# 113

To access the rant about IKEA, may I direct your interests to the Blue and Yellow Door...


The Purple Door:
It's all been a haze of late, I shit you not. My first full-time job since arriving back into Australia has been a tiresome affair with sporadic encounters of condiments along the way. The first week and a half was a dip of atrocious flavour where my head floated like flotsam and Elroy Jetson in a sauce of unknown ingredients. The horror of it all was punctuated by a flurry of four-day working weeks where I, the alleged teacher, wandered through hallways hoping that no one and sundry asked me anything remotely associated with the English language. I wasn't regular until I organised a "confession" with The Reverend where we each disposed of a pint glass or three of Cooper's Breweries' finest ale without the clergy finding out. In hindsight, it was a decision of pure genius and I ought to have grandstanded more about it, perhaps naked while waiting for the little green man to disappear from his little cubby house at the base of the traffic lights on the corner of North Terrace and Pultney Street, as that act alone caused more than the build up of waste in my guts to seep in my favour. Indeed, it seemed the turning pints that enabled me to slot into a place, here in my homeland, which had been exclusively allocated to me. Everything from then on became clearer and I no longer had to question the mystical powers of reason.

The Red Dwarf:
Things at work were flowing smoothly by the end of the fourth week; the swagger in my step was directly proportional to knowing my place in the grand scheme of things. I felt ensconced in a robe of infinite possibilities without desiring to blow a load prematurely. It was one of those tantric moments that I, and only I, was aware of. Then week five, aka Exams Week, peered around the corner and whispered my name in one of those regrettable comedic B-grade voices. Suddenly, sleep was at the head of the commodities list and I had close to fuck-all of it to trade. What's worse, although I felt in no way related, my bank statement informed me that my semen account was nearing an all-time high. Without further ado, I consulted my personal guide to common sense, shot off a load before work, caught the bus into town and immediately established a perimeter around the Things To Be Done gang, which was running rampantly throughout the university by this stage. The upshot of this bolt of brilliance was that I managed to slide out of the staff room unnoticed by four-thirty on Friday arvo. Bloodshot eyes from a deprivation of shut-eye and a four-day growth were the sole benefactors of this flawless plan. The moment had written itself, really.

The What-Fucking-Colour-Was-That? Door:
I saw the old man for the first time in more than seven years last night. Ever since the old deer went schizo-cum-psycho on my arse and told me that she wouldn't be attending my wedding (the only one I ever intend to have), things have been shaky, to say the least, with the old bastard. He had lost contact with the son but retained the devoted services of the cook. I had lost contact with the father who had to stand by his woman and retained the company of the reason for my existence on Earth. Following several quick chats on the phone, where he spoke highly of apologies and misunderstandings regarding any association that may have stemmed from the mouth of the woman who birthed me about the person whom I consider to be a human being of the finest calibre, my wife, and whom said lunatic from whom I sprang had once labelled as The Devil Incarnate, I managed to coerce the old fart to meet me at a pub somewhere neutral in proximity to our respective dwellings. With elation in his voice, he had agreed. However, after we parked several streets from the watering hole he made every excuse under the gum trees to why stepping inside such a lavish establishment of liquid pleasures would be a bad idea. I shook it off as a classic case of the old man pretending to be himself and practically had to drag the bastard through the doors, stomp on his broad working class shoulders a couple of dozen times and throw a glass of ale at his teeth. But the job was a good'un, to quote a good mate. We chatted about shit I wouldn't usually reserve the right to fart on, as is always the case with the old boy, but the important thing was that we did chat and we did exchange outstretched arms. A few times, actually. And those two things, as far as I'm concerned, were good enough for me. The added bonus was that each of the girls we respectively love wasn't mentioned once: blokes with similar DNA, I have since decided.

The Blue and Yellow Door:
Welcome to IKEA. Please take your complimentary pencil and paper tape measure.

What the fuck is the attraction with this oversized slab of cultural train wreckage anyway? I posed that very same question to myself during my latest encounter with the Swedish super store to end all Swedish super stores. I've got nothing against the Swedes as a race of people. Sure, there have been moments when I thought more than once about purchasing a plane ticket and an axe, and knocking down the doors of every member of ABBA, followed by a quick stop-over and tour of the Volvo headquarters, but as far as a race of people are concerned, I feel privileged whenever I witness a curvaceous Swedish Arian lass walking in the opposite direction.

But IKEA isn't like that. As far as I can tell, there isn't a single fucking curvaceous Swedish Arian lass in IKEA's Adelaide mega mart branch. And believe me, my eyes have ached from darting sideways motion whenever I've been there. That, the labyrinthine properties documented in the comments portion of the previous entry, a sickly feeling brought on whenever spending more than ten minutes in an environment of unoriginal blandness, and feeling like a human freakball whenever taking a piss or, say it ain't so, a dump in IKEA's pristine dunnies (cleaned every half hour by a Tanzanian dude called Zubloktroi), is enough to guarantee you prime real estate on the expanding list of terrorist suspects.

I felt like tackling the check-out bloke (a term used under advisement), stabbing him in the head with a blunt hexagonal alloy object, smearing his bloodied face and stomping the results onto the canvas I had purchased on the cheap, and throwing the piece on eBay for those who value art to bid on. The only problem was that I found it beyond my capability to extricate the Allan key from its tightly wrapped housing, rendering the remainder of the scheme frivolous.

It shits me that those IKEA fuckheads have thought of everything.