I guess in a way, I was actually out and about, participating in the whole “Black Friday” thing, except that I was only out to show a really nifty store to a friend of mine (and buy a few rolls of their really yummy cookies while I was there), and we weren’t hunting for any Black Friday-related deals.

The store in question was Ikea, which has just recently opened in Orlando, and continues the tradition of Swedish ass kicking the store chain is so well known for.

So what happens when you combine the company of a good friend and a chance to spend a few hours strolling through the coolest home furnishings store on Earth with the insanity of Black Friday and the general asshattery of the average human being? Well, you get lots of good with lots of bad. Fortunately, Ikea didn’t bother kicking in with any bad stuff.

The Good

You might as well accuse me right now of being a shill for Ikea, and while I’ll laugh at you for it while I tell you “no, I just like their store,” I’ll still continue to gush like Old Faithful about the place. Anyway, behold, a list!

• The truck was frighteningly well-behaved. No weird noises, no failures to start right up (or threats to fail), no performance problems, no overheating (it ran suspiciously cool, actually), and it was a quiet, smooth ride thanks to some new tires I slapped on it a couple months ago.
• Ikea has added even more impressive furniture and other cool stuff to their lineup since I last saw one two years ago (specifically, when I sued Kevin Keithley in a Small Claims Court, in San Mateo County, California, for bouncing a $900 check he wrote to me, my mother and I headed out there to hold his bullshit-spewing feet to the fire in person, and we stopped in to tour that Ikea while we were there). A spiffy (and dirt cheap) floor lamp came home with me. They now make some amazing fake plants (they look incredibly real, right down to the “moist potting soil”), and their lighting department has added lots of new items to the lineup too.
• We got to laugh our asses off, repeatedly, at all the people in a rush to get to whatever stores they wanted. All the honking horns, all the middle fingers, all the aggressive driving, and all the accidents were quite entertaining. All fender-benders, with some annoyed, “why me?” soccer moms curbside babbling to overworked and uninterested police officers. One dumbass actually turned into oncoming traffic, and I found myself staring down a convertible headed straight at me (thankfully, we were both doing less than 20 miles per hour). The best part was how she looked at me with annoyance and incredulity, having already been honked at by the other guy she almost drove head-first into thanks to her error, as if I’d made the mistake.

The Bad

• Well, the traffic sucked, and the crowds sucked. That’s to be expected, but this year, even more than in past years, there really wasn’t that much out there worth being in a huge rush for. Most of the Black Friday specials this year completely sucked (great — those flat-screen high-def televisions are down to a thousand bucks now, woot! I can have a big shiny idiot box for a thousand bucks that I still can’t get a decent high-def signal into unless I drive the damned thing with a computer, not a cable box or satellite receiver), and there just weren’t many sales or specials. Ikea’s prices were pretty much standard-issue — their usual “seriously cheap” pricing is already really good.
• There’s just too much anger. Folks, you’re just spending your own money … there’s no point in being in such a fucking rush to go do it. If you see a huge off-ramp filled with traffic, waiting to turn, trying to race ahead of it and sneak in ahead of everybody just isn’t going to work, and lots of people are going to honk at you.
• The drive from Melbourne to Orlando is long and boring. Going with friends makes it much better (I used to go it alone on a monthly basis, and man that truly sucked), but it’s still an hour and a half (and that’s if you’re willing to piss away five bucks or more, round-trip, on the tolls) one way and you’re still surrounded by impatient assholes

I haven’t really done Ikea justice in this post, so I still just sound like a gushing fanboy. I’ll have to write up another, more detailed entry about them sometime soon. Maybe tomorrow

For now, g’night!