<!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:”Cambria Math”; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:1; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:”"; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”,”serif”; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {mso-style-unhide:no; color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; color:purple; mso-themecolor:followedhyperlink; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –> Ladies and gentlemen, students, faculty members, and distinguished guests, I am here today to warn you of a growing threat. An evil that has infiltrated our homes and sits dormant on our kitchen counters. I speak, of course, of zombie toasters.
Wait! I see the smirks, I hear the laughter. But how many of you with your fine homes and your latest gadgets, your digital this and electronic that, how many of you can honestly say you can reliably get a simple piece of toast the way you like it. Ha! I thought so.
Perhaps you’ve had this experience. Your old toaster, which always made the toast a bit too dark, has begun burning every piece of bread you put in it. You make a decision that its time has come and with complete optimism you chuck it away and purchase a shiny futuristic looking new model with temperature control and humidity sensors and other exciting features guaranteed to make you the most sublime piece of toast you can imagine. You get it home and make your toast and you figure out the exact setting that will produce the golden brown lovliness you’ve been dreaming of…
And six months later you’re either eating burnt toast every morning or else the blasted thing has failed catastrophically and you’ve decided to go lower tech this time and purchased a cheap pop-up two slicer, which also fails to live up to your expectations.
This is the tragedy of the zombie toaster virus. No toaster anywhere in the world is immune. My research indicates that 55% of toasters are infected either at the factory or some time before their purchase by consumers. An additional 43% are infected within the first 10 days of their purchase, due to their being placed in the same spot on the counter as a previous toaster which had the virus. Only 2% of toasters can be said to perform in such a way as to place them beyond suspicion.
Further research is of course required to isolate the cause of the virus and to come up with some way of fighting it once it takes hold in a given toaster. Until that point I have developed a short list of things that you can do to try and extend the life of your toaster, assuming of course you can find an uninfected toaster in the first place:
1. I suggest you keep your toaster in a room seperate from all other appliances, that you make certain no other toaster has ever occupied the space you reserve for your new toaster and that the outlet into which you plus your new toaster is a pure outlet which has not served any previous toaster.
2. I suggest further that you only make toast immediately after having showered and that you have a seperate loaf of bread in the freezer just for toast, so that any sandwich-making activities remain completely seperate.
3. I suggest that once you have made the toast you leave the room immediately and keep the door closed at all times. Remember, other appliances may be carriers.
4. Do not for any reason bring your cellphone into the same room as your toaster. I am working on a hypothesis that the same virus that drains cellphone batteries before their time may be behind the zombie toaster phenomenon.
The threat of the zombie toaster virus is real, and it is growing. We must find a way to turn the tide before the story of a perfectly toasted piece of bread becomes but a fable we tell our children. For their sake, and for our own, we must combat this evil.