Victorious return
30 Oct 2005 
very late at night 
Matt Winckler
As the Protoss Dragoon said: “I have returned.” Really, I can’t put it much better than that.
Following my earlier guidelines (viz. return both alive and prior to 0400 this morning), the trip to Seattle was a complete success. We rolled into the temple (IKEA is Swedish for “shrine of the cheap junk gods”) parking lot sometime around 1400 yesterday afternoon, only to find that we had evidently arrived in the middle of some sort of pilgrimage. The place was absolutely packed. Not only was it a Saturday afternoon, but they were holding an annual feast of some sort, relating to the eleventh anniversary of the day the shrine was erected. There were no available parking spaces, but lots of antsy pilgrims. Fortunately, I’d packed heat in the event that anything got out of hand, and even more fortunately, it proved entirely unnecessary. IKEAn pilgrims are pacifists, apparently.
After finally securing a parking spot, we began our trek to the altar. The trek led us along a lengthy path through stacks of imported merchandise that had seemingly no organization whatsoever. IKEA, I decided, is very much like Wal-Mart, but without any of Wal-Mart’s organizational skills. Things are not arranged into aisles. No, in fact, the bulk of the store has only one aisle, and it meanders aimlessly through sections of junk set up in all manner of artsy arrangements. First, there is the “Showroom” section of the store, devoted to showing pilgrims the virtue of the IKEA way through hands-on demonstration. Second, there is the “Marketplace” section, where pilgrims can pick up all manner of lesser junk and small-ticket items. Finally, there is the “Manual labor” section, where you, the customer, must locate and dig out whatever items you wanted to buy after seeing them in the “Showroom” section.
Through these sections there is no straightforward path. Rather, pilgrims must follow the circuitous route around the shrine, absorbing all the propaganda and forgetting what they originally came for. (Among this propaganda were liberal amounts of posters and banners proclaiming “god jul!”. My Swedish is a little hazy, but I infer that this means something to the effect of “junkyard of the gods”.) To illustrate my point, I have provided here a plan of the store, which my sergeant-at-arms has helpfully annotated.
The shrewd, as you will see, may find certain shortcuts placed throughout the store, but these are scarcely wide enough to accept a single cart. Open space, freedom of movement, and room to breathe are evidently foreign concepts to these Swedes. I used to think a full Wal-Mart was something of a traffic flow disaster, but now I know better. A full Wal-Mart doesn’t hold a candle to a full IKEA. For one thing, a full Wal-Mart doesn’t fuss around with providing its own parking garages full of insane people.
Anyway, I was fortunate enough to have an unexpected ally in Corporal Jaeger. He rapidly decided that this pagan temple was not the place for him, and set about notifying the world of this revelation. We concluded my first and last visit to the heathen shrine in little more than a single hour. I did my best to think of something positive to say about IKEA, but could only muster a passing fondness for the striking shade of royal blue that they have painted all their buildings. However, even in this they fall short, for they accent the blue with a hideous bright mustard yellow. Heinous!
Pagan gods appeased, we headed northward to the next stop on our trip. I was in search of some Belhaven Wee Heavy Scottish Ale, though I could not recall where my dad had earlier procured it (Larry’s Market is the correct answer). We tried Trader Joe’s (never having been there) without success. After that we felt obligated to purchase some edibles at a dining establishment, following which we proceeded to our sortie’s primary objective: attendance of a wedding.
I have now attended two antichristian weddings, and I must say there is something both putrid and tragic about them all. The unbeliever naturally lacks any sort of biblical grounds for marriage, and must therefore rely on pathetic humanistic reasons both for marriage and for staying married. (Why remain faithful if there is no absolute standard commanding it? Well, uh, for the sake of “love”, and cherishing each other, and inner belief, whatever that means.) The wedding itself was over in all of ten minutes flat. They walked up, the…priestess, or witch, or justice of the peace, or whatever she titled herself, sprang into a little homily about how the bride and groom met, they zipped right on to the vows, and that was that. Clap clap clap, all done. Ten minutes. I’m glad, though. Better ten minutes of offending God through omission than an hour.
But as I told my wife later, the phenomenon truly is tragic. Watching unbelievers getting married is like watching small children play “house” or “store”. They see grownups doing it, and they try to imitate, but they don’t have a clue about what it means to actually run a household or a store. They’re just going through the motions because “that’s what people do”. I was also reminded of how pagans have singularly little reason to be faithful in marriage at all. Were I not saved, I am quite certain that I would be a really first-class criminal, because I understand that there is no point in following rules that somebody simply made up. Sure, I might possibly get caught sometime for forgery or car theft, but the state doesn’t even punish you for adultery! No reason why not to engage in that. Ah–except the whole “deep love and commitment to each other” part. Based on exactly nothing more then feelings.
As I said, it’s tragic. It is times like this when I thank God all the more for saving me and transforming my mind. It is more blessing than I can express to have an absolute standard and reasons for obeying the law, even though I fall short of it every minute of the day. At least I can understand why I should follow it.
The trip back to home base was fairly uneventful, aside from the typical “cruise control? What’s that?” drivers. These are the kind of people who wear their baseball caps backwards, are jamming to music (or something) in their vehicle, and consistently slow down to the point where you switch to the left lane to pass, and then they speed up to about 90mph, get way ahead, and repeat. At least six times. And one of those times involves slowing down while passing a semi truck (which you would also like to pass) on a wet, narrow road at night with spray flying everywhere. Sheesh.
We arrived home shortly before 0100, and I was asleep 45 minutes later. I planned to sleep in through Sunday School, and awoke at a healthy 0915 with a full hour to get ready for church. We all got ready, boarded the APC, and drove to church to find the parking lot strangely empty. It was 1020, and church should have been starting at 1030. It was positively odd, until Mystie commented: “Was this the weekend we were supposed to set our clocks back?”
I hereby heartily curse the concept of Daylight Saving Time as a twisted Communist abomination, and could wish it banished to the deepest and darkest pit of the Pacific Ocean for all the time it allegedly saved. DST is a biannual folly of consummate proportions, and should be buried somewhere in whatever dusty annals have been set down to record the ineptitude and imbecility of 20th century mankind. Actually, I think there’s something to the concept of “global” time, where everybody simply uses UTC (a.k.a. GMT), and so lunchtime here in the Pacific time zone would actually be 20:00 hours. The day would start sometime around 16:00 hours, and we would knock off work at 00:30 or so. Whereas in New York they might eat lunch at 17:00 and go home at 21:30. For simplicity, you could even just specify “local noon” in addition to GMT offset, such that Pacific local noon would be 20:00 (GMT -0800).
Naturally, of course, none will ever adopt this most logical scheme, just as the ridiculous Americans will never adopt the vastly superior metric system. It’s just one of those things, like IKEA, where rationality simply does not take the day.
[...] In the midst of an impressive and entertaining post, Matt had this comment, Unbelievers getting married is like watching small children play “house” or “store”. They see grownups doing it, and they try to imitate, but they don’t have a clue about what it means to actually run a household or a store. They’re just going through the motions because “that’s what people do”. [...]
Unbeliever marriage seems even more crazy when you realize that most of them have no problem doing the “entitlements” of marriage long before they are ever actually married. It’s practically expected these days. Even with some “christians” (using the term loosely).