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Awesome blog reading discretion has been advised. Don't be mad, Boo.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Welcome, ye damned, to the Fourth Circle......abandon all hope, ye who enter here!
At Ikea last week, Marie and I found our personal hell. A place packed with people, who apparently have no concept of "personal space". It's as if the opportunity to save a few dollars and obtain a bunch of cool looking, but admittedly shoddy furiture gives people tacit permission to treat each other like crap.
I remember saying as we headed up the escalator, "I feel like we're being herded".
You know.....like cattle.
Anyone who has been to Ikea is bound to know what I mean, if you paid attention. According to the website, Ikea stores are all designed to ensure that the customer is able to see the entire store, as opposed to a regular retailer, like Wal-Mart, who designes a store so that a customer might go in and find what they need and escape with ease.
So, Ikea is basically designed so that if there is ever a fire, you can rest assured that you will die in one of two ways:
1) Trampled to death by the man in the wheelchair who wouldn't let you past him in the VERY narrow lanes.
2) By fire. Horribly.
Sure, there were emergency exits. No signs pointing to where they were or anything, but I'm certain that in the event of an emergency a helpful member of Ikea's teenage staff would be more than willing to direct you to them by shouting at you once they were out side.
We were about 15 minutes into our little Ikea excursion when we both feel the undeniable urge to leave....like nowish. So 15 minutes in should be like 2 or 3 minutes out, right? It took us 10 minutes of dodging people at a semi-quick pace to get out of that place, no exaggeration. It was like that movie Labrynth, only no Farting Swamp or David Bowie to thwart us and no hot Jennifer Connley to serve me my nasty over-cooked hotdog.
As we drove away I was reminded of something I read many moons ago. Most of the people in Ikea that day were just ridiculous in their lack of courtesy and their desire to spend money. Dante's inferno is a scary (but fictional) look at what is awaiting us in hell if we party like rockstars. This is poetry for the hard core. 9 levels of hell and a fun little hobby for the damned in each of them. Here is what wikipedia had to say about the Fourth level...not making this up....
"Fourth Circle. Those whose concern for material goods deviated from the desired mean are punished in this circle. They include the avaricious or miserly, who hoarded possessions, and the prodigal, who squandered them. Guarded by Plutus, each group pushes a great weight against the heavy weight of the other group. After the weights crash together the process starts over again. (In Gustave Doré's illustrations for this scene, the damned attempt to push huge Ikea made sofas and bookcases out absurdly small fire escape doors....if they can find them.) (Canto VII)"
Oh.....that is so creepy.
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