Ingmar is Laughing At You
(c) David Volk 2002

Ingmar is laughing at you.

And so is all of Sweden.

Of course, I didn't realize all this until I went to Ikea last weekend in search of a desk armoire and noticed the weird-ass names the company has given to each piece of furniture it sells. There's a swivel chair called "direktor," a diskette storage container called "diskett," a computer work station called "effektiv"(oh puh-lease) and a set of table legs called "Curry."

How wrong is that? Anyone who has ever been to an Indian restaurant knows that you don't put curry under the table, you put it on the table.

There's even a computer desk called a "jerker."

Which, if you have carpal tunnel syndrome, may lead you to believe the desk had been oddly appropriately named, even though the name is supposed to be Swedish.

And that's exactly my point.

I think they're making it up.

Not only do I not think Ingmar is Swedish, I don't even think his name is Ingmar. In fact, I think his name something more American like Bob, Bill or Heinrich and that he and a bunch of his buddies went out, got rip-snorting drunk one night, happened to turn on the TV to the muppet show and heard the "Swedish Chef." They were so giddy with the besotted silliness of it all that they ran around the house giving everything fake Swedish names.

I can just hear it now.

"Oh, look, Lars," the head drunk said to his newly-renamed friend (formerly known as Larry) as he pointed to a lamp, "There's a luza. That's a yinga hunga (chair) there, a venze vonzi (sink) here and a fjork (fork, go figure) all the way over there."

It's just another blatant attempt to appeal to our belief that if it's European, it's got to be better even if the store only specializes in mostly cheap starter furniture. Granted, people might not be willing to shell out $100 for a modular bookshelf at Home Depot, but they will if it's got a couple of coats of varnish on it, it looks vaguely foreign and it has a funky name they can't pronounce which, if it really was a Swedish word, would probably translate into some preposterous phrase such as: "My Aunt's Testicles."

If you ask me, it's the Fruzen Gladje situation all over again.

If you don't remember it, Fruzen Gladje was one of the first gourmet ice creams to hit the grocery store shelves in the early 80s. It sold because it was different, its name was vaguely Swedish and it tasted okay. I don't know why this is, by the way, but I've noticed that Americans are all too willing to shell out extra cash for something European as long as it doesn't taste patently bad. If it just tastes okay, I guess they must figure, well, the taste is just so-so, but at least it's better than the stuff we get here in America.

Interestingly, a weekly newsmagazine story on the invasion of designer ice creams translated the vaguely Scandinavian name of the ice cream. Want to know what it means?

Absolutely nothing. The company made it up.

That reminds me of something the great sage P.T. Barnum once said. Yep, there's a sucker born every minute.

It also makes me think of a quote from Cloris Leachman on the "Phylis" show.

"It reminds me of something my Swedish Grandmother told me when she was dying: 'Venze vonzi smurde borg de snufze de megaborf."

Upon hearing the comment, another character on the show asked her what it meant.

Her reply?

"I don't know. I don't speak Swedish."

I'm outta here.