I got a new bed from Ikea over the weekend. This one has drawers underneath so I can “maximize my living space.” I am not so crazy about Ikea and whenever I go there a little piece of me dies. But it doesn’t die quietly. It is more like screaming and kicking with blood spurting and heads rolling and zombies tearing flesh off small children right on top of the gørtang table in beech veneer. It’s a collision of crying children, college students, arguing couples, Swedish meatballs in mysterious brown sauce, and couples making out in a corner. Dude, wtf is that about? Like the last place I want to make out is at IKEA. Listen, treat your lady right. At least go to Ethan Allan. I hear that is for classy broads.

Anyway, one cannot get a used bed on Craiglist. That is how you get bedbugs and herpes and razor blades in your apples, etc. So I got a new bed. It came in three thousand parts, three baggies of hardware, and a manual that was longer than anything I’ll ever write in my entire life. But hey! It’s only 37 easy steps! It took three hours and two people. (Thanks, JoMo.)

The thing about Ikea that pisses me off, other than the fact that it makes everyone in the world have the same crap made from Burmese rainforest trees, is the showroom situation. They have these “showrooms” that are named “Living in 500 square feet.” Oh the CHALLENGES OF LIVING IN A 500 SQUARE FOOT APARTMENT. Oh I can’t even imagine how awful it must be to live in 500 square feet. They smallest showroom they had was 275 square feet. Which is about 100 square feet more than my place. I was like, shit, maybe I should just move into Ikea. Then I discovered the ‘kitchen’ had no running water and the oven was made out of cardboard, ha ha ha, you lost Annie, once again. Your grand plans of world domination thwarted, once again, by Ikea. Damn you bastards, with your umlats and your A’s with the circle on top of it, like an angel. How fancy of you.

Anyway, the point is, hey, I have a new bed. It is kind of low to the ground though. Everything Ikea makes is kind of low to the ground, it makes them seem more ‘designy’ and “European.’ I need a walker to help me out of bed. However, it makes me look like a giant in my own apartment. That is nice, I guess.

I eat a lot of toast. I think I have mentioned this before, somewhere. I eat many pieces of toast a day. In the process of making and eating toast, I sometimes leave crumbs. I happen to be very conscientious about leaving crumbs, but toast is full of crumbs. In fact, it’s like crumbs stuck together and shaped into a piece of bread. So no matter how careful I am, I leave crumbs. Then I have to vacuum, etc. Sometimes I want to chase myself around my apartment with a vacuum cleaner while I eat toast.

So, what if I made some kind of bib out of sticky tape? Then all the crumbs fall and hit the tape. OH MY GOD I AM BRILLIANT. I WILL BE RICH DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT STEALING MY IDEA.

Then I was thinking how all my friends with pets always have lint rollers and complain about the hair situation. So why not make it easier by making some kind of overcoat or smock out of lint rollers? It’d be a lot easier than shaving your cat. Then when you leave the house, you can take it all off and ta da your clothes are pet hair free! Or you can make a lint roller outfit for your pet. I mean if pets can wear sweaters and hoodies the can certainly wear lint rollers. I should get the patent on this pronto.

Frank Gehry has a patent on the “fish shape.” Can you believe that? I didn’t until someone showed it to me on the U.S. Patent Office website. It seems ridiculous that one can own a patent on a shape. You’d think that fish would own the patent on that one. If I were a fish, I’d be pretty pissed. I’d get a patent on Frank Gehry-shaped things and then sue him for being shaped like Frank Gehry.

With the help of an anonymous architect, I have tricked out my chair. It is so tight and so pimp that every chair within a 300 mile radius is weeping from jealousy. They look at themselves and they wonder, why, baby Jesus, why can’t I be pimp? Am I forever damned to this life of mediocrity? Is there any hope?

Oh, but there is.

I have posted directions on how to turn your stupid, non-pimp, and non-tight chair into the Rick James of chairs (crack pipe not included). You can read about it on the Emeco blog, over here. But heed this warning: If you cannot handle the pimp, you should not even bother looking. I mean it. This chair is only for people who understand the power of pimp and can use it for good and not evil. Good meaning pimping and hustling. Evil meaning everything else.

And in other news: Last Known Settlers, my rock n’ roll band, has put up musical tunes for your enjoyment. You can check it out on MySpace because we don’t actually have a “real” website and Nathan would totally freak out right now if he knew, but shh don’t tell him. It’s our little secret. If you see Nathan please do not mention this to him.

I am going to Los Angeles in a few weeks to visit the family, i.e. get annoyed. I called my mother on Thanksgiving and told her I was going to spend it with a big group of friends, and she asked “Everyone you friend marry? Or are they….SINGLE?” Gasp! Choke! Sputter!

OH GOD NO NOT SINGLE PEOPLE!

Anyway I told her that we were all single and old and unhappy and we’d all sit around the table wiping our tears, and then after pumpkin pie the girls would have a contest to see whose ovaries were more barren. Clearly I’d be the winner. My womb looks just like the Gobi Desert, with camels and everything. She did not think this was funny. I kind of thought it was funny though. But I am one of those people who laughs really really hard at their own jokes. I am my own best friend.

But here is a fact: 41% of Americans 18 and older are unmarried/single.

This is a real fact. Not one of the fake ones you see on TV. Anyway it is almost like 90 million people. So for everyone out there who has to deal with a parent complaining about your barren womb stuffed with camels and scorpions and roving bands of nomads, fear not, my friend. You are in good company.

Last week’s Time Out New York had a special feature on “small spaces” and featured a few New Yorkers who have mastered their “small spaces” through their mad dezign skillz. And when you have mad dezign skillz, you get mad propz. Zo that iz what they gotz–the propz. So I thought, hrm, I live in a “small space” let me check out this issue and read and gain knowledge and perhaps learn a few ways I can improve my “small space” from these masters of the design universe.

THEY. ARE. TOTAL. CHEATERS.

They have apartments that are 350 square feet! 350! That is the Taj Mahal when you compare it to my 187 square foot compartment. Shit, if you give me a 350 square foot apartment I would be living it up. I’d have enough room for a bed, dresser, couch, table, and a boccie court. Please, 350? That is like having a whole other wing of a house. Excuse me, where is the kitchen, I couldn’t find it because YOUR APARTMENT IS SO CAVERNOUS AND SPACIOUS, OH DEAR IS THAT MY ECHO I HEAR! Echo! (echo) Echo! (echo) Oh, don’t be silly, this apartment isn’t THAT big. Also, the kitchen is in the west wing. Go down the hall, turn left, go down another hall, and then make your second right. That is where the kitchen is, right next to the sculpture garden. You can’t miss it. If you see the Alexander Calder, you’ve gone too far.

So I decide to keep reading because I like to make myself angry by seeing how “the other half” lives it up in the warm, gentle, soft lap of luxury. It turns out they are even BIGGER cheaters because they do not read or have books (except for like one person). They also have this strange device called closets, which I am not familiar with, but apparently it is an area just for clothes and shoes. Very foreign. (Actually I do have a closet, it is a folding/accordion type door in front of a breadbox.) These apartments also get natural light, which I’ve only heard about, but have yet to see, much like a unicorn. And then I think one had a futon, but I don’t remember. I find futons offensive. I am a grown up. I should sleep like a grown up.

I have submitted my apartment to “Extreme Makeover: Your Shitty Apartment Edition” contests because it’s so small, but it’s in fact SO SMALL you can’t really do anything with it. Other than curl up in a corner so your books have more room to sit there and collect dust. The greatest number of people that have ever been in my apartment was 7. Me, a friend, and 5 firefighters, and one broken carbon monoxide alarm. But that is a different story, though with the power of deduction you can figure it out. One firefighter asked how much I paid for rent right there on the spot. Then he laughed at me and set me on fire.

Sometimes I am in the mood for a soda and I think hey, I will drink a soda. Why not? I should “live a little.” But then I discovered Diet Coke Plus and I got very sad. Do you know about this? It is totally ridiculous. It’s Diet Coke PLUS vitamins. Look, I drink Diet Coke specifically because it does not have vitamins. I do not want my Diet Coke to be healthy. I want it to rot my teeth until they’re little nubs and I have to throw all my food in a blender to eat it or get the fancy titanium bone graft implants that my dad has (who interestingly enough, rarely drinks soda). I want my body to be filled with all that glorious high fructose corn syrup and caffeine and whatever MSG type crap they put in their “secret recipe” that makes Coke so MF flavorful and delicious. I want all of this, yes. Listen, Diet Coke, you are not fooling anyone. I know your little games. Coke will never be healthy unless you replace it with water and call it Coke. Just saying. I guess the idea is that someone will want a Coke and think, hey, why not get Coke with vitamins? Anyway, the moral of this sad, sad story is that you should take vitamins if you want vitamins and drink Coke if you want Coke. And never the two shall meet. OR I guess we can go the other way and add Coke to salad. Like if you’re going to eat vitamins, might as well eat corn syrup and caffeine. It is an idea. Diet Coke with Salad.

I have a new blog post up at Emeco. This time it’s an open letter to Philippe Starck. Also if you are Australian and you are an architect and you are part of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, then check out this week’s newsletter. I have written an open letter to all of you. I will post up the PDF’s here when I get them. This whole newsletter thing is very random. And since the first piece of hate mail I ever received was from an Australian architect, it makes it all the more awesome and strange at the sametime.

Thanks to everyone who came out to Pecha Kucha tonight. I understand that many were actually turned away at the door which totally sucks and I’m sorry. There’s nothing worse than dragging your shit out to rock, only to get totally denied from the rocking. Clearly people do not want you to rock. Listen, I have no control over this. If it were up to me everyone would rock. Rocking, in fact, would be some kind of requirement for just being a mammal.

I think the presentations went pretty well. I liked the dude from Snohetta because he seemed like a pretty jolly guy and also I like the idea that their employees get 5 weeks off and work 9 to 6, though I have a hard time believing that any office actually functions that way. I have a feeling that they “can” leave at 6 but never do. Kind of like how I “can” rob a bank, but I know I shouldn’t. I also liked the thing Israel (from 2×4) did with the t-shirts (though dude, Israel, you went way over the 400 second rule, you should be publicly flogged, but actually, there’s no such thing as private flogging is there? Flogging by nature is public so why do people always say public flogging? Whatever, English, you are vexing me again). There were about 800+ people there and it was so hot inside that I actually tried panting. I mean if it works for dogs, it could work for us right? Guess what, it doesn’t work, but I tried it so you don’t have to. So it’s confirmed. Panting doesn’t keep you cool. But you know what keeps you cool? MOVING AIR. Note to air: KEEP MOVING.

I was up till 5 this morning doing these slides–and there were three other people who took on a few slides themselves, so I’d like to give a shout-out to Marc, Lizzie, and John. Don’t ask me why I didn’t start making my slides last week, clearly I like to make my life really stupid. Basically up until the last minute I was frantically trying to figure out how I could make my slides as cheesy as possible, and believe it or not, it’s actually harder to make something look bad, than make it look good. Although I guess people make things that look bad all the time, but then again they think it looks good, but then if you really think about it, they probably worked really hard to make it look good to them, which is actually bad, so I guess people really do work hard to make things look bad, whether or not they think it looks good. Oh man I am tired. I think that makes sense in my head. It’ll make sense in your head too if you read it a few times or stay up long enough. Anyway, I am particularly fond of the slide with the cow that flew across and the ramen slide. Those are my two favorite. Though I also liked the one Marc made with the soldier that comes out and shoots hearts and the Egyptian pyramid one. When I first saw that I laughed so hard. It was about midnight and things were still funny to me. But then things stopped getting funny around 4. Anyway I’m glad I did it and I appreciate all those that came out.

Please help me. My neighborhood smells very bad. It smells like feta cheese. It also smells like hot trash and pee and B.O. and also like room-temperature plain yogurt. Sometimes it smells like bacon. But mostly it smells like feta cheese and every time I walk out of my apartment I feel “totes nosh” and want to vomit in my own mouth. It turns out that the culprit is a tree. It is very large tree. It has bark and branches and green leaves just like a regular tree but it also has fruit that is filled with feta cheese. It is a feta tree. I know you thought that feta came from sheep, but actually it grows on trees, just like money. I keep thinking that at some point the fruit will all be gone, but the tree keeps making more feta. It wants to share it with the world, as if to say, “hello friend, please, have some fruit. It tastes salty and smells like socks.” It wants birds to take the feta fruit and carry it to faraway places where more feta trees can grow, but I can tell you right now the birds are looking at the feta fruit and they are like “You’re kidding right? We didn’t even eat this shit during the Depression.” I think it’s actually a ginko tree but my friend Brian is positive that it’s a sheep-eating feta tree. So if you have sheep, you will not want to walk it around my neighborhood. Just a little friendly warning. Leave the sheep at home.

Tomorrow night if you are in the fair City of New York, I will be giving a presentation at Pecha Kucha, which is kind of like Powerpoint karaoke. There will be 20 slides, 20 seconds each slide. The computer is set and I can’t control it. So basically if it’s boring, you will be spared. There will be extremely hip and potentially annoying and mostly pretentious designers and architects in attendance and you can look at the speaker list here. I’ll be talking about “Dear Architects.” I hope it’s funny. I haven’t written it yet.

“Dear Architects” appears in this month’s Abitare Magazine, an Italian/English magazine on art, architecture, interior design, and other industries that involve black clothing (including the black clothing industry itself). The cover story is about “daily life in Rem Koolhaas’ Bordeaux home.” The photo features a plump maid who I assume works for DJ Jazzy Rem Koolhaas. People tell me that his two personal assistants are called PARK’s, which stands for Personal Assistant Rem Koolhaas. Hahaha oh man I cannot make this shit up. So there’s PARK1 and PARK2, and I have a feeling that’s part of their email addresses too. I would also like to have a personal assistant, but the only person I can afford is myself, which defeats the entire purpose of having one.

Anyway, “Dear Architects” appears in the special “The Reader” pullout section and the letter is translated into Italian, alongside the English version. It came out a few days ago, which explains why I received a piece of Italian hate mail the other day. I got it, and I was like cool! It’s in Italian! I wonder what it says? Then I Babelfished it and it was all very confusing and a total mess, so I had Chris translate and once he got to the word “imbecile” I figured out pretty quickly that it was in fact, a letter of hate, and not one of love or even tepid acknowledgment. However, the writer did apologize for writing in Italian, which I thought was very polite. As if to say, “I HATE YOU, YOU ARE AN IMBECILE. P.S. Sorry for writing this hate mail in Italian so it’s harder for you to understand how much I hate you.” Touche, Italy. Well played.

The Emeco people invited me to dinner at Morimoto this evening. I will go, but I am vegetarian so the whole experience will be lost on me. But there’s always something vegetarian right? I can eat the napkins. Also, because I am very immature, I keep thinking of…

“IRON CHEF JAPANESE MASAHARU MORIMOTO!”
“Hai!”
“How do you think you fared today at Kitchen Stadium?”
“I think I did very well thank you.”
“And what about today’s secret ingredient?”
“At first I said to myself, mmm, uni…it’s so smooth in texture and so delicate. But then I started to cook, it all came together. Everything happened so fast!”
“Hahaha yes, time is always a factor here in Kitchen Stadium. Do you think you will win, Iron Chef Morimoto?”
“I am very confident, yes. I think I will win.”
“But you are facing a very tough challenger today.”
“Yes, but I am confident. I believe my dishes are the best.”
“Good luck, Iron Chef Morimoto!”
“Thank you.”

Then there are the judges:
“Normally… I do not like uni. It is always so…slimy. But I have to say, this is delicious! It is like…like a musical for my tongue! I love it!”

“I agree! The balance of flavors is so…well done. That must be why they call you Iron Chef!” tee hee hee

Now that I read it, I realize it’s MUCH funnier in my head. Trust me if you heard it in my head you’d bust a nut.

And honestly, my favorite is Iron Chef Chinese Chen Kenichi because he looks a little doughy and always looks insecure even though he is IRON CHEF. Then he’s like “Oh I just thought of recipes my father used to make.” I also like Iron Chef Sakai because he looks like a Japanese Tom Skerrit except skinnier. He also looks like a fox. I don’t know why. I wonder if the Iron Chefs get pissed that they have to wear satin chef outfits. That does not look like it breathes. They look like outcasts from the Pink Ladies or something.

After “Dear Architects” exploded in my face (I am still picking shrapnel out of my eyeballs, thank you), a chair design company called Emeco asked me to blog for them. I don’t really know anything about design. Seriously. I think finger puppets are good design because, uh, they are puppets that go on your finger. Like, oh sweet! Finger puppets! Here’s one that looks like a giraffe! Anyway Emeco didn’t seem to care. They basically asked me to make fun of them. So I said, uh, OK, yo momma so old she owes Jesus three dollars. And then they were like, uh no, not quite, why don’t you write about design? And I was like, oh ok. But yo momma really is old.

Emeco makes magical chairs from the FUTURE that are obviously handcrafted by aliens and unicorns, and a few are on display at MOMA and they are all sectioned off by a velvet rope and if you get too close someone yells at you. That’s how special these stupid chairs are. Anyway a new version of their site just launched, and you can peep it here. I’m under “collaborations” and the blog is called FH&CC. I’ll let you try and figure it out. I like that I am in the same category as Norman Foster and Phillipe Starck. That makes me laugh really hard. I mean really.