Memo to the hundreds of people camped out in front of the new Ikea store yesterday morning: YOU FUCKING STUPID FUCKING FUCKS ARE FUCKING DUMB.
As a resident of Minneapolis, about a year or so ago I lived through the Krispy Kreme Onslaught. Minneapolis did, up until that point, not have any Krispy Kreme lardpuck shops. The donuts, which were just donuts, goddammit, had somehow accreted dozens of near-godlike qualities through word-of-mouth and mass delusion. Eating a Krispy Kreme donut was supposed to be akin to a mouthgasm, the kind of pleasure usually reserved for royalty. A dripping torus of pure heaven. And we were finally going to be able... no, we were going to be given the honor of being permitted the HONOR of buying them.
There were lines around the block. To be in possession of even a single Krispy Kreme donut gave you the ability to wage confectionary class warfare upon your friends and co-workers. Honest, caring Midwesterners wrestled with the "share or hoard" ethical dilemma. There may have been rioting in the streets.
Eventually, as more locations opened and boxes of the fucking things started clogging a rack at Target, we all came to our senses, realized they're just donuts, and moved on. Plus everyone jumped on board with Atkins, and as it turns out, KK donuts have WHEAT in them, so they became anathema. I hear Krispy Kreme is working on a low-carb donut now, but so far all they've managed is a bowl of hot fat with a layer of melted sugar on top, and it keeps melting the cheap plastic spoons.
You'd think we'd have learned our lesson, but nooooooooo. Now we've got an Ikea. Cheap, functional Scandinavian furniture. I have nothing against Ikea furniture. I'm not going to go all Fight Club on you, don't worry. But nearly 200 people CAMPED OUT OVERNIGHT so that they could be amongst the first to shop at the store Wednesday morning. And if an errant bulldozer had come careening through their ranks, killing them all, the average IQ in the Twin Cities metro would have jumped three points.
At least with the stupid fucking donuts, if you didn't have a KK shop in your area, you were out of luck. You had no other options, short of FedEx overnight, and all that nets you is a huge shipping bill and a box of day-old donuts. Furniture, on the other hand, deteriorates at a much slower rate.
If you live in the Twin Cities, and you wanted Ikea furniture before July 14, you could FUCKING WELL GET IT. Ikea does mail order, people. What kind of mentality, exactly, leads you to decide that sleeping overnight on pavement near the Mall of America is perfectly acceptable behavoir, yet going to a website and placing an order is TOO MUCH HASSLE? You people need help.
The first fucker was out there on Sunday night. SUNDAY NIGHT. There were actually six people there, but five of them won a contest and got a couple of grand worth of stuff to be there. I don't know if I'd swim in my own filth in Bloomington for four days for $2,000 worth of furniture, but you know what the sixth guy got? An eighty-buck armchair. That's 20 dollars a day. That's ninety five cents an HOUR. Toothless whores with only three limbs sell themselves for more than 95 cents an hour. Sweatshop workers in third-world countries are lining up to offer 30-year-old Carl Aasen career advice.
Aasen is Swedish for "asshole". And I believe, to use another Swedish phrase, that it's AKTUAAL KWOOUT TYM! ''I've never done a crazy thing in my life, and this is probably the last one."- Carl Aasen. So the guy decides to do ONE SINGLE CRAZY THING in his entire lifetime, and it's waiting four days in line for an eighty buck chair. You wild man. Either Carl is the dullest human being on the planet, or he's got a collection of mummified neighbor heads in his basement.
I just want every last one of the 2,000 people in line yesterday morning when the store opened, at least one of whom actually wept with joy according to news reports, that I hate you and I hate your shelves. Happy Belated Ikea Day!