Red And Leathery

Yesterday the mail arrived and, as usual, it consisted of two pieces of "real" mail and about eight pounds of advertising, coupons and assorted unsolicited shit, at least some of which has to be carefully shredded in order to minimize the risk that some toothless meth user will steal my identity by rummaging in my trash. Mrs Bison set to flicking through a Macys brochure that seemed to be mostly dedicated to furniture, and she made the comment that we could probably do with a new bedroom set, one where all the pieces matched. Now for any normal bloke this phrase would be enough to drive a spike of fear through his heart. It raises the specter of entire weekends dragging round furniture stores looking at an endless succession of expensive, unappealing and, frankly, fucking shit furniture.

Fortunately Mrs Bison qualified her statement with the phrase "...but I can't be bothered to shop for one". Now that's what a wife should say. Good call - let's watch clips of Red Dwarf on YouTube instead. The spouse has a wonderfully high activation energy for shopping - she doesn't enjoy it, won't seek it out and doesn't use the spending of money as a fruitless compensation for a sad and empty existence. Lucky me - I'm convinced that whole legions of women have a homing device that draws them to Bed, Bath and Buggery or Linens and Shit on a weekend, and woe betide any poor bastard husband/boyfriend who gets caught in the tractor beam.

Of course, in the unlikely event that we had contemplated buying furniture (about as common an occurrance as me watching American Idol on TV) we would certainly not have been going to Macys. This goes back to an experience I had a couple of years ago when we went out to buy a three-piece suite for a room that we had not properly furnished in about a decade. After traipsing around the many and varied furniture stores of St.Louis (does the word "bland" mean anything to you?) we ended up at the local Famous store (which Macys recently bought). They had a leather three-piece suite which was light in color, soft, matt finish and very casual, unlike the darker one we already owned, so we ordered it.

The day before we went on vacation the new furniture showed up and it was, in almost every respect, entirely unlike what we saw in the store. It was dark burgundy, shiny, solid as a rock, and you kind of slid off if you tried to sit on it. So we attempted to return it. It's amazing how quickly the sales assistants go from being all "how can we help you, sir" to "why don't you just fuck off and die?" Sure they'd take it back if I paid a 20% restocking fee; I tried pointing out that the goods they supplied weren't what they had represented them to be, and all that, but I'd have had more luck talking to the fucking sofa. (I didn't call them useless fucking cunts once, which I thought was good of me, particularly since they were.) In the end I went to the store manager and he sorted it out, down to the last cent, but although I'll happily go back to the store, I would cut off my own foreskin before buying anything from their furniture department (assuming they even still have one).

We ended up buying some furniture for that room on impulse when Mrs Bison happened to stumle across something that looked good, and this, I believe, is the secret of successful furniture shopping: Don't Force It. It's rather like finding a spouse - you don't go out looking for one or you'll drive yourself up the fucking wall, as well as missing out on a lot of fun in the process. If you happen to meet one along the way then great. Of course if you want to find furniture you need to at least occasionally set foot in a furniture store; you won't get lucky in the grocery store. Similarly it's no good expecting to run across a wife if you spend all your free time in the titty bars. Unless, that is, you want to marry a stripper. In which case you need to be careful - you may find, like with furniture, that once you get it home it's not quite what it appeared to be in the store. It too will probably be harder, more slippery and a different color than what you thought you were getting.

Which makes me wonder - how do people do the mail-order bride thing? Now that's some seriously hard-to-return merchandise. At least the catalogue for that would be interesting to get in the mail...


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison