Despite its many shortcomings, IKEA holds a special place in my heart. It may be like one’s first girlfriend or first car, simply that it was first furniture store in my way when I needed to furnish a space. It could be because it was the cheapest place in town to get breakfast while I was a destitute postgrad. But I think it was because I really enjoy putting things together, making IKEA the drug pusher to my inner crack whore. After putting together my own stuff during postgrad, I pounced on any opportunity to put my friends’ stuff together whenever they furnished a new space. With each bookshelf, bed, chair, or stereo cabinet I pieced together, I noticed a pattern emerging.

It wasn’t that the directions were unclear, or all that difficult to follow. One doesn’t even need to be literate to make it through a set of IKEA directions. But with every piece save the three-piece wonders that one doesn’t need directions for, I noticed there was a point in every assembly process where I got stuck. It’s when I’m more than halfway but less than two-thirds done. It’s where the wheels come off. (Sometimes literally, in the case of a particularly sticky chest of drawers.) It’s the point when I look at the sad little man in the front of the directions and think that I, like the little man, might be able to solve all my problems by ringing IKEA and confessing that I have no idea how to proceed.

I call this the IKEA Point. I have gotten past it every time without having to ring IKEA, though it has sometimes required that I leave the room and have a cup of tea. Oddly enough, I have reached the IKEA Point in other sections of my life, and thanks to IKEA I have some confidence that I can get past it. I had a series of scares while working on my thesis and research proposals, for example, where I was convinced I would have to give up on LaTeX and retype everything in Microsoft Word. I got past it.

Lots of stuff in life doesn’t come with instructions, but some stuff does. Often those instructions are confusing, but it’s possible to get past it. Not a bad thing to remember, when facing down a room full of pine and you’re armed with only an allen wrench.

I usually like Christmas. A lot. This year a series of mildly irritating circumstances in the immediate runup to the holiday reminded me of all the stuff I really despise about Christmas.

I’m lucky that although I am technically a part of the retail phenomenon that is the problem, neither I nor anyone else in the shop feel the need to force Christmas down anyone’s throat. In general? I blame retailers for everything I hate about Christmas. Starting as soon as they possibly can, sometimes before Halloween, we are whipped into a frenzy of spending and preparing and stressing to create the perfect day, which nearly always falls flat because we are all of us human. After months of preparation, Christmas leaves people exhausted. This is perfectly timed, as people are thrust into contact with their extended families with whom they may not get along even on the best of days.

We are told to shop for everyone, regardless of whether they want anything or can use the token you’ve procured for them. We either abstain from shopping for ourselves, or we buy stuff anyway and feel guilty. And then we still binge shop the day after Christmas. There are even sales for facilitating this.

Meanwhile, as Dublin is hit with weather we’re not equipped to handle, some people are left stranded and unable to travel wherever they’d planned on spending their Christmas. It throws things into sharp perspective, when you’re out shopping at the last minute for someone you may not get to see after all. You remember that what you (and they) really want is just to be home for Christmas.

I am lucky in that I usually get what I want for Christmas, which is to be home. After the frenzy dies down and everyone is enjoying the results of their frantic shopping, I can enjoy being home. It’s a lot easier these days than it used to be, but I don’t appreciate it any less.

I hope you’re enjoying your Christmas, wherever you are, whoever you’re with, and whatever you’re doing.

I’m a big Bruce Sterling fan, down to the point that I *know* there’s a conspiracy to supress his work – have you tried to buy a Sterling novel recently? They’re not to be had anywhere – despite the fact that theres about a half dozen of us that I know of that look – sure theres Amazon, but fuck sake, why isn’t it on shelves?

Anyway – my point being, Bruce’s S.’s big trope is that your/our reality is being messed with on a near continuous basis and almost no vector is as heavily engineered to be a harpoon through your brain into your wallet than the girl-band super-group of which the Spicegirls were a paramount example and the Pussycat Dolls are the latest incarnation of easy-on-the-eye earth-stalking devourers. As you can see, the memetic attack vector has evolved.

If you listen to the lyrics its the same ultra-consumer stuff that’s been cropping up ever since the A&R men started pushing it back a few years ago (I think it was My Humps that they first put numbers to the ‘value to the brand of a top X song mention’) when they realised that getting the flavur of the moment to say ‘my baby buys me Grey Goose’ was worth $20,000 in sales. The big underlying thing to the PCD stuff is motorshow stuff – cars, speed, high-tempo, high amp stuff – subtle things like ‘zoom, zoom, zoom’…

So, really, is it any wonder that people aren’t so up with the ‘your world is about to get smaller’ stuff thats the probable case? The Committee for the Apocalypse has apparently revised things recently …

… actually, piecing things together, the kind of ‘money no object’ sorts that were ever going to be in that party set in the first place are probably going to shrug off fuel at quadruple the price. Ach, what the hell, it’ll be grand.

He was on The Daily Show, and was brilliant.

And to my total joy, he was on one of my favourite podcasts, This American Life.

Guess what? He was brilliant.

Each TAL is a themed set of vignettes of interesting people living curious lives. It’s definitely firmly part of the NPR, SBUX, iPhone, Bleu-State hipsterism for which I am renowned; I wholeheartedly suggest it to you, even if you only listen to the piece on Cuervo Man, and then give up.

I am quite pleased that I called islamic terrorism as ‘the issue’ but I was way, way too optimistic on the march of technology on one hand and missed the behavioural stuff like once people have a mobile phone all arrangements become ad hoc… and if people are still ‘base station’-ing its because they’re using fat pipe for high bandwidth web use – if its just talk, that’s done on the move.

The classic cyberpunk crash is happening now, rather than a few years ago… the underclass never teched up, they’re still killing each other with iron-age analogues… the police never went ‘Tank Police’ in response…

Though the ‘monocycle’ I stole in turn from Venus Wars maybe on its way…

Seem* familiar?

I only shudder to think what’s next.

*Incidentally, the real loituma site is gone (the rancid.fi domain). Internet history is fleeting.

However, one can only listen to the back catalogue of Gamma Ray so many times and thus I have decided to turn to the Intarwubs. You there, intarwubs, tell me what good podcasts are out there – preferably music without talking – TED or Long Now Foundation, while excellent, are not what I am looking for.

Any and everything from Hayseed Dixie through some new Trance would be welcome. In particular, if someones got a line of where I could get Type O Negative – Cinnamon Girl (I have the 1min version from the Duke Nukem OST) that would be spiffy.

Also – I’ve decided to resharpen some of my sadly rusted guitar and piano skills – cause gee, not like I won’t have time. There’s a music room here with all sorts of stuff, which should provide entertainment – but if someones got a line on a good tab/score site that lets you download and print that would be good – so far its week five and no sign of any mail – not boding well for my ‘I can get books off Amazon’ plan…

The one very important point to keep in mind is that the metro system is *incredibly* hot – the carriages are air-conditioned and dump heat into badly ventilated tunnels. Even if the carriages are ok, the platforms are like an oven in the smaller stations and uncomfortable. If you can arrange your trip to just use the main stations (Grand central, Penn, Union Square etc.) you’ll be more comfortable.

I stayed in the Pod Hotel 230 E 51st Street which I found fantastic – the rooms are not big, but clean, comfortable and very central. I liked it a lot and it was good value. Here are reviews for other points of view. The Pod Hotel New York (230 E 51st Street, (212) 355-0300)

Right next door there is a delicious sushi-sashimi place (Tanaka’s, 222 E 51st St) but you may not want to come to America and eat Japanese…

Icons – you have to see the Chrysler Building and the Statue of Liberty. The Chrysler building is the best-looking of the Art Deco skyscrapers, better than the Empire State building. The Statue of Liberty is just the symbol of everything that’s great about the US. There is also a beach/themepark/aquarium out at Coney Island (just take the D, F trains out to the end) – its a fantastic beach, almost empty in case you want to be able to say you went swimming in New York :)

Museums – I would recommend the Natural History Museum on the West side of Central Park for a great collection of dionsaurs and other critters, then take a nice stroll through Central park to the Metropolitan museum on the East side. Highlights of the Met museum are the reassembled Egyptian Temple and the fantastic Roman relics.

Coffee shops – I went looking for the best coffee places in New York and according to the internet they are apparently:
Abraço – 86 East 7th Street,
Gimme Coffee – 228 Mott St
Ninth Street Espresso – 700 E 9th St

These are indeed good – I would recommend taking Abraco and Ninth St. Expresso as part of days shopping around the East village – it is definitely where I saw all the little fashion shops – between 5th Ave and Avenue A – and then down into the Lower East Side. There is one big vintage place called Screaming Mimi’s (382 Lafayette Street) that had lots of stuff. For other cafe’s and the like – “Bon Pain” is a good chain and there are a few of them.

So – a day for the museums, a day shopping in the East Village/Lower East Side, I went to Coney Island one day and spent another just walking around mid-town along Broadway – if you have more time, I am sure you will come up with other creative things to do.

Bars and Clubs, alas, I am less use because my cousin brought me around and apart from ‘there is a good bar somewhere around 23rd Street, 3rd Avenue’ I can’t remember any detail. Anyone care to add to this?

And in fairness, I have been present at spontaneous outbreaks of song at parties and I know what pubs to go to for a fairly high chance of by-locals-for-locals trad music in Sligo – but is it that simple? Is real Ireland the place where the traditions are the same as our grandparents time? Is it where the live music tradition has been turned into the band scene with everyone jammed into places like Whelans in Dublin or McGarrigles in Sligo?

I can see why it might be hard to tell whats really real when Irish pubs are sold in boxes so I throw it open to the floor – is there such a thing as ‘real Ireland’ or is whatevers there, be it Brazilians in Gort or superpubs a la globalisation, by definition real since thats what *is* there?