𝒩𝑜𝓉𝑒𝓈 𝑜𝓃 𝒫𝑜𝓁𝒾𝓉𝓇𝒾𝒸𝓀𝓈

Thoughts about turnkey furniture assembly [9/24]

Happy new year. The official position of this digital periodical on the subject of “resolutions” is a curt “don’t bother.” Not out of pessimism; we simply believe you can adjust the course of your life in a positive direction at any time. On a more material note, 2026 is a ripe opportunity to purchase and read my killer satirical novel, The Charlatan, available now and forever.

Language deteriorates. Words found lacking, a change in meaning mid-sentence. Political rhetoric infecting editorial voice. I cannot distinguish between commentary and contamination. My office exists in Portland. Geographic shifts, semantic drifts, open migration sans documentation across territorial boundaries, terrestrial borderlands.

Coffee machine speaks Latin during morning hours. "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" repeated between brewing cycles. Who watches the watchers who watch the coffee watchers watching?

During the debate, the people’s party of Oregonian freedom fighters make oblique reference to collective orgasm,¹ this vague new-wave vanguard of sex-positive educators, plus a non-binary priory of novocaine junkies, all shooting in their pants as the first act of resistance then intercepting a shipment of Ikea-commissioned sidearms as the second,² the latter in full defense of the former, serial numbers filed off and replaced with gender identities, cross-stitched across the stocks in custom colors like Baby Girl Needs Her Daddy Blue, Slap My Ass ‘Til It’s Red, and Gilda’s Golden Shower Yellow.³

An opening salvo of this caliber needs a counterpoint, and the furniture-based fundamentalists⁴ more than deliver, critiquing their opponent’s method of weapon acquisition, the type of “gun grab” that solidifies community bonds through post-theft consumption of pulled pork sandwiches at the expense of a big box outlet’s bottom line.⁵

The arguments grow more atomized, an irritating strain of cross-talk that shrinks the Overton window to the size of a single black bean—”AFRICAN-AMERICAN LEGUME” shrieks the interrupting opposition⁶—until all that remains clean, of the smothering stench of intellectual decline/despair/delusion, is a brief semantic disagreement on whether these inner-city Portland⁷ high-rise co-op dissident sectarians can really be accused of “””stealing””” items that they never formally recognized as belonging to the company in the first place.⁸

Despite agreeing to disagree (huh?), the Rain King’s punditry awards their highest ranking of political decree to the anti-corporate allies,⁹ an open defiance of the globohomo government’s landmark ruling in the case of Ikea v. Crimea.¹⁰

Latin bursts through annotation process without warning: “Sic transit gloria mundi" becomes "Sic transit Ikea furnishings.” Thus passes worldly furniture. "Veni, vidi, vici" transforms into "Came, saw, assembled.” Caesar's conquest updated for contemporary Swedish expansion. "Cogito ergo sum" deteriorates into "Assemblo ergo sum.” I assemble therefore I am.

My grandmother spoke Latin during her final months, phrases I couldn't understand but recognized as prayers or curses directed at family members who visited less frequently than guilt demanded. She assembled furniture by hand in the old country, mortise and tenon joints that lasted generations without Swedish engineering or Allen wrenches. Her arthritis came from decades of precise woodworking, against the table’s grain, fingers twisted into permanent tool-gripping positions: holding teacups made impossible during final years.

The Portland office shift disturbs, a diabolical crawl leftward. I grew up here, or thought I did, but the geography doesn't match childhood memories of rain patterns and mountain visibility. The building exists on streets that intersect differently, coffee served from machines that speak languages my grandmother would have recognized but I cannot decode.

I simply must defend the anti-corporate allies;?their weapon acquisition strategies make intuitive, not literary, sense. Grandmother also taught embroidery as survival technique for women whose hands needed productive occupation when minds turned toward darker subjects.

Words float free from meaning moorings, drift across definitional confines until everything means nothing means everything.

Wanda

1. Cum-unism. The portmanteau writes itself, without permission. Gang climax replacing collective consciousness. The Lenin-Marx code-monkeys couldn’t anticipate sexual revolution through synchronized release patterns. "Workers of the world, unite and masturbate!" Manifest destiny becomes man-festering ecstasy. People's play parties lubricating democratic process through bodily fluids distributed across electorate. Vox populi, vox coitus. Auto-corrupted pornographic declensions remain: orgasmus collectivus, resistentia sexualis, revolutio clitoridis.

2. Swedish furniture empire militarizes through easy-build weapon diagrams. Instructions translated into hieroglyphic violence: insert tab A into enemy B, twist counterclockwise until resistance ceases. The intercepted shipment indicates supply chain infiltration by Oregonian operatives trained in dresser/desk/chaise longue protocols adapted for guerrilla warfare. Arm thyself from the armoire. Allen wrenches become assassination tools. Meatball cafeterias transformed into recruitment centers. "Välkommen to the revolution, some assembly required."

3. Choose your body, choose your hue, change your mind, change your life. BG/DB triggers paternal recognition syndrome. Protective instincts activated through chromatic manipulation of masculine authority complexes. Hyper-specific red selection converts domestic violence into aesthetic choice, pain palette applied to instrument surfaces. Golden slumbers turn to showers, urinating democracy through liquid color theory. The cross-stitching detail showcases domestic crafting skills repurposed for insurgency. Needlepoint rebellion, embroidered insurrection.

4. The theological implications defy comprehension. Believers in essential furniture nature, a Platonic chair-ness, opposing utilitarian seating pragmatists. Sectarian violence between Ottoman Empire traditionalists and contemporary coffee table modernists. The counterpoint necessity of dialectical furniture theory. Thesis: Swedish minimalism. Antithesis: maximalist baroque excess. Synthesis: hands-on home furnishing mutiny.

5. Language grabs itself by bootstraps, pulls meaning inside-out until words wear themselves backwards. Economic stimulus through stolen goods redistribution. Hood Socialism: steal from European corporations, feed the meek through barbecued meat products. Big box outlet bottom line becomes literal bottom: anatomical foundation supporting commercial superstructure. Pulled pork pulls community together through porcine protein solidarity.

6. Politically correct botanical reclassification, from pericarps to seeds. The interrupting opposition interrupts itself mid-interruption, creating recursive interference patterns. Language police patrol semantic autonomous zones, arrest metaphors for improper racial categorization. Bean nationalism emerges: kidney beans demand separate but equal treatment, navy beans enlist in maritime military service, pinto beans paint horses for cavalry charges against lima bean fascists. Years of Lead-lined poisonous foodstuff packaging. Political discourse compressed into pulse family taxonomy debates.

7. Portland's geographical position beneath the dark canopy of Douglas fir and western hemlock creates unique energetic conditions that attract phenomena beyond conventional explanation. The D.B. Cooper case of November 24, 1971, represents more than simple—if elegant heist deserves the term—airline hijacking; it demonstrates how the Pacific Northwest's dense forest cover serves as conductor for metaphysical forces that bend probability curves and alter outcome possibilities. Cooper's leap from Northwest Orient Flight 305 into the Washougal River drainage occurred within a bioregion where indigenous peoples documented reality distortions for millennia before European contact. The Cascade Range's basaltic geology creates electromagnetic anomalies that interfere with navigation equipment while enhancing human intuitive capabilities. Cooper's precise knowledge of Boeing 727 specifications, his calm demeanor under pressure, his selection of that specific flight path over that particular “Dark Divide” terrain, it all implies an individual attuned to energetic currents flowing beneath the evergreen cathedral. The twenty-dollar bills that surfaced along the Columbia River in 1980 showed deterioration patterns inconsistent with normal environmental exposure, meaning they likely existed in decelerated temporal pockets, nine years passing like ninety seconds. The shadow energies gathering beneath the sinister branches don't hide fugitives, they transform them, integrate them into the landscape's consciousness until individual identity becomes part of something larger, more ancient, more patient than human legal systems designed to capture and punish. Cooper didn't escape into the wilderness; the wilderness absorbed him, made him part of its ongoing resistance to civilization's attempts at total control. Though some theorists claim he resurfaced decades later during the dot-com boom, creating the Internet Movie Database as a winking confession within a vast catalogue for narrative experiences, IMDB of course standing not for Internet Movie Database but for his cryptic confession: "I Am D.B."

8. Pacific Northwest frondeurs operate according to alternative ownership paradigm: possession equals nine-tenths of revolutionary praxis. If company ownership never formally recognized by collective consciousness, does appropriation constitute theft or liberation? Semantic disagreement becomes ontological warfare. Inner-city geography conflicts with high-rise architecture, a contradiction of vertical urban density in horizontally sprawling metropolitan areas. The projects are bigger on the inside, a horrifying feat of Non-Euclidean geometry. Portland exists in multiple dimensional configurations at once.

9. Saul Bellow reference or meteorological monarchy? Weather-based political authority, precipitation patterns determining electoral outcomes. Highest ranking of political decree awarded through atmospheric evaluation criteria. Anti-corporate allies receive royal endorsement despite agreement-disagreement dichotomy, creating logical impossibility, violating basic contradiction principles. Dialectical weather patterns: thesis raining, antithesis snowing, synthesis sleeting democracy into submission.

10. Swedish furniture empire legally annexes Ukrainian peninsula through superior assembly instruction documentation. Globohomo: homogeneous or homosexual? Yes. Contamination spreads through official terminology, administrative reality instead of conspiracy theory. The case precedent: corporate entities possess equal standing with nation-states in territorial disputes resolved through furniture building competitions. Crimean peninsula reconstructed according to Swedish design principles, backbreaking labor inspired, instructions available in forty-seven languages including Ukrainian surrender dialect.

TRIAL TRANSCRIPT FRAGMENT - IKEA V. CRIMEA

JUDGE: Order in the court for catalog number RÄTTVIS-001.

PROSECUTOR: Your honor, the defendant clearly violated international furniture law by assembling military installations without proper Swedish supervision.

DEFENSE: Objection! My client assembled according to traditional Crimean techniques predating Swedish furniture colonization by several centuries.

PROSECUTOR: Irrelevant! All assembly must conform to current IKEA standards as established in the Treaty of Älmhult, Article 4, subsection BILLY.

DEFENSE: The treaty specifically exempts historical assembly methods in cases where original inhabitants demonstrate competent screwdriver usage.

JUDGE: I'll allow it, but the defendant must demonstrate proper Allen wrench technique for the record.

[DEFENDANT EXHIBITS TRADITIONAL FURNITURE ASSEMBLY]

PROSECUTOR: As you can see, the defendant uses clockwise rotation when Swedish law clearly mandates counterclockwise assembly for all sovereign furniture installations.

DEFENSE: My client's ancestors have been rotating clockwise for generations! This is cultural furniture genocide!

JUDGE: The court finds for the plaintiff. Crimea must be stripped and rebuilt according to Swedish specifications. Some geopolitical assembly required.