Look out, it’s evil! - Random Stuff XXXVII

10:38 pm August 3rd, 2007




			Look out, it’s evil! - Random Stuff XXXVII Helping to drag America, kicking & screaming, into the Age of Enlightenment

6_bleen_7


	Random Stuff XXXVII
	Here are not one, but two new definitions for a common Net misspelling: hypocracy n. 1. Government by hypocrites. 2. Government by people living in subterranean caves. Still, I can't top samwibatt's masterful adaptation of a once ubiquitous cyber-mangling. Remember, a few years ago, when every idiot on the Net was yammering on about the "Millenium" starting on 1 January 2000? Actually, they're right: whereas the third millennium began on 1 January 2001, the Millenium, pronounced with a long e, really is the 1000-year period commencing 1 January 2000. Undoubtedly you're familiar with the children's refrain: I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream! In these days of rampant child obesity, perhaps we should promote a lower-fat substitute: I smilk, you smilk, we all smilk for ice milk! Does anyone even manufacture ice milk anymore? As it happens, yes—but now it's called "low-fat ice cream". Somehow the original name has a homier, more honest and natural feel. "Low-fat ice cream" sounds like it's been chemically processed to extract excess lipid. If total consumption drives the choice of squalled-for delicacy, then my personal mantra of gratification would go like this: I stea, you stea, we all stea for iced tea! I've actually been known to recite this when asking for my third or fourth refill of iced tea, and the server says something cheeky about my sponge-like physiology. (The chant itself I must attribute to some clever bathroom graffitist at the brother's college.) Long ago I told my good friend Thomps about screaming, smilking and steaing for various treats, and he liked the idea so much that he spent an entire class period with his Honors English students making up variations on the theme. They came up with a few good ones and one absolute gem, whose hilariousness and syntactic perfection, I hope you'll agree, outweigh any inherent sexism: I swat her, you swat her, we all swat her for ice water! When we moved to Seattle, we left a fair amount of our furniture behind (including Kathy's "Hide-a-Bed," which I called "The Molecule" because every atom in its four-tonne, steel-framed bulk was covalently bonded to at least one other, making it impossible to divide into smaller pieces for transport). Shortly after we arrived in the Emerald City, when it came time to restock, we asked around for tips on furniture stores. Everyone we knew—not too many people, but enough to rule out a coincidence—recommended a chain store down south in Renton; a store we'd never heard of, by the uncouth name of "IKEA." So, the second weekend after we rolled into town we got on I-5 and headed down to the unfashionable end of the Seattle metro area. The IKEA apparently drew so much traffic that it had a special exit. I heard on the radio some business's (not IKEA's) driving instructions starting with "Take the IKEA exit off I-405...." Sure enough, the official highway sign for the exit read "Renton—IKEA." What's more, it was built to accommodate two lanes of traffic: the Renton lane (north) and the IKEA lane (south). And indeed, it looked as though half of western Washington was following us there. My sense of amazement only grew upon driving into a mile-square parking lot, hiking in 20 minutes to the actual store, and marching along in a labyrinthine display of Yuppie Scandinavian furniture and knickknacks for the entire afternoon, nearly forced into lockstep with the throngs of other shoppers forming a giant, sinuous serpent of humanity. All joking aside, I have to admit we did extraordinarily well there; the two dressers we scored number among our finest home furnishings. If Seattle scores, say, an 8.5 on a scale from 1 to 10 for IKEA-mania, then Provo, Utah rates at least a 12. When an IKEA was slated to open in nearby Draper this May, hundreds of people pitched tents and camped out the night before, just to get the first crack at the wondrous Swedish consumer goods inside. A line of cars miles long queued up before the gates on Opening Day, and thousands more Provosts (i.e., people from Provo) flooded in as the orgiastic inaugural shopping spree wore on. (Remarked my father, retired after 20 years in Utah pediatrics: "Goes to show how boring life is in Provo, with nothing to do but have babies all day.") And you can guess what the gormlessly happy Mormon families, flush with the anticipation of losing themselves in 310,000 square feet (over seven acres, or nearly three hectares) of capitalist splendor, were singing as they careened along I-15 toward Draper in their minivans: I Kea, You Kea, We All Kea for IKEA!! Tags: random_shit, wurds Current Tunes: Enya, Amarantine

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	Comments

	From: samwibatt	Date: August 4th, 2007 02:47 am (UTC)		(Link)

ROFFLE!

I still crack up about "stea" from time to time. Thanks for that hit of it.

Julia and I wint to the Draper IKEA on - if not opening day, a Saturday very near to it. There was an unbelievable throng. There were traffic cops managing the vehicular flow outside, and the moving around inside was very cattle-like and depressing somehow. Pretty much all of Sandy and their towheaded chirrens were there, and by the time we got out I was very much ready to have gotten out. We're going to need some new furnitures soon, and it's probably there that we'll get them. I acknowledge that their wares look like good stuff, but the fandom in that article you link is kind of creepy.

No it's not, it's really creepy.

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	From: 6_bleen_7	Date: August 4th, 2007 04:44 am (UTC)		(Link)

I have to find Thomps's list of variations his students thought up. The only one I can think of, besides the one I quoted, is "I sland, you sland, we all sland for Iceland."

I can understand how IKEA would draw a huge crowd in Seattle, but I would have guessed it far too Yuppie and, especially, foreign for Utah. Every item in the store has its own name, with generous application of umlauts, and not one Biblical reference in the lot.

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	From: samwibatt	Date: August 4th, 2007 04:30 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Yes, but it's cheap.

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	From: 6_bleen_7	Date: August 6th, 2007 03:55 am (UTC)		(Link)

Really? We scored those real wood dressers for pretty cheap, but I didn't realize the entire store had that reputation.

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	From: samwibatt	Date: August 6th, 2007 03:58 am (UTC)		(Link)

I guess cheap isn't the right word; rather, economical. The store in Draper is very up-front about it. Julia and I et at the cafeteria there, as part of a wish to have the full IKEA experience. On the walls they had painted text like "Why do we make you bus your own table? To help keep our costs down!" sort of thing, if a bit more dignified than that.

The idea seemed to be that you could get decent furniture for less than you'd expect to pay because you put it together and they economize in every other possible way.

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	From: 6_bleen_7	Date: August 10th, 2007 02:21 am (UTC)		(Link)

Okay, I'll grant them that. Having seen how expensive real wood office furniture is (i.e., "price on application"), I now realize what a good deal we got, and those dressers rank among our finest furniture. As long as they also sell soap, chickens and ghetto blasters, then I can't complain.

That reminds me—did you hear that the baiji dolphin of the Yangtze River was officially declared extinct? It may have sparked a resurge of interest in Last Chance To See.

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	From: samwibatt	Date: August 10th, 2007 03:30 am (UTC)		(Link)

I hadn't heard about the baiji - that's sad, but not too surprising.

And sad that Douglas Adams himself is extinct. Alas. That bit about "Couldn't I see that this was a sock, soap, chicken and ghetto blaster shop?" among many others was classic.

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	From: ruthling	Date: August 4th, 2007 03:23 am (UTC)		(Link)

aren't Keas sheep-eating parrots?

I've done the IKEA thing a couple times since the one in Stoughton opened. It took >8 months for the foofah to die down enough to actually be able go.

Also, Johnathan Coulton has a song about it.

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	From: 6_bleen_7	Date: August 4th, 2007 05:34 am (UTC)		(Link)

Douglas Adams talks about keas in Last Chance To See; the book includes a photo of one sporting a sharp, curved beak. It has an unsavory reputation for ripping windshield wipers off cars with that formidable mouth weaponry. That's all I know about keas.

Having seen the place, it doesn't surprise me that someone's written a song about it.

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	From: q_pheevr	Date: August 4th, 2007 03:46 am (UTC)		(Link)

Other possible definitions for hypocracy:

An insufficiency of government; Grover Norquist's fondest dream.

The lower house of a bicameral legislature (the upper one being the hypercracy).

Government sustained by hypodermic injections of the populace.

The church mode a fourth below the cracy mode.

The rule of thiosulphates.

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	From: 6_bleen_7	Date: August 4th, 2007 05:51 am (UTC)		(Link)

Hypercracy—ROFFLE! I should have thought of that one.

Heh-heh—I've used sodium thiosulfate in an amino-acid synthesis, but since I was using it in a biochemical setting instead of a photographic one, I was unfamiliar with the term hypo (for sodium hyposulfite, I now know). The use of hyposulfite to indicate S₂O₃^2– is somewhat nonstandard. Given that SO₃^2– is sulfite ion, hyposulfite ought to represent SO₂^2–, just as chlorite is ClO₂^– and hypochlorite is ClO^–. On the other hand, SO₂ in its common form is a neutral molecule (and a stinky one at that), so the term may have been available for the closest analogue. (Or, early chemists mistook S₂O₃^2– for SO₂^2–.)

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	From: ejwise	Date: August 4th, 2007 03:53 am (UTC)		(Link)

I knew that was you who added to my comment on Shelley's most recent LJ post. But, as inquiring minds want to know, why did you rescind the comment? Do tell. ;)

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	From: 6_bleen_7	Date: August 4th, 2007 05:36 am (UTC)		(Link)

Huh? I didn't—she must have quashed it, like she usually does. In fact, I haven't even been able to see my comment. I'm glad you saw it, though—was afraid I'd have to post it in the "other community."

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	From: samcurt	Date: August 4th, 2007 02:41 pm (UTC)		(Link)

If we go by the Wikipedia definition, then ice milk itself is no better than ice cream. Yes, lower fat, but the same amount of sugar. I'm convinced that sucrose is more harmful than triglycerides-- but let's not get into debate here.

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	From: 6_bleen_7	Date: August 10th, 2007 02:23 am (UTC)		(Link)

Sucrose is very likely more harmful than polyunsaturated fats. Beyond that, it probably depends on one's physiology. Nutrition is still such an inexact science, so dependent on the interplay of genes and the environment, that I would look at definitive statements one way or the other with considerable skepticism.

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	From: cutiepi314	Date: August 6th, 2007 07:10 pm (UTC)		(Link)

The IKEA chant is my favorite! Wow, people pitched tents for an IKEA? That surprises me that a town in Utah would do that; recall that IKEA is a store which prides itself for good employee treatment and non-sweatshop labor. It seems to conflict with the Mormon ethic.

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	From: 6_bleen_7	Date: August 6th, 2007 11:25 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Not quite; it definitely clashes with the conservative ethic, but Mormons in some ways are almost communistic. In any case, as long as the people working at the Draper IKEA are good Mormons, they will overcome their conservative leanings enough to begrudge the employees decent pay and treatment.

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