white noise

The first IKEA in Ohio opens on the north side of town tomorrow and people are actually camping out to be the first inside. The mind reels.

For the record, I’m a fan of IKEA and am excited to see them come to Cinci. I’ve gone out of my way to shop at the one outside of Chicago and haul a few things back – but in all fairness, I was already in the area on business. I wouldn’t quite characterize their wares as cheaply constructed junk, however I do usual find myself appending the phrase “for what you pay for it” when I talk about their quality. IKEA is like the red Italian table wine of home furnishing – an affordable source for mod-european styling on a budget, packaged up nicely for American consumption. Sure, the flavors are a little muted as to appeal to the widest swath of palates, but the taste is still satisfying and pairs easy.

But camping out? Ya know, I never understood the hordes who waited out for iPhones, PS3s, or the countless over-hyped electronic gadgets before them either. Doesn’t everyone know by now that first-gen electro gizmos are invariably either overpriced, buggy, or both. Maybe that actually moves Daryl (and his other brother, Daryl) waiting for his Billy bookcase up a notch higher on the consumerism food chain, but only a notch. I mean, who in the hell can’t wait another day, or week, or month for a bookcase, floor lamp, or flower vase? Yes, I do know the store is giving door prizes to the first few, but nothing all that lavish, and certainly nothing worth staking out the storefront for up to 48 hours. I’m holding out hope for humanity that these are actually store employees incognito, strategically drumming up a little media attention, but I doubt it.

You the man now dog.
(Updated 11:16pm) Or Not!

If you’ve watched any news about the Ohio election you may have heard about the ballot shortages in our county. It took us an hour to vote tonight, not because of long lines, but because the polling place had run out of ballots. I guess I didn’t even know that was possible until tonight.

Shortly after arriving at the polling place, and having our ID checked, we were informed we could either complete an issues-only ballot, or wait for additional candidate ballots to arrive. After a half hour of waiting there was still no sign of more ballots and the waiting area of would-be voters grew. Cincinnati newspaper and television crews showed up and began interviewing people. Fifteen minutes more later, one of the polling officials reappeared with a stack of photocopied ballots and got us all moving through again. After completing the makeshift ballots, we had to deposit them into a special steel container since they could not be scanned electronically. While at the table getting my ID rechecked I overheard the polling official who made the copies telling another: “So I called the office again asking when our extra ballots would be showing up. I told them we had a lot of people waiting and that the media was here. They said to just make photocopies and get everyone out as soon as possible.”

That didn’t exactly give me a warm fuzzy about this whole democratic experience.