There Is No Cat

Groovy '60s Sounds from the Land of Smile!

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

"They were right. It is a cult. But a nice cult."

Last weekend, Laura and I stopped at IKEA for the first time in a long time. We had just been looking at couches in another furniture store. Laura was impressed by how inexpensive the couches at IKEA were; I was looking at them and thinking about how cheaply constructed they were and how they would be lucky to last five years. (That said, I bought the desk I'm using right now at IKEA eight years ago, and it's as good as the day I bought it. But then, I paid about three times as much as one of those couches cost.) The Guardian has a lengthy, interesting article examining the company, how they make their goods so cheaply, how they find all those goofy names for everything, and their founder's early flirtation with fascism and Nazism.

I was tempted by some of the lamps, and may return to get some, but I would have a hard time living with most of what they sell. All the reading I've done on modern design and looking at how furniture is made have really raised my appreciation for items that are well made (and added to a desire to make some of it myself so I know that it's well made, or not, as the case may be). That and a desire to not ever live like a college student again. Lamps and Daim chocolate candy and maybe a long wall shelf were about it.

Posted at 11:40 PM

Comments

Note: I’m tired of clearing the spam from my comments, so comments are no longer accepted.

Trackbacks

This site is copyright © 2002-2024, Ralph Brandi.

What do you mean there is no cat?

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

- Albert Einstein, explaining radio


There used to be a cat

[ photo of Mischief, a black and white cat ]

Mischief, 1988 - December 20, 2003

[ photo of Sylvester, a black and white cat ]

Sylvester (the Dorito Fiend), who died at Thanksgiving, 2000.


Stylesheets


This site is powered by Missouri. Show me!

Valid XHTML 1.0!

Valid CSS!

XML RSS feed

Read Me via Atom

new host

Me!

Home Page
Resume
Married
Photographs
Flickr Photostream
Instagram Archive
Twitter Archive

last.fm

There Is No Cat is a photo Ralph Brandi joint.


Archives

Search



Family Blogs

Geneablogy
Jersey Girl Dance
Awakening
DullBlog
Mime Is Money

Blogs I Read

2020 Hindsight
AccordionGuy
Adactio
Allied
Apartment Therapy
Assorted Nonsense
Backup Brain
Burningbird
Chocolate and Vodka
Creative Tech Writer
Critical Distance
Daily Kos
Dan Misener likes the radio
Daring Fireball
Design Your Life
design*sponge
Doc Searls
Edith Frost
Elegant Hack
Emergency Weblog
Empty Bottle
Five Acres with a View
Flashes of Panic
Future of Radio
Groundhog Day
Hello Mary Lu
iheni
Inessential
Interllectual
Jeffrey Zeldman Presents
Jersey Beat
John Gushue ... Dot Dot Dot
john peel every day
JOHO The Blog
Kathryn Cramer
Kimberly Blessing
La Emisora de la Revolucion
Lacunae
Loobylu
mamamusings
Medley
mr. nice guy
MyDD
Orcinus
oz: the blog of glenda sims
Pinkie Style
Pinkie Style Photos
Pop Culture Junk Mail
Seaweed Chronicles
Shortwave Music
Slipstream
Talking Points Memo
The Unheard Word
Tom Sundstrom - trsc.com
Typographica
Unadorned
Vantan.org
WFMU's Beware of the Blog