loh talks about elsewhere in the essay thing or the Fight Club disdain for IKEA. IKEA IS AMAZING.