Toaster
This is what Life is like as a Toaster.
I'm only telling you this in the hopes that you'll pass it on to my kids, let 'em know I cared for them, let 'em know I would have been there for them, had things... well you know. Had things turned out different. Or differently. I can't remember which usage is correct, now. Hell, I'm a toaster, I shouldn't be questioned about any grammatical choices I make.
The year was seven aught three, which, in human years made it about late nineteen ninety eight. A Friday. Punching out time. Which, for us toasters, is around 8am.
Wireless was coming, oh sure it was, but not to us, not to us toasters. Hell or high water'd come first, is what we were told. Or something to that effect. To be perfectly honest with you, I have trouble with those colloquialisms... or not colloquialisms, but, you know, almost proverbial sayings. "We were tethered to the counter by our power needs," they said. "Toast on the go?" they would ask, "What're you, crazy?" And us, not knowing any better, would think about that one for a bit, and invariably, gravely, we would answer, "No, we're not crazy."
Oh man, they thought that was funny, they always thought that was funny. HIGH-larious.
Well, my friend, maybe, I've got to tell you, maybe we were crazy. Crazy like boxes. You could go crazy in those boxes, let me tell you. Shoved away in a closet, sometimes your tray not even cleaned out. Man, I tell you, I heard stories about some toasters never having had that tray emptied simply because people didn't know it existed. How sick is that? Sick, sick stuff, my friend.
I started out hot that morning, and not in a punning sort of way, but I was jammin' like a... spammin', or something, I was on a roll, smoking the smushy rope, I was having a great morning. The house was quiet, and I worked best in those hushed mornings, before the rush, getting in my zone, just me, and, occasionally, the cockatoo they kept in the corner, if they had forgotten to put the sheet over its cage again, chirping away like a pretty darn happy bird, for one stuck in a cage.
I was flipping bread in and toast out, bagels and a couple of English muffins, lickety-split, nothing was stopping me. I even buttered one piece of bread before toasting it. And it was good, man, it was all good.
Sure, I was a little sticky after the pre-buttered toast (which it specifically warned against in the manual, but what did I care, I was young, I was free, I was damn brash), but I was loving it, feeling the toaster equivalent of the wind in my hair. Which is the heat in my coils, I suppose. I've never done enough soul searching to really figure out what my equivalent would be. That sort of thing usually just sits out there, between us, like an unmentioned pumpkin in the room. Sure, it might be awkward and orange, but no one mentions it, and no one feels the need to.
This, of course, is when I tried to get cutesey. Oh man, oh man. Make sure you tell the kids, now.
All right. Well, on the last bagel, a little piece broke off. Now, normally, you leave that stuff, you leave it behind, and move on to the next. "After all, that's what your crumb tray is for," my pops would say.
But did I? No, heck no. It was a chunk with blueberries in it... the most valuable kind... that stuff is a horrible sight to see burned... a real waste of a bagel's life, there.
I dove in with the nearest available implement... why didn't I look harder? Why couldn't I just let it go?
Well, let me tell you something, my buddy old pal. Don't go in there with a metal fork. Because even the best of us slip up. And you'll be regretting it when you have to get some guy (non-gender specific, of course) to tell your kids all the stuff you shoulda told 'em.
Summary
disclaimer:
This week we debut our new feature, just in time for... well, Christmas, I suppose.
Summarization!
In case you're too lazy to read the whole issue!
Wow!
Just scroll down past all that troublesome text (or bookmark http://www.sanemagazine.com/now.html#summary and just click that) and click on the Summary icon and/or link and you'll be treated to a handy dandy condensed version of the latest issue! Add water and you've got the regular issue and one slightly soggy computer monitor (WARNING: Do not actually attempt to add water to the summary unless you have printed it out first.)! Wow! Again!
So enjoy, and, umm, do all the other things you've always wanted to do, had Sane Magazine not been taking up your whole life.
No, no, don't thank us.
It's just our way of showing we care. A whole lot.
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