2001-08-14 � Swedish things

I have a friend named April who took me for the very first time to Ikea. For any of you who don't live near one, Ikea is the best store ever. It's filled with coolio shit that doesn't cost much and it's all kept in a huge warehouse/showroom structure that's painted blue. Going to an Ikea is more an event than a shopping trip. Its Swedish, see, so you can't buy a hangers, you have to buy haunkers and you can't buy a kettle, you have to buy a ketl. Anyway since she introduced me to Ikea I go with some regularity and can't get out of there without dropping all my available mad money.

My friend April has since decided she will seek spiritual enlightenment by embracing Buddhism. One of the tenets of this new philosophy is a disdain for the material. I have a great deal of respect for anyone who can give up material things, �cause I can't. I love my shit. I like to shop for shit, I like to buy shit, I like to get rid of old shit to make room for new shit. I love shit.

So I fear I was a bad influence on her while she was living here. I'd ask if she wanted to go to Ikea with me and she would say �no more things' and I would say �but they're SWEDISH things from SWEDLAND' and she would say �since you put it that way I need a great big rock and a folding table.'

Now she lives a few time zones away. She is nowhere near an Ikea, but I am. This weekend I went to Ikea to buy Swedish posters and put them in Swedish frames and while I was there I got Swedish meatballs because Carman of Carman's Country Kitchen (the slogan for her restaurant is "she put the cunt back in country. I swear to the Baby Jesus and his Mama who was sucked up into heaven when she was sleeping in a cave that's the real slogan) asked me to pick some up for her and I got Swedish flower pots and Swedish table feet for my mother and Swedish napkins for my chin.

And in my fever of commercialism I thought about April and her ritual drumming on the mountain tops and I missed her.

Posted at 4:33 p.m.

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