Well, I certainly was a man with a destination today…
September 25, 2010, 3:25 AM
Do you ever have those days where you look back at how you handled yourself and think, boy, I really was an a–hole? Today, I drove to work because I didn’t feel like dealing with Metro, and during the day after I got to work, I thought about how I handled myself on the way down, and I realized I was a bit of an a–hole in the car this morning. I had Randi Rhodes on as always, and for whatever reason, I refused to let anyone merge in front of me if I could help it. And then after the potential mergers gave up and dropped back, I was all, “Heh, heh, heh!”
Now mind you, I wasn’t a complete jerk in the car today, nor did I drive dangerously. If someone really wanted to get in, I still let them in. I wasn’t about to blatantly cut someone off. But I wasn’t as courteous as I usually am. Georgia Avenue during rush hour seems to do that to a person. Usually, I’ll let people in, but today I just didn’t feel like it, I suppose. What point I was trying to prove, I don’t quite know. But yeah, I look back at the morning commute, and I was certainly being a dick, which the folks at Wikipedia highly recommend against.
Otherwise, I put together a desk for the office today. Since our previous style had been discontinued, I was putting together the “Galant” style desk from IKEA. That was this one with the frosted glass top. It was something refreshingly modern, as one would expect from IKEA.
However, my usual complaints about putting together IKEA furniture soon surfaced. I hate those little pictograms that they use. I understand why they do it – IKEA sells its furniture in so many countries with so many different languages that it makes sense to make a booklet without any words. However, the Galant booklet was just about incomprehensible. Seriously. Take a look for yourself. You try and figure out what goes together first. And if you guess that the whole thing gets built upside-down on top of the glass, you are wrong. Usually when I put furniture together at work, I put it together in the kitchen, since we have a large table in there where I can spread out and such. And since the directions kind of indicated, by showing the glass in the first instructions, the first thing I did was to get a coworker to help me lift the glass up and place it upside down on the table. Turns out that the glass is the last thing you attach, since the legs, among other things, are attached from the top.
Basically, the master component of a Galant desk is this metal frame. Everything attaches to that. The legs get screwed on from the top, and the glass gets screwed on from underneath. After looking at the directions and all the parts, I eventually just cast the directions aside and built the bloody thing without the instructions. I knew what it was supposed to look like in the end, and I managed to make that happen. And the thing is pretty sturdy for something I put together. Once I get the stuff put together, I usually end up with something pretty solid.
Still, one has to wonder how much it would cost to buy some words with those pictograms. Non-IKEA furniture is usually pretty good on the words, but lacking on pictures. IKEA is the opposite. If only I could get the best of both worlds. Those pictograms along with a few words (in English in my case – I do not speak Swedish, unfortunately) would do wonders for IKEA customers the world over.
But here’s the plus side to things – once I put office furniture together once, I can usually put another specimen of the same type together without the directions. Before the older style desks (not from IKEA) were discontinued, I could just about put those things together with my eyes closed.
Song: Old commercial for Phillips Milk of Magnesia. These are the same actors as the "except when nature stops" commercial for the same product that I discussed in this space some years ago. That woman is certainly up front about people getting constipated, that's for sure. This same woman also embarrasses her daughter when she gets constipated, too. The other question is, does everyone in this woman's family get constipated?
Quote: "So if you hear me cursing in Swedish, that's why." And then when people challenged me on the fact that I don't speak Swedish, I just said that I would be channeling it through the furniture. Blasted IKEA directions...