IKEA monkey interrupts shopping frenzy
Knock knock. Who’s there? Monkey. Monkey who? Monkey who went to IKEA.
No, that’s no joke. Far from it (although, reassembled, it could be a Haiku, which, thanks to the public education system, is what I was taught is an Eskimo limerick. As opposed to an ice cream sandwich, which is an Eskimo Pie. Mmmm. Pie. Wait. Can we still use the word “Eskimo” or is that no longer culturally sensitive, like the term “fatty” or “stewardess” or “Mongolian?” Oy. This world. Am I right? Anyhoo. Where were we? Oh, yeah. Monkey in IKEA. Please, continue).
Because while it may seem as though Santa (a.k.a. North Pole Jesus) has shown up a little early to deliver an entire bagful of awesome on the world in which we live (a.k.a. suburban Toronto) in the form of a tiny, well-dressed monkey (a.k.a. a tiny, welldressed monkey — like there’s a better description?), it isn’t.
It is the opening salvo on something far less awe- some, something entirely unholy and something so insidious that it threatens to use its tiny little hairy macaque hands to strangle something we all (OK, 32 per cent, give or take) hold dear.
It’s the beginning of this year’s Confrontation Over Christmastime ™ (that angry loofah guy over at Fox has dibs on the whole War On … thing, which he may have sold the northern rights to, but my cable box doesn’t get channel 473 ¾ so I don’t know if those crazy Canuck kids in their tevee clubhouse are making use of it).
And, this season, it arrived in wee primate form, wearing a pretty sharp coat, wandering the parking lot of a department store filled with all of those who were celebrating the season the way it was meant to be: spending credit they don’t have in order to purchase wobbly, wooden crap from Norway or Denmark or wherever that dark cold place is that thinks dumpy, rumpled journalists make great literary protagonists and prefers its meat served only in ball form. Could it be more obvious? It was a herpetic, jacketclad Trojan monkey (a good reminder that the only thing that’s 100 per cent safe and effective is abstinence, kids) that escaped and caused a kerfuffle, taking all of those shoppers’ eyeses off the prizes, leaving the tills less ringing, leaving the store less crowded, the carts less filled with unassembled cheer.
And its name? What was the name of this stylish midget simian? Darwin. Darwin! Need you be reminded that this is also the surname of the man behind the theory of evolution, which posits that we are not, in fact, divine creations, but rather the accidental offspring of, yes, unprotected (no coat, no Trojan) monkey coupling?
It’s as if the perpetrators, the instigators of this attack on the holy, holly holiday whoever they are — Jews, Buddhists, The Gays, The French, The French Gays, Swiss, etc. — wanted us to know what they were up to, that the Wa ... er, Confrontation was, as they say, truly on. They’re laughing at us. They’re taunting us. They’re flinging it in our faces like, well, feces.
The only thing that would have made it more apparent and egregious is if this rhesus Darwin was carrying a purse, wearing heels and trolling the IKEA ballpit for unattended children to whom he could teach recycling.
And these poor witnesses, these innocent folks such as the much-interviewed and rather comely Bronwyn Page (psst: call me ...) were the first victims of COC 2012 (as opposed to Corrosion of Conformity 2012, which is currently rocking the hell out of the West Coast! Whoo!). They were initial collateral damage in an effort to turn the best time of the year into a Christless, nativity sceneless, treeless, presentless, funless orgy of seculatarianism (fun fact: that is also the name of the very first American Triple Crown-winner).
From there, well, the liberal and Jewish-run media ran with it and then it’s all anyone was talking or tweeting about (Rupert Murdoch somehow uncovered the plot, but not at all through any sort of malfeasance or anything — just great, solid, um, newsgathering).
The focus was no longer on the consumerism that wraps up the holiday and makes it bigger and better — like bacon on a tenderloin — but on things that don’t matter, on trifles and piffles that distract us from the things that really matter, such as heavily discounted trifles and piffles.
And the assault continued. The one front became many. From there, it was easier to take our attention from the task at hand, as they — the enemy they — produced and bedazzled us with a great number of unXmassy shiny objects this week that weren’t actually shiny objects.
From the godless, Arab Muslim President Obama (it’s not intolerant if you’re merely uninformed and/or stupid), we’ve been hearing a lot about some guy named Fiscal Clifford and something about his dangerous driving (probably a Smart car, which is a known gateway to socialist public transit).
From the sewer of depravity that is the music industry, we get a live, televised concert of such pointless excess (filmed in the real Fuhrerbunker, and not that one for tourists), made further insulting and unnatural by the reanimation of the long dead, whose zombie performances (Kurt Cobain’s ghastly lifeless face as he reunited with his Nirvana mates haunts me still) raised money for the denizens of New Jersey and the rotting Big Apple, so they could get more heroin reefers and crack needles, probably.
And from Hollywood, an endless barrage of filth in the form of films vying to please the only God to which they bow, Oscar (Oscar DeBarge, he’s some kind of pagan saint of agents), including moving pictures about angry black people (Les Miserables, I think) and mystical wizards and dwarfs (Tom Cruise in Jack Reaper). And that’s not even, with propriety in mind, mentioning the flashing of actress junk all over the computernet in recent days (entirely irrelevant fun fact: Anne Hathaway voiced a character named Red Puckett in the film Hoodwinked!).
So it was, that on those things we focused, on those things we spent what should be Christmastime (official beginning date: Nov. 31) obsessing, rather than filling our carts and cash registers, and edging away that depression with more debt and imbibable novocaine.
Now, it actually is almost Christmas.
We’ll have nothing but that one day, that one precious day to share with family, friends and those we hold dear, without being able to make their eyes light up with the expensive baubles and trinkets and myrrh (available for PS3 and Wii). It will just be us and them, held only together by the emotional bonds we share and the love we have, relating to one another on an entirely real, human level and, should that be your thing, a spiritual one.
And why? Well, as with everything that’s wrong with this world, it all began with Darwin.
So. Did you hear the one about the monkey walking into an IKEA? Yes. Yes, you did. And that’s not funny at all.