It’s a brisk boxing day and I’ve spent the morning drinking coffee, watching Rome, and redesigning AxesAndAlleys.com. I still took a bit of time out from my busy schedule for you dear readers. Here are three links.
Clouds Cover Volcanoes on Mars
You’ve got questions. These folks don’t answer them.
Dave’s Web of Lies
The attractiveness of Russian girls is pretty well-known. Also their avarice. Otherwise Russian bride web sites wouldn’t be so prominent and our Russian émigrés here in the States wouldn’t have the well-founded reputation of looking for “rich American husband.” Every Russian girl I’ve ever met in New York examined my wallet pocket first. Except for Uki, who was a rich nuclear physicist and didn’t need my money. Just a good lay and some vodka.
Now, I come from Georgia (the U.S. one, not that one roundabout Armenia) and we’re definitely known for our Southern belles. More beautiful and more fiery than Vivienne Leigh could ever hope for. Still, while we were 14 and spending the humid Summer days masturbating in the woods, we were always jealous of those Russian lads. They grew up with hot, loose Russian girls.
Because our girls at that age look like this:
Don’t get me wrong. If I were 13 I’d be all about the chick with the braces. But here’s the rub: Russian girls hit puberty at six or seven years old. Wendy up there is great, but look at what 14 year-old Russian boys had to fool around with:
Wouldn’t you feel cheated? I did.
Of course, when you get older this causes its own problems. A couple of weeks ago I brought a Russian girl home with me from a bar. Wouldn’t you know she was wearing Hello Kitty panties. Not ironically. We had a good conversation about Sanrio products once I got her to put her clothes back on. Here’s where my first suggestion comes in: Russian girls need a born on date.
Look, I’m no fan of the Budweiser. I think it’s weak and smells worse than old piss when it’s dried into your hair. But the Budweiser folks had a great idea in that born on date. I propose that all Russian females be implanted with an RFID tag indicating when they were born. A simple scanner would’ve helped prevent me from almost tapping jailbait and I could’ve skipped to the conversation about those delightful Badtz-Maru sunglasses Sanrio makes.
Now let’s say your wallet’s fat enough to bag you that Russian babe with the smooth thighs, perky breasts, and viciously-beautiful face. You’re probably thinking you’re set with decades of the hottest sex every night, years of dumbfounded stares of appreciation from other men, and a reason for people to talk to you at cocktail parties. As the Russians mockingly told the Germans one cold winter in 1944, “Ein minuten, bitte.”
The Russian boys have it good, but you wouldn’t want to change shoes with the Russian men. Not only is there bear wrestling, the Russian mob, and the occasional polonium poisoning, but your average 27 year-old Russian woman looks something like this:
While your 15 year-old Russian counterpart could gloat about the “nice piece” he was fondling behind the Iron Curtain, your 30 year-old Russian compatriot is stuck in a sexless hell of dentures, swollen ankles, and saggy boobs.
The tragic irony is that when a Russian woman looks like this:
is when she’s finally developed a personality. Usually an interesting one at that.
So my second proposition is that the RFID tag mentioned above also include a countdown in years, days, and hours to that Russian girl’s expiration date.
For blonde Russians, the rapid decline begins at around three months out from her 27th birthday. For the brunettes, approximately one month out. Strangely, for the rare redheaded Russian lass, the expiration date is quite unpredictable, so a concrete expiration at 26 years of age is in order.
Look, I know some people will find this offensive. I too am suspicious of RFID technology, so I totally understand. But, the fact remains it’s effective. With that out of the way, it’s also the best solution for all parties involved.
American men won’t feel deceived when they’ve hit that true, manly gravitas in their late twenties where women begin to find them the most attractive, yet be saddled with Grandma Davidova for a wife. She might offer some great insights into life, but there’s much better ass to be had out there.
It’ll spare those Russian women, too. No longer will they have to deal with cheating husbands, the loss of their income when their rich American husbands leave them jobless and with no skills or money, not to mention the daily embarrassment of him seeing those crow’s feet all over her legs. No doubt when rejected by the scan she’ll return to Russia where she can find an older man more suitable for her. Preferably a 70 year-old news stand attendant with Mommy issues.
Don’t get me started on the Poles…
There are only a handful of places I hate more than IKEA: the gypsy slums of Rome, my gangbanger friend’s couch in Compton, Las Cruces in New Mexico, South Carolina’s lovely North Augusta, and the 34th Street QuickStop DMV. That last one may actually be a tie with IKEA (and more on it in a later story).
Recently I came into some extra cash. I won’t tell you how, but it was exciting and nefarious. Having also moved into a new apartment without any furnishings it was clear to me that I must make a trip to the holy grail of middle class whitey: IKEA.
I don’t hold any guilt for that because I’m Jewish and middle management. So while I should be running the world and rich, I’m pulling in less than many waiters every year and inputting purchase orders every couple of days. Really I’m an underachiever, no matter how big my equipment is.
My first frustration with IKEA was that directions to their store were rather vague. Basically “Go to Brooklyn, we’re there.” Being a Queens boy I took the F to York street and expected to be in IKEA. Then I walked down to the Water Taxi, which I had been assured was a location from which I could take a ferry to IKEA. Turns out that all that stuff about a ferry from Brooklyn to their location was a lie. I did get to see some Asians taking wedding photos in mini-skirts and short sleeves in 25 degree weather, so I wouldn’t call it a total loss.
I did remember that there was a free shuttle from Court Square to the store, so I headed up that way. Now, again, IKEA’s instructions were basically “Go to Court Square and you’ll magically arrive at our store. Because IKEA is magic.”
What I did find, after about a half hour and several text-messages to friends from the area, was a bus stop that was two inches wide and camouflaged to look like Brooklyn. I actually only noticed it because I was sending a text message to someone and walked into the bus stop pole to which the IKEA sign was affixed with scotch tape. Very classy.
When the bus finally arrived, it was this hulking teal thing. Think the Incredible Hulk, but gay. And a bus. And driven by a guy who REALLY didn’t give a shit. Which is fine. I’ve worked several shitty jobs in the past, but I made sure to clean the spittle from my chin after the boredom got to me. Have some self-respect.
The one high point of the trip was that everyone getting on the bus was incredibly polite. It was all “No, you can go first” and “Would you like this seat?” I even ended up with a woman named Jillian in my lap, things were so friendly. She was from Norway and liked many of the bands on the label for which I work. Normally I hate Norwegians, but she smelled good and was sitting in my lap.
Speaking of Scandinavia, IKEA is supposed to work on some model of Swedish efficiency in America. This was the first thing I noticed about it. You walk in and there is only one escalator going up. There is one person at the bottom of this escalator whose job it is to scream at the top of her lungs that there are bathrooms on the first floor (our second floor, silly Yooropeens), and the second floor (our third floor) has many of the things you need to furnish your home. There is also a woman with a bowl of candy. She has no teeth.
Black arrows guide your path throughout the store. Not that anyone pays attention to these. And most of the price tags in the store include an aisle and bin number you can write down. Not for when you check out and it just gets sent to your house, but so you can check out, get a print out, then go down to the Self-Serve furniture area and put your heavy items on a cart. THEN you can check out. And then you can go pick up the extra parts of your furniture. Oh, and THEN you can take your 500 pound cart (no exaggeration, my receipt says 473 pounds) to the home delivery section. Which is 300 yards from the checkout counter.
The obvious problem with this Swedish efficiency is, of course, that there are no actual Swedes involved. I didn’t even detect a hint of Dutch or German accent in other shoppers, so clearly there is no one in attendance who could offer anything close to Swedish efficiency.
Instead people go the wrong way, no one travels in a straight line, everyone is from a different ethnic group or socio-economic class, and maybe two people in the entire store listen to Metal. At least the signs were bilingual in Spanish. There were several Jews, which is promising, but mostly I wondered how squirrely nebbishes who looked like that could land women who looked like THAT.
My friend Johnny described it as walking into a UFO. If so, it’s an alien spacecraft populated entirely by the denizens of Steinway Street in Astoria and the Russian section of the boardwalk at Coney Island. He mentioned how it’s podlike, with all of these sections set up to look like what your house could look like with these goods in it. That would be true except for the absurd panoply of human waste occupying each pod.
These were truly alien. There was the mother changing her baby on the quite sexy red couch, which was selling me on the bending a woman over it possibilities until the moment I noticed mother, shit-cheeked baby, and diaper changing. None of which was taking place in a bathroom.
I also saw a room with elegant wood paneling, underlit shelving, and fifteen Russian girls in their early 20s with pot-bellies who completely negated my other article on how hot Russian women ten to be (for a short period of time). I’ve never seen so many moles, many cancerous.
Another example was the sexy bachelor pad setup, with a combination chaise lounge/sofa, entertainment centre, and hot hot heat media shelves…with the seven year old girl attempting to be sexy on the bedding. I think my sex drive is still suffering.
Even the purchasing system was Byzantine. You grab a pencil and this tiny form they give you. Then you see a thing you want, write down what it is and the price. And most of the time you write down an aisle number and bin number after this. Unless, of course, none is provided. In which case you have to go ask the “Co-Worker” at a register (if you can find one) about it.
The “Co-Workers” are “Over-Worked” and barely paying attention. So if they miss a couple of items out of your list…oops. Which brings me to this self-service furniture pick up. After you visit a Co-Worker, you’re supposed to go downstairs and grab your own stuff. Only then do you get to a cashier. So I head on downstairs to get my stuff. I’m a young man, strong like bull as a cute Russian girl told me while I struggled with an entire couch. But, as the couch just spoken about attests, there’s only so much I can do when the couch is ten feet long and I’m not.
So it’s entirely unhelpful when the IKEA spokesgrunt with the backbrace looks me over and says it’s lighter than it looks. Then he looks over my friend Jillian who’s only a shade over five feet tall and 95 pounds (most of which must be her breasts) and says she could’ve helped me. Yes, she could’ve, if I was trying to use her to seduce my way out of a concentration camp in World War II. The irony of this will play out in a couple of paragraphs.
I have had a pair of shopping experiences that were worse. In 1986 my Mom accidentally left me in the changing room of a Mervyn’s department store where I was briefly accosted by security who mistook me for a very small woman attempting to steal a rather large brassiere and some ruby red pumps.
There was also the time I stopped in the aforementioned Las Cruces, New Mexico to fill up on gas at a Sonoco gas station while moving my mother’s home from near Austin to near San Francisco. Of course any visit to Sonoco gas stations ends in a half hour bound and gagged in the storeroom after an armed robbery. Really, all I wanted was some gas, a couple of sour fruity straws, and a pack of Camel Wides to last me until Bakersfield.
After all of this, my night would not have been complete without being called a Nazi. To my surprise, I was called such just as I boarded the complimentary bus back to Borough Hall. While I contemplate my status in Hitler’s genocidal machine, I can at least rest tight in the fact that my living room will soon be furnished…if they get my address right.
1. What makes a work is the interpretation of the mind.
2. What lies between touches both.
3. “Completion” is not the end of creation.
4. The seeds he planted came to Bud by chance.
5. Naysaying is not saying. (If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.)
6. Be ready to deal with the fact that you’re not going to be happy with the end-product of your work.
7. The whole is much greater when its parts are put together in just the right way without second-guessing the form and function of that creation.
8. The simplest elements strengthen a work because they are the elements which require the least thought.
9. Follow your thoughts without resorting to artifice.
10. Embrace editing and drop what you like the most first. (Be careful when holding small children.)
11. Some works are created to impart meaning; some works are created to show off.
12. The contempt of the present is not yet the judgment of history.
13. Creation is never quite what you intended; sometimes it’s way off.
14. Attempting to impart a growing body of information in a work will likely leave it without stability.
15. Knowing something exposes it to all of our prejudices and preconceptions making that knowledge something else entirely.
16. Building a work opens a small pinhole view of the nose of God.
17. Your thoughts operate differently from your feelings; note the differences and use them.
18. Work without fear of what has already been said and done.
19. Learn what changes between concept and application.
20. Any element in a work will affect the other elements around it.
