In the New Yorker...

[serious crayons]

The thought crossed my mind as I was reading it that the article is longer than it really needs to be.

Admittedly I still haven't finished it. But frankly, the article reads to me like she felt she needed some tension -- IKEA is a cult! Its founder is weird! They try to control their employees! They want to make everybody in the world the same, and their nefarious scheme to do that is tweaking their catalog displays depending on the country! -- and couldn't find more than a few little minor things, but milked them for all they were worth. So far, my takeaway is that IKEA makes cheap, reasonably attractive, environmentally questionable furniture that a lot of people seem to like. Which is approximately how I felt about the company going in.

Unless of course, there's some big reveal in the last fifth or so that I haven't reached yet.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Admittedly I still haven't finished it. But frankly, the article reads to me like she felt she needed some tension -- IKEA is a cult! Its founder is weird! They try to control their employees! They want to make everybody in the world the same, and their nefarious scheme to do that is tweaking their catalog displays depending on the country! -- and couldn't find more than a few little minor things, but milked them for all they were worth. So far, my takeaway is that IKEA makes cheap, reasonably attractive, environmentally questionable furniture that a lot of people seem to like. Which is approximately how I felt about the company going in.

It did seem a little "forced." On the other hand, it also seemed to me to take the usual New Yorker attitude to Europeans: "See the amusing foreigners? Aren't they so quaintly ... amusing?"

Unless of course, there's some big reveal in the last fifth or so that I haven't reached yet.

I won't spoil the ending for you. 

[Front-Ranger]

I just finished the 16-page article "The Fallout" by Evan Osnos in the October 17 issue. It's a very powerful story from beginning to end about the Japanese tsunami and ensuing nuclear disaster.

[Jeff Wrangler]

I'm in the middle of the Taylor Swift bio now. 

I finished that article over lunch today. It was interesting, but I found it kind of creepy, too. I'm not sure why. 

Maybe it's because teenage girls scare the liver 'n' lights out of me. 

[serious crayons]

Maybe it's because teenage girls scare the liver 'n' lights out of me. 

The wha' ...? 

I've always heard it as, "scare the living daylights out of me."

[Front-Ranger]

I finished that article over lunch today. It was interesting, but I found it kind of creepy, too. I'm not sure why. 

Maybe it's because teenage girls scare the liver 'n' lights out of me. 

hehe, I feel similarly Jeff, ever since those teenage (Tween age, actually) girls held me down in the church bathroom and made me inhale on a cigarette!!  

[Jeff Wrangler]

Goes to show how far behind I am, or, rather, that I have three issues going at once, but at lunch today I finished the Oct. 10 article about Art Pope in North Carolina. It was a very good, though scary and depressing, example of why social conservatives with lots of money are a danger to the country. 

[Front-Ranger]

Did you see the ad for "big ass fans" in the back of the latest issue? Double Brokeism!!! 

[serious crayons]

Just finished David Sedaris' piece in the Oct. 24th issue. Man, he has really gotten good at combining irreverent humor with deep but subtle poignancy. The last line is a killer.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Ordinarily I find Jon Lee Anderson's articles ponderous, tedious, and overly long, but I liked his story on the rise, history, and fall of Muammar Qaddafi (Nov. 7 issue).