The Ikea catalogue arrived today: please please we will now see no more of those letterbox-cleaning TV ads repeated from last year. It is the lowest form of wit to make jokes about Ikea product names like Jerker, Fukta, Fartfull and Lyckhem. Perhaps company founder Ingvar Kamprad makes jokes about WA’s eccentric retail trading laws, which mean his enormous shop in Innaloo is packed on Saturdays but empty the day after. I’m sure the SA shop on Sir Donald Bradman Drive is thronged every day of the week, and no doubt famous Swedish people can buy what they want at midnight.
But the 376-page thing caused me angst: the bookshelves weren’t in the Workspaces chapter. The Billys and the Expedits turned up in Living Room, after coffee tables. Don’t get me wrong: I am no Ikea-boy seeking my erotic gratification. Nor was I wanting to have an extra-diegetic moment. I like inspecting the books on the shelves. How many copies of Find The Love of Your Life After 50 do you need in one claustrophobic space? Six, it seems: “We imagined what would happen if six friends decided to live together in 40 square metres.” What would happen? Prison riot.
I do admire, however, their retention of their umlauts, and those little circles above the As. It is almost enough to forgive them for their break-even hotdogs.
How long before I can turn on the fucking TV and watch the footy?
The Worst of Perth 
IKEA hotdogs are shit. They may be cheap but that just makes them a cheap, shit hot dog. A pox on their big box.
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Swedish style !
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Not as funny as when Elvis made a hot dog using the Hot Diggity Dog machine on BlokesWorld. Old skool Blokesworld on Channel 31 was da shit.
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Theres going to me a Man Land there, you drop of your husband to play Xbox while you shop all day.
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I just love it when, having perused the whole of an expensive, and expansive, catalogue of desirable goodies, I come to the realisation that there is nothing in there that I need, nor crave.
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You don’t need a little Hemroid lamp for the baravan?
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Heroically turning back the tide of capitalism, one bookcase at a time.
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Watching Walu furniture ad in cinema: no mention if flat-packed…
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No Quisling bio on the shelves? Or was he Norway?
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What kind of expansive catalogue doesn’t contain naked Gold Wings ?
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Nice fucking cardigan
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fucking Mac user, what did you expect?
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hey I’m on a mac(book pro) and don’t wear cardies like that.
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do you have manscaped facial hair?
do you wear your watch on your right wrist, even when you are right-handed?
is she saying: ‘I have no idea how to make this fucking thing work, but if I move the cursor over here, it quacks like a duck.’;
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How can you tell he’s right handed?
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I’m going by the orientation of the pen and the handle of the coffee cup, my dear Watson
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I wear my watch on my right wrist despite being right handed. Does this make me a mac user even though my main operating system is Linux?
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Linux is surely the improv jazz to Mac’s trad. I would’ve thought a Linux user would just ask other people the time.
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That would necessitate social contact.
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Go into a chat room and ask.
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we had a Swedish guest recently who put us onto their Lingonberry jam. Sweet enough to go on pancakes, tart enough to accompany sausages or cold meat, and a bona fide cure for the hiccups. It’s always on the table now.
Blöödy mårvellous.
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Quince paster!
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Almost bought quince paste today, then thought what would TLA do? So put it back and got the Maggie Beer Chardonnay and Verjuice Paste instead.
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What would TLA do? Surely muddling will be involved?
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And a Mojito.
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Maggie from “The Chef and the Biddy”? I’d rather quince paste it. That’s not what I’d do.
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Spoken like the late Richard Carleton.
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And it’ll shine up an old krona like you wouldn’t believe.
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On Swedish Australia friendship day I’d just like to mention that Volvo is now owned by the 吉利控股集團 motor company.
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I always walk against the arrows, feel anxious, and regret the decision to enter.
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Rookie! Ya gotta do reconnaissance the day before, get the name, aisle and shelf number. Come back when it’s quiet, with a wing-man.
And believe – there are versatile solutions for modern living.
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There is at least one redeeming product. Perhaps Ikea would be more bearable if they handed out cider at the door. Its not perry but its not bad.
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I dream of IKEA…but not on a Western Australian Sunday apparently.
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Holy fucking shit. IKEA will ‘pay you to have the 2012 IKEA Catalogue in your home’, I am going to shoot myself now
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As the cringing owner of several Billy bookcases, let me say that IKEA shite is so cheap, on a quality level at least, that they might as well be paying you to have it in your home. I just throw out the stupid cardboard backs on those bookcases, yeah!
Sadly enough, I also know of people who regularly go to IKEA of a Thursday night … for dinner…
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Pfft. Uchi Bento is like a page out of that catalogue. I could assemble an Expedit blindfolded.
We took Ma Bento there one evening recently. “No, no! My treat!” I generously declared, as I pulled a crisp fiver from my wallet to pay for her barra and chips (not too greasy – suck it, Augusta). I even had lingonberry jam on my meatballs, and a glass of lingonberry pop.
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As far as I understand, the difference between you and me, Bento, is that while you blithely accept IKEA into your life, I passionately hate the two Expidits currently polluting my study and dining room, respectively; and that simple utility does nothing to dissuade me of their inherent shiteness. Apart from LP storage, they’re almost useless.
Lingonberry jam on your meatballs – try explaining that to your mother (NO OFFENCE).
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I was running off at the mouth there Bento, so to speak – it’s just that IKEA is a particular (ir)rational hatred of mine.
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Yes, but how many copies of FTLOYLA50 do you have?
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Swedish furniture
Cheap yet stylish harbinger
Of New World Order
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Useless? They can hold all sorts of things! (PERSONAL OPINION)
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Bang, *almost uncontrollable chuckle* – you just made my day Bento (LIKE A NORMAL PERSON). Thank you.
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I’ll take an “almost uncontrollable chuckle” over a LOL any day.
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‘pop’?
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I never did understand why people have trouble with IKEA furniture. Most of our stuff’s either from IKEA or accidentally from Belgium (loong story, not worth explaining), and we’ve never had trouble with any of it not fitting together, or breaking (Okay once years ago mum accidentally pulled the front of the TV cabinet off… but i hadn’t actually finished tapping the nails in yet so that can’t count). In fact my brother and I since we were little were always putting IKEA furniture together and we’ve still got all that stuff… in excellent condition. hm.
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$15 voucher, redeemable within the month, when you spend $100+ on shite to sleekly clutter up your life.
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i recently needed to buy something large from Ikea (the largest Expedit, as it happens – those plastic craft crates from Bunnings fit in there and are great for the kids toys)
I decided to get there nice an early to beat the queue – arrived before it opened on a Saturday and there was a queue of more than fifty people crowding the entrance. When the doors opened they ran – RAN – up the escalators, but I was the only person who went into the shop – all the others had come for breakfast. It’s now some sort of bogan weekend treat.
and a big shout-out to the bloke with one arm at the check-out, who is brilliant. I now use him as a benchmark when I abuse the braindead teenagers at the supermarket checkout:
‘for fucksakes, there’s a bloke at Ikea with one arm that can bag things quicker than you!’
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IMHO after speaking to many people and then buying a tent (yes it relates) I think the problem with IKEA furniture is not the furniture, but the people who put it together due to their ability to read pictures.
I grew up knowing that pictures can be read as instructions and have no trouble with anything as long as said instructions are drawn. But here for some reason, I think people don’t read pictures as much (if at all). Everything’s written out – recipes, origami instructions (O.o how on earth one reads written origami i’ve no idea. Probably why it never works…).
Even the tent had the instructions written out – pages upon pages of “take pole Orange-4, insert into whatever-that-thingy-is-that-sticks-to-another-pole-and-pretends-to-be-a-corner”…
IKEA is international (thus why they draw the pictures. Most everyone can read pictures) and very popular (there were 6 stores in Paris alone last time i checked), so perhaps IKEA isn’t the problem.
The ability to read the pictures might be :O
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Jesper, is that you?
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uh, no. sorry. :)
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Shame. I was listening to a docu about IKEA founder the other day. He was apparently sorry about an early enthusiasm for hitler.
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and was dyslexic. thus the weird furniture names. he could remember names, not product codes and numbers.
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Yes, right on. I was born a pictures woman.
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Every IKEA picture tells a story.
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