Could your home be next?

Forget about lead in the drinking water. Or even the imminent plague of cicadas. IKEA infestations are reaching epidemic levels, reports the always insightful Onion. An excerpt:

“This epidemic of self-assembled, clean-lined modernist furniture is still largely contained to densely populated urban areas, but the danger exists that it will spread to other regions throughout America,” CIDC [(Center for Interior Design Control)] spokesman Chris Greeves said Tuesday. “At the rate it’s moving, our nation could suffer European levels of Scandinavian design within a decade.”

Greeves said IKEA is not easily controlled, as it spreads largely through word of mouth.

“It passes between rooms until it has infested not only your living room, but also your 1.5 bathrooms, your cleanly appointed kitchen, and then your entire sun-drenched, open-plan loft apartment. In the most extreme cases, it will even spread to the string-light-decorated rooftop patio overlooking your recently gentrified neighborhood.”

Heh. Are you a carrier? I can just see the opportunities: IKEA Walk (raise money to find a cure and save living rooms everywhere from this design-debilitating condition!), and ooh, can there be some sort of ribbon people can wear?

By way of disclaimer, this is all in good fun: I myself am guilty of spending inordinate amounts of time poring over the IKEA catalog. But I haven’t made a purchase. Yet.