cyberspace junkyard

Classic. Furniture addicts will either laugh (or cry!) at this, from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Tragic Ikea packs 'em in
Ikea fever has proved fatal. Last week three men were killed in a stampede when the first Ikea store opened in Saudi Arabia. Reuters reports thousands of people camped overnight to be first inside.
It is a sad fact of modern global life that a shop selling boring Swedish furniture, endowed with ridiculous names like Klackbo and Billy, would provoke such insane fervour. The insatiable desire of humanity to acquire another Oddvar stool or Stromling dish drainer this year earned Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad the dubious title of world's richest man.
The Ikea SupaCenta at Moore Park trades its socks off, with 28,000 tragics braving traffic gridlock every weekend.
And for what? Shopping at Ikea is hell. Like a casino, there are no windows or clocks. There is one exit and it can only be reached by walking for hours in the designated Ikea direction through the Ikea maze of phony bedrooms and living rooms, with little pencils at strategic intervals so you can jot down gobbledygook attached to objects you desire, before being handed an Ikea map and ordered to retrieve your object "down the road". After hours lost in Zetland, you arrive at a vast hangar only to be told to "take a number". And that's before you even attempt to assemble the thing at home.
Ikea is an infuriating amalgam of Swedish socialist bureaucracy and rampant consumerism. All the form-filling and queuing is designed to send right-brained people mad. And with the southern hemisphere's largest Ikea store due to open in Homebush Bay in December we need to ask: How many Olafs does one city need?