Whiter Shades of Pale (32 page)

Eats 6,000 calories a day but does not gain weight.

Soft hands from eight-week vacation to Malta.

Most stylish jeans you’ve ever seen were just “grabbed” out of the closet.

The majority of things that white people put on their walls are easily explained: diplomas (“A degree in Eurasian studies
and
folklore? Impressive, kind of”), modern art (“This looks good next to your chair”), concert posters (“You saw that band before they got big; this poster pretty much proves that”), and personal photographs (“You went to Tibet twice?”). But there is a more puzzling piece of wall decoration that increasing numbers of white people are turning to: old maps.

You might think that white people like old maps because they are “vintage,” and while you would be right, there is more to the story. Unlike art, posters, and degrees, it is very difficult for a white person to pass judgment on a map.

“Eighteen eighty-three New England? What is this, 1996? It’s all about the St. Lawrence River this year.”

This alone makes an old map very desirable. But it goes even deeper than that.

You see, every white person is nostalgic for time periods they never lived in. This is because they are convinced that if they’d lived in these periods, they would have been far more exceptional people than they are today. It’s the same logic that Biff used in
Back to the Future Part II
, where he went back in time with a sports almanac and became superrich because he knew who to bet on. Though white people would prefer to believe that it is their intelligence
and personality that would have made them a fantastic playwright, Cold War spy, senator, abolitionist, or muckraking journalist.

White people will generally choose maps based on the following criteria: Have I lived there? Have I traveled there? Is it hilariously out of date?

The latter is especially appealing to anyone who finds humor in the existence of Prussia or the Ottoman Empire (and for some reason, white people often do).

But in the end, white people like reminders of the past because it always has a happy ending. Either they would have had a sweet life, or they would have had an oppressed life that worked itself out in a generation or two. Perhaps this is why so many white people pursue degrees in history.

If someone were to tell you that there was a large windowless store that provided an enormous amount of people with exactly the same mass-produced goods, you might think that they were describing some horrible Soviet-era furniture dispensary. In actuality, that store is IKEA and it is Swedish!

It is scientifically impossible to enter the home of a white person and not find at least one thing made by IKEA.

However, white people must be careful about how much they like IKEA. In fact, IKEA is a lot like taking cocaine recreationally: a lack of money in college only allows you to do it now and then, but when you start to get a little bit of money you have to work hard to fight the urge to let it take over your entire life.

When a white person receives a new IKEA catalog, they are first filled with a sense of elation as they think of replacing everything in their home to re-create the photographs of the beautifully lit European-style homes. To a white person a new IKEA catalog (or an extended trip to the website) is a bit like New Year’s Day, in that they both inspire resolutions that will never be kept. “I’m going to get organized” or “The reason that I don’t cook is because I hate my kitchen” are some popular ones.

But that joy quickly and inevitably turns to sadness as the white person realizes that all of their interior design hopes and dreams have been fabricated by a brilliant Swedish decorator. For many white people this process was sped up exponentially by that scene in
Fight Club
where Edward Norton realizes he has assembled the exact catalog. This is basically the white person equivalent of taking the red pill in
The Matrix
.

And yet still white people are unable to completely break free from this IKEA habit. They just learn to live with it, sort of like herpes. Currently the only people who are able to come close to breaking an IKEA addiction are those wealthy enough to shop at stores like Design Within Reach, or those with enough free time to cobble together a coherent living room from thousands of hours spent sifting through Craigslist and flea markets.

Outside the realm of furniture, IKEA also plays a very important role in determining the validity of a relationship between white people. When white people need to test if they can take their love any further as partners, they must take a trip to IKEA, where they will get into a fight. This is because all white couples get into fights at IKEA. It is currently unknown what causes the fights, though there is speculation that lingonberries trigger some sort of anger mechanism in the white brain.

In any case, if the white couple can survive the journey to IKEA then the relationship is strong enough for full domestic partnership.

In addition to providing you with cheap furniture, IKEA can also give you the perfect gift for a white person. Simply get them anything from the store and include a gift receipt. This is more personal than a gift certificate, and no white person will ever complain about having to go to IKEA to return their gift. They were headed there anyway.

Backpack has been to Thailand three times.

Heart is heavy with sadness over treatment of Aboriginals.