Cursèd cheap Ikea junk!
    Somehow a  fair amount of "Ikea" brand silverware has shown up in my house. I didn't bring it here; I don't know how it got here.
    I don't know too much about "Ikea" other than that it's run by some Nordic billionaire, and that's enough for me to not give a toss. But people are always talking about it in hushed, reverent tones, making it out to be some fantastic brand. I eventually determined it to be a furniture warehouse, which is of limited interest to me since there is not much furniture that can fit in my miserable bedsit.
    One day my parents came to visit me and said 'What shall we do?'. I suggested a rowboat on the lake, or a walk in the park, something befitting the bright sunny day in question. But they would hear none of it- "We wanna go to Ikea!" they screamed. "We don't have that where we're from, but we heard it's great!".
     Well, I told them, you're out of luck, 'cause we don't have it here, either. But it turns out I was wrong- there is an Ikea warehouse in some anonymous flat suburb an hour away. So we had to go there. Once you there, it was more or less like an amusement park. There were lots of very heavy people strolling around. I was told many people "make a day" of it. Once you go inside this warehouse, painted in patriotic Nordic colours, it's some kind of maze reminiscent of Italian rest stops where you can only get out by going all the way through. Along the way the consumer classes ooh and aah over geometrically-shaped beds, chairs, dog toys, and silverware. There are also people selling meatballs. Oh, boy.
     I couldn't get out of there fast enough, and for the two hours spent in this hell, my parents didn't even buy anything. Meanwhile I find that someone has smuggled Ikea silverware into my house, and when I went to cut something today, the knife broke in half. Yes- in half! And what do you think I was cutting? A piece of cheese! I understand that a knife might break in half if you're slicing, say, a rock, but soft, unctuous cheese? (I hope unctuous is a word in English.)
    So read 'em and weep, Ikea fans.