Busytown by Jolisa Gracewood

Without addressing your larger story really at all (except to say that all that running around after flour sounds like a waste of good drinking time, and that I am completely unsurprised by the authorities' freakout), I would just like to mention the joy of IKEA duvet covers. I was in the US for three days on the way home from Europe earlier this year, and dedicated one precious afternoon in Houston to an IKEA duvet cover quest. 100% cotton! Cool patterns! Cheap! (And probably: sweatshops! Sigh.)

(And by 'mention', I mean 'agree with you thoroughly about the fantasticness'.)

Joy, first thing in the morning belly laughs. I love making kitset furniture, Muji is good for that too. Collaborating with someone else to make kitset furniture is good times too, it tells you a lot about someone's character IMO.

And they scoffed and ridiculed Michael Moore's Bowling for Colombine angle: American's live in fear engendered by media and "authorities"?
Fear is not to be scoffed at.
Until it becomes this stupid (and self-important).
At least the hash people are likely to have access to good lawyers. If they'd been Dr Hassan and his wife Fatima they'd be in locked away for life without the hint of a habeus corpus.

Lovely - and have to admit, much to my horror, I miss IKEA.

Definately not the parking experience, but the inability to stroll through without buying a whole bunch of stuff that we really don't need,and the great shopping for kids rooms, and the 'ball-room' that the kids are happy to spend hours in while we shuffle around poking and prodding the kit-set furniture (on that note, how come IKEA doesn't do online shopping?)

When the Auckland store opens I'll be there, despite myself.

And so from the Islamic state of Malaysia emerges this long simmering plot. Lucky the ever-watchful US citizenry uncovered it before the Hasheds got to unleash the second stage of their plan. (Throwing actual anthrax in large handfuls onto the streets?)

Muslims eh? Wouldn't be surprised if they were all homosexuals too.

And so from the Islamic state of Malaysia emerges this long simmering plot. Lucky the ever-watchful US citizenry uncovered it before the Hasheds got to unleash the second stage of their plan. (Throwing actual anthrax in large handfuls onto the streets?)

Oh yes, those wily Orientals and their cunning Teutonic conspirators. So, let's see... if you can throw one handful of anthrax every five seconds, and one handful is approximately two ounces, and you have a two pound bag of anthrax, exactly how long would it take to - cough - gasp - thud.

I realize now that I forgot to mention in the blog that Connecticut was one of the epicentres of the original anthrax freakout (domestic in origin! and unsolved to this day!). The letter that accidentally killed an elderly woman went through a post office about fourteen miles north of where I'm typing.

Which might explain some of the overreaction. I guess I should go back and add that in... although nobody officially mentioned anthrax on the day, they must have been thinking about it.

they must have been thinking

Perhaps you're being overly generous? :)

> 100% cotton! Cool patterns! Cheap!
> (And probably: sweatshops! Sigh.)

IKEA tries hard to avoid sweatshop labour, so you're probably ok there. On the other hand, there was recently a stink about construction of a store near Nanjing destroying a number of ancient tombs.

Why does this always have to be so hard? Is there really no market for a store where everything is guaranteed to be made by well-treated workers under environmentally sustainable conditions, so that people can just shop for what they need without having to read every label in sight and worry about what they're not being told?

Amy.... it depends on how far you want to take things...

Some people will be happy with "no sweatshop labour"
Others want "no sweatshop labour AND no ancient ruins desecrated"
Yet others wil want "no sweatshop labour, no desecrated ruins, and the builders who constructed the shop were not wearing leather boots"

And then, even if the boots are man-made-fibre, are they an oil derivative? And were they made with sweatshop labour? And did they drive fuel efficient vehiocles to get the non-sweatshop labour to the factory, etc etc etc....

Me... I'm going to Auckland Ikea as soon as the "opening weekend mad crowd" has gone... (which may take several months?)

I'll see you there, Fletcher! You bring the beer, I'll bring the flour...

We used to go to the Ikea store in Sydney every time we visited the relatives. After three visits they were completely over it and didn't want to drive us out that far anymore. But they really are a great store, and it seems weird we haven't got one sooner.

Anyway ... the talk of 'it depends on how far you want to take things' etc <Fletcher B, above> reminded me of a news story on BFM this morning that just made me think (and I'm not a Greenie at all) "Oh Lord, that's great for the environment!" As in not.

The full story can be found here but just one notable part is:

...who will deliver the lightsaber to a waiting line of Hummers outside the baggage claim of the William P. Hobby Airport. Accompanied by a police escort, the soon-to-be real space artifact will be driven to Space Center Houston to be...

Just FedEx the f*cker and be done with it!

Me... I'm going to Auckland Ikea as soon as the "opening weekend mad crowd" has gone... (which may take several months?)

Take a day or two off work and go during the week. That way you'll get furniture and retain your sanity. Bonus!

Is Ikea large? Will there be lots of people there? In that case, count me out. It's lovely furniture, but anything larger than the corner shop throws me into a panic, these days.

Hehe, speaking of panic .. reminds me of my first IKEA experience, as a Taranaki-bred-Wellingtonian-turned-San-Joseian about 1.5 years ago. Rolled up to the Mountain View store in my corporate-provided rental car to pickup some cookie-cutter furniture for my apartment. Got in there, spent two hours strolling through the massive warehouse, got my bed and drawer set along with other miscellaneous items, and then headed back out into the parking lot. Only to realize that I hadn't made a mental note of where exactly I had left the car. Spent the next 40 minutes pushing my large IKEA trolley through the multiple levels of the parking lot, pushing the buttons on my locking-remote and listening for the beeps. Found the car, eventually... one of lifes lessons, I guess. :)

Those American's sure take their Homeland Security seriously:

Officials yesterday defended the retention of highly personal data on travelers not involved in or linked to any violations of the law. But civil liberties advocates have alleged that the type of information preserved by the department raises alarms about the government's ability to intrude into the lives of ordinary people. The millions of travelers whose records are kept by the government are generally unaware of what their records say, and the government has not created an effective mechanism for reviewing the data and correcting any errors, activists said.

But new details about the information being retained suggest that the government is monitoring the personal habits of travelers more closely than it has previously acknowledged. The details were learned when a group of activists requested copies of official records on their own travel. Those records included a description of a book on marijuana that one of them carried and small flashlights bearing the symbol of a marijuana leaf.

RB may not come back, next time he visits ...