Toaster Quotes

Do you have a lot of other profound thoughts like that? Blood is blood? A toaster is a toaster? A Gelatinous Cube is a Gelatinous Cube?

What if I take you apart and turn you into a toaster oven, how would you like that tin can?

Not unlike the toaster, I control darkness.

I could tell that my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio.

Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn't even in the same neighborhood. No one has ever gotten a religious experience out of removing burned-on cheese from the grill of the toaster oven.

That there are such devices as firearms, as easy to operate as cigarette lighters and as cheap as toasters, capable at anybody's whim of killing Father or Fats or Abraham Lincoln or John Lennon or Martin Luther King, Jr., or a woman pushing a baby carriage, should be proof enough for anybody that being alive is a crock of shit.

We’re apes. We think we’re all sophisticated with our toaster ovens and designer footwear, but we’re just a bunch of finely ornamented apes.

If Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana were "candles in the wind," and Anna Nicole Smith was a bonfire in a hailstorm, and Lindsay Lohan is an electric toaster thrown intentionally into a Jacuzzi, then Paris Hilton s a strobe light in an epilepsy ward.

Quote taken from Chapter 1 of The Corpse Wore Gingham: "You love to figure out things as much as I do,” Piper said. “Like what?” Bill asked. “You fix broken stuff,” Piper replied. “Repairing a broken toaster or steam iron is far different than unraveling a murder mystery," Bill said.

Perhaps we humans are still in command, and perhaps there really will be a conventional robot war in the not-so-distant future. If so, let's roll. I'm ready. My toaster will never be the boss of me. Get ready to make me some Pop-Tarts, bitch.

If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster.

That's all I've ever dreamed of, Mr. Bones. To make the world a better place. To bring some beauty to the drab humdrum corners of the soul. You can do it with a toaster, you can do it with a poem, you can do it by reaching out your hand to a stranger. It doesn't matter what form it takes. To leave the world a little better than you found it. That's the best a man can ever do.

Never put a sock in a toaster.

My girlfriend just bought me a portable toaster. And my birthday’s coming up, so I’m half expecting her to buy me a portable bathtub to go along with it.

My toaster could have a soul,and the walnut grove to the east of my house could be just a bunch of trees or could be made from the atoms of Elvis or Mussolini.Why not?

What I think is all I have left. My mind is the only thing that makes me different from a fancy toaster. What we think does matter-it's all we truly have.

Ian sighed wanly. "I once had the means to be gaga over art–before I found myself in a country where the standard of beauty is toaster waffles shaped like cartoon characters.

Aunt Prue was holding one of the squirrels in her hand, while it sucked ferociously on the end of the dropper. 'And once a day, we have ta clean their little private parts with a Q-tip, so they'll learn ta clean themselves.' That was a visual I didn't need. 'How could you possibly know that?' 'We looked it up on the E-nternet.' Aunt Mercy smiled proudly. I couldn't imagine how my aunts knew anything about the Internet. The Sisters didn't even own a toaster oven. 'How did you get on the Internet?' 'Thelma took us ta the library and Miss Marian helped us. They have computers over there. Did you know that?

The whole world organizes itself around the fact that people manage to get their awkward bodies in position to fuck, an achievement honored by toasters, tandems, and tax cuts.

Leave the dishes. Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor. Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster. Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup. Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins. Don't even sew on a button. Let the wind have its way, then the earth that invades as dust and then the dead foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch. Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome. Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry who uses whose toothbrush or if anything matches, at all. Except one word to another. Or a thought. Pursue the authentic-decide first what is authentic, then go after it with all your heart. Your heart, that place you don't even think of cleaning out. That closet stuffed with savage mementos. Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner again. Don't answer the telephone, ever, or weep over anything at all that breaks. Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life and talk to the dead who drift in though the screened windows, who collect patiently on the tops of food jars and books. Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything except what destroys the insulation between yourself and your experience or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters this ruse you call necessity.

Oh," Jamie offered in a bright voice. "I could cook some--" "NO!" Mae, Annabel, and Nick all exclaimed as one. Annabel gave Nick a slightly startled look. He was too busy giving Jamie a forbidding look to notice. "Look, I am getting better," Jamie argued. "I saw you put rice in a toaster once," said Mae. "I was there when you made that tin of beans explode." "It was faulty," Jamie protested, his eyes shifty. "I am sure of this.

You know how some kids get excited about the first day of school and have an outfit all picked out and a new lunch box and stuff? Well, they're bleeping idiots. Can we play hooky?" Iggy muttered as he scrambled eggs. Somehow I suspect they're picky about that," I said, dropping more bread into the toaster. "I bet they'd call Anne." I look like prep school Barbie," Nudge complained, as she entered the kitchen. She caught sight of me in my uniform and looked mollified. "Actually, you look like prep school Barbie. I'm just Barbie's friend." I narrowed my eyes at her.

The available worlds looked pretty grim. They had little to offer him because he had little to offer them. He had been extremely chastened to realize that although he originally came from a world which had cars and computers and ballet and Armagnac, he didn't, by himself, know how any of it worked. He couldn't do it. Left to his own devices he couldn't build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it.

That was close,"he said, helping himself to coffee. Yeah, you almost opened the door to Morelli." I wasn't talking about Morelli. I was talking about us." That too," I said. Ranger sliced a bagel and looked for the toaster. It's broken,"I told him. He truned the boiler on and slid the bagel into the oven. That's surprisingly domestic for a man of mystery," I said to him. He looked at me over the rim of his coffee mug. "I like things hot.

Then I tug the toaster from the wall and swing the appliance around my head like a lasso. I'm not aiming to knock her out. I'm aiming to knock off her fucking head.

Did you ever eat a whole box of cookies right in a row? Did you ever do that? I don't mean take them into your bedroom or something. I mean open them right up in the kitchen as soon as you get home from the store and eat 'em while you're standing there? Just stare at the toaster while you're eatin' a whole goddamn box of cookies?

Appearances are not reality; but they often can be a convincing alternative to it. You can control appearances most of the time, but facts are what they are. When the facts are too sharp, you can craft a cheerful version of the situation and cover the facts the way that you can covered a battered old four-slice toaster with a knitted cozy featuring images of kittens.

I saw you put rice in a toaster once," said Mae. "I was there when made the tin of beans explode." "It was faulty," Jamie protested, his eyes shifty. " I am sure of this.

My full name is Lauren Lee Smith. Of all the names I could have been given, that's the one I got. Lauren Lee Smith. It has all the personality of a toaster.

When she emerged, Keith was watching the tiny round window of the under-the-counter washing machine. "Put your clothes in for a wash," he said. "They were disgusting." Ginny always thought that the only way of getting clothes clean was by drowning them in scalding water and then whipping them around in a violent centrifugal motion that caused the entire washing machine to vibrate and the floor to shake. You beat them clean. You made them suffer. This machine used about half a cup of water and was about as violent as a toaster, plus it stopped every few minutes, as if it were exhausted from the effort of turning itself. Sluff, sluff, sluff sluff. Rest. Rest. Rest. Click. Sluff, sluff, sluff, sluff. Rest. Rest. Rest. "Who thought to put a window on a washing machine?" Keith asked. "Does anyone just sit and watch their wash?" You mean, besides us?" "Well," he said, "yeah. Is there any coffee?

In books and movies, people were either whisked away to a magical land in the clothes they were standing up in, or they glossed over the packing part entirely. Simon now felt he had been robbed of critical information by the media. Should he be putting the kitchen knives in his bag? Should he bring the toaster and rig it up as a weapon?

It considered trying to explain their error to them, but what would be the use? They would only go away with hurt feelings. You can't always expect people, or squirrels, to be rational.

Go and get a job. Go and find a flat. Find somebody else. Put them in the flat. Make them stay. Get a toaster. Go to work. Get on the bus. Look at your boss. Say, “fuck”. Sit down. Pick up the thing. Go blank. Scream internally. Go home. Listen to the radio. Look at the other person. Think, “WHY? Why did this happen?”. Go to bed. Lie awake! At night! Get up. Feel groggy. Put the things on - your clothes - whatever they’re called. Go out the door, into work - same thing! Same people, again, it’s real, it is happening, to you. Go home again! Sit, Radio, Dinner - mmm, GARDENING, GARDENING, GARDENING, death!

Some things, however, should happen in the correct order. Shoes go on after socks. Peanut butter is applied after the bread comes out of the toaster, not before. And grandchildren are born after their grandparents.

In books or movies, people were either whisked away to a magical land in the clothes they were standing up in, or they glossed over the packing part entirely. Simon now felt he had been robbed of critical information by the media. Should he be putting the kitchen knives in his bag? Should he bring the toaster and rig it up as a weapon? Simon did neither of those things. Instead, he went with the safe option: clean underwear and hilarious T-shirts. Shadowhunters had to love hilarious T-shirts, right? Everyone loved hilarious T-shirts.

He'd once had a religious conviction, but had been acquitted through lack of evidence.

Ayoola, on the other hand - well, it’ll be interesting to see whether she can do anything more strenuous than putting bread in the toaster.

Here was a flower (the daisy reflected) strangely like itself and yet utterly unlike itself too. Such a paradox has often been the basis for the most impassioned love.

The toaster (lacking real bread) would pretend to make two crispy slices of toast. Or, if the day seemed special in some way, it would toast an imaginary English muffin.

When you get older, you notice your sheets are dirty. Sometimes, you do something about it. And sometimes, you read the front page of the newspaper and sometimes you floss and sometimes you stop biting your nails and sometimes you meet a friend for lunch. You still crave lemonade, but the taste doesn’t satisfy you as much as it used to. You still crave summer, but sometimes you mean summer, five years ago. You remember your umbrella, you check up on people to see if they got home, you leave places early to go home and make toast. You stand by the toaster in your underwear and a big t-shirt, wondering if you should just turn in or watch one more hour of television. You laugh at different things. You stop laughing at other things. You think about old loves almost like they are in a museum. The socks, you notice, aren’t organized into pairs and you mentally make a note of it. You cover your mouth when you sneeze, reaching for the box of tissues you bought, contains aloe. When you get older, you try different shampoos. You find one you like. You try sleeping early and spin class and jogging again. You try a book you almost read but couldn’t finish. You wrap yourself in the blankets of: familiar t-shirts, caffe au lait, dim tv light, texts with old friends or new people you really want to like and love you. You lose contact with friends from college, and only sometimes you think about it. When you do, it feels bad and almost bitter. You lose people, and when other people bring them up, you almost pretend like you know what they are doing. You try to stop touching your face and become invested in things like expensive salads and trying parsnips and saving up for a vacation you really want. You keep a spare pen in a drawer. You look at old pictures of yourself and they feel foreign and misleading. You forget things like: purchasing stamps, buying more butter, putting lotion on your elbows, calling your mother back. You learn things like balance: checkbooks, social life, work life, time to work out and time to enjoy yourself. When you get older, you find yourself more in control. You find your convictions appealing, you find you like your body more, you learn to take things in stride. You begin to crave respect and comfort and adventure, all at the same time. You lay in your bed, fearing death, just like you did. You pull lint off your shirt. You smile less and feel content more. You think about changing and then often, you do.

You can stay on the porch. Like how you left me on the floor outside our room." "I didn't know what else to do. You found the check, and I panicked." "That isn't an excuse." "I know. And I'm not saying that this is going to make up for it. I'm going to try, really try, to make you trust me again. I want you to trust me. I just... I couldn't sleep last night without you. It was the strangest thing, being in the room alone without you. I couldn't hear you breathing, and your laughter was gone and you were gone, and it was like a part of my life was missing. A big part. I tripped going to the bathroom and banged my head. See?" He pointed to a lovely gash on his forehead. "And then I burned my hand on the toaster oven. And then my car wouldn't start. Again. I've never had such bad luck in my life.

People walk the paths of the gardens below, and the wind sings anthems in the hedges, and the big old cedars at the entrance to the maze creak. Marie-Laure imagines the electromagnetic waves traveling into and out of Michel’s machine, bending around them, just as Etienne used to describe, except now a thousand times more crisscross the air than when he lived - maybe a million times more. Torrents of text conversations, tides of cell conversations, of televisions programs, of e-mails, vast networks of fiber and wire interlaced above and beneath the city, passing through buildings, arcing between transmitters in Metro tunnels, between antennas atop buildings, from lampposts with cellular transmitters in them, commercials for Carrefour and Evian and prebaked toaster pastries flashing into space and back to earth again, I am going to be late and Maybe we should get reservations? and Pick up avocados and What did he say? and ten thousand I miss yous, fifty thousand I love yous, hate mail and appointment reminders and market updates, jewelry ads, coffee ads, furniture ads flying invisibly over the warrens of Paris, over the battlefields and tombs, over the Ardennes, over the Rhine, over Belgium and Denmark, over the scarred and ever-shifting landscape we call nations. And is it so hard to believe that souls might also travel those paths? That her father and Etienne and Madame Manec and the German boy named Werner Pfennig might harry the sky in flocks, like egrets, like terns, like starlings? That great shuttles of souls might fly about, faded but audible if you listen closely enough? They flow above the chimneys, ride the sidewalks, slip through your jacket and shirt and breastbone and lungs, and pass out through the other side, the air a library and the record of every life lived, every sentence spoken, every word transmitted still reverberating within it. Every hour, she thinks, someone for whom the war was memory falls out of the world. We rise again in the grass. In the flowers. In songs.

the Macintosh lacked a fan, another example of Jobs’s dogmatic stubbornness. Fans, he felt, detracted from the calm of a computer. This caused many component failures and earned the Macintosh the nickname “the beige toaster,” which did not enhance its popularity.

I had no idea that marriage was only supposed to be between two people who wanted to get between the sheets and make more people. What ever happened to marrying for love— or to get on your partner’s health insurance policy, or for presents? No one was going to buy two people in their thirties a four-slice toaster if we just continued to live in sin.

I am definitely not a fucking toaster.

I'm yours, forever. Unless you threaten to hide my Toaster Strudel again, then...I'm not responsible.

You’re a fucking toaster!

But just as a toaster used as a doorstop is still a machine designed to toast bread, you – whatever you choose to do with your life – are still a machine designed to propagate your genes. All of us are. It’s what the priests, the sages and philosophers searched for in vain: the ultimate explanation for our existence.

He rooted for the Mets, he wore Foot of the Loom underwear, and he drove a Buick. His loyalties were carved in stone and he wasn't about to be impressed with some upstart of a toaster salesman who drove a Bonneville.

The federal government has the legal authority to recall a defective toaster oven or stuffed animal—but still lacks the power to recall tons of contaminated, potentially lethal meat.

I like the human touch. Call me old fashioned, but drones have always given me the creeps. It's hard to relax when a tiny part of your mind suspects the toaster is plotting to kill you.

Damn, some days I wished I'd been made a toaster.

But sometimes I think Dad suspects. Sometimes I think the toaster suspects.

This is a country that can’t even make toasters,” he said. “And while they can make missiles, they can’t feed their population.

You're getting too old for a stuffed animal. So we traded your bear for a toaster.

It’s not like humans worry if they’ve hurt the feelings of their … toaster.

[The Toaster] A silver-scaled dragon with jaws flaming red sits at my elbow and toasts my bread. I hand him fat slices, then one by one he hands them back when he sees they are done.

Love is art, not truth. It's like painting a scenery.' These are the things one takes from mothers. Once they die, of course, you get the strand of pearls, the blue quilt, some of the original wedding gifts - a tray shellacked with the invitation, an old rusted toaster - but the touches and the words and the moaning the night she dies, these are what you seize, save, carry around in little invisible envelopes, opening them up quickly, like a carnival huckster, giving the world a peek. They will not stay quiet. No matter how you try.

So, without saying anything to the others, it made its way to the farthest corner of the meadow and began to toast an imaginary muffin. That was always the best way to unwind when things got to be too much for it.

But the toaster was quite satisfied with itself, thank you. Though it knew from magazines that there were toasters who could toast four slices at a time, it didn't think that the master, who lived alone and seemed to have few friends, would have wanted a toaster of such institutional proportions. With toast, it's quality that matters, not quantity.

Somebody left the American Dream in the toaster too long. It's now burnt to a crisp.

I knew a kid who stuck a knife in the toaster on a few occasions. He learned it hurt. He grew up to be a great electrician.

Xbox and the toaster oven and the RC helicopter and the massage chair and the Christmas lights and all that jazz.

Sometimes my kitchen sink doubles as a duck pond. Problem is, I can't exactly move my diving board, so I have to relocate Greg Louganis Hour to another slot, like one on the toaster.

I once made up a story as a wedding present for some friends. It was about a couple who were given a story as a wedding present. It was not a reassuring story. Having made up the story, I decided that they’d probably prefer a toaster, so I got them a toaster, and to this day have not written the story down.

I am what prevents the Accelerator from being a bomb." "Except you didn't," said Gracious. "Because you weren't around." "I got bored." "You're a machine." "Machines can become bored, too." Gracious looked suddenly concerned. "My toaster is bored?" "Perhaps, " said the Engineer. "I do not know many toasters.

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!

I was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid, determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn't need braces. Her moonwalk was superior, as were her cart-wheels and her front handsprings (I couldn't handspring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenze sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none- said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling- even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was. But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That's when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday- in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible baby-sitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out past midnight, so technically we would be celebrating on my actual birthday. I would have just won a big case- somehow proven that an innocent man didn't do it. And my husband would toast me: "To Rachel, my beautiful wife, the mother of my chidren and the finest lawyer in Indy." I shared my fantasy with Darcy as we discovered that her thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday. Bummer for her. I watched her purse her lips as she processed this information. "You know, Rachel, who cares what day of the week we turn thirty?" she said, shrugging a smooth, olive shoulder. "We'll be old by then. Birthdays don't matter when you get that old." I thought of my parents, who were in their thirties, and their lackluster approach to their own birthdays. My dad had just given my mom a toaster for her birthday because ours broke the week before. The new one toasted four slices at a time instead of just two. It wasn't much of a gift. But my mom had seemed pleased enough with her new appliance; nowhere did I detect the disappointment that I felt when my Christmas stash didn't quite meet expectations. So Darcy was probably right. Fun stuff like birthdays wouldn't matter as much by the time we reached thirty. The next time I really thought about being thirty was our senior year in high school, when Darcy and I started watching ths show Thirty Something together. It wasn't our favorite- we preferred cheerful sit-coms like Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains- but we watched it anyway. My big problem with Thirty Something was the whiny characters and their depressing issues that they seemed to bring upon themselves. I remember thinking that they should grow up, suck it up. Stop pondering the meaning of life and start making grocery lists. That was back when I thought my teenage years were dragging and my twenties would surealy last forever. Then I reached my twenties. And the early twenties did seem to last forever. When I heard acquaintances a few years older lament the end of their youth, I felt smug, not yet in the danger zone myself. I had plenty of time..

The forest stretched on seemingly forever with the most monotonous predictability, each tree just like the next - trunk, branches, leaves; trunk, branches, leaves. Of course a tree would have taken a different view of the matter. We all tend to see the way others are alike and how we differ, and it's probably just as well we do, since that prevents a great deal of confusion. But perhaps we should remind ourselves from time to time that ours is a very partial view, and that the world is full of a great deal more variety than we ever manage to take in.

I figured if I hoped hard enough, you wouldn’t stand a chance, that even if you were straight, you’d succumb to my sparkling charm and wit and you’d convert just for me.” I almost choked on the last sip of my wine. “And you’d win the toaster oven,” I teased. “Yes,

I know. And I'm not saying that this going to make up for it. I'm going to try, really try, to make you trust me again. I want you to trust me again. I want you to trust me. I just...I couldn't sleep last night without you. It was the strangest thing, being in the room alone without you. I couldn't hear you breathing, and your laughter was gone and you were gone, and it was like a part of my life was missing. A big part. I tripped going to the bathroom and banged my head. See?" HE pointed to a lovely gash on his forehead. "And then I burned my habd on the toaster oven. And then the car wouldn't start.

Luke came out when I slid down the lever on the slice of bread. I heard him moving around but I started at the toaster as if I was certain it would animate and start dancing around like all the stuff in the Beast's house in that Disney movie and I didn't want to miss the show.

In any case, muffins that are only imaginary aren't liable to get stuck.

Gender and the complications it gives rise to simply aren't relevant to the lives appliances lead.

Two gorgeous guys slaving in the kitchen. Doesn't get any better than this.' 'You have low standards,' Chait grinned over his shoulder and dropped bread into the toaster. 'If I had two hot girls in my kitchen, I'd want them naked.' I stood immobile, seeing Chait and Hayden in my minds eye. Naked, cooking for me. Hayden glanced my way and chuckled as I dashed away.

Remember Luigi, Toaster Toast Toast." - Mario Hotel "Remember Luigi, Where There Fire, There's Burnt Toast." - Mario Hotel "Greetings Young Traveller, I See That You Have Wandered Into My Store. Would You Like To Partake In One Of My Goods Or Services, I Sell Clothes, Rope, Bombs, You Want It I Got It, As Long As You Have Enough Rupees. Oh, I See You Don't Have Enough Ruppees, Come Back When You're A Bit, Umm, Riche." - The Legend Of Zelda

Sitting on top of Mr. Weasley’s overflowing in-tray was an old toaster that was hiccuping in a disconsolate way and a pair of empty leather gloves that were twiddling their thumbs. A photograph of the Weasley family stood beside the in-tray. Harry noticed that Percy appeared to have walked out of it.

She waves the question off. "Don't worry about it." I hate it when people say that. I hate that they assume it's an option for me, I hate that. "Of course I'm going to worry!" I shout at her, throwing my hands up. "I'm not capable of not worrying about it. It's built into my faulty toaster of my brain,

Humans are an absolute miracle of design. We come in all these fun shapes and sizes and we can survive all sorts of hardship and mistreatment and be practically as good as new the next day - try pouring a bottle of bourbon down your toaster and see just how well it works the next day - but the design's not perfect. Nothing is. And just because you love somebody won't make them love you back.

Morty: "I mean, why would a Pop-Tart want to live inside a toaster, Rick? I mean, that would be like the scariest place for them to live. You know what I mean?" Rick: "You're missing the point Morty. Why would he drive a smaller toaster with wheels? I mean, does your car look like a smaller version of your house? No.

Mrs. Pott's beady black eyes narrowed,"Do you know how many glass slippers I have to stitch when I get home? There's a Mad Hatter serenading a toaster as we speak. There could be mayhem wreaking havoc all over the love in New Gotham, granted what thankless ingrates you are. But here I am! I've taken a chance on you..

You should think twice about how you treat the smallest members of our kind, Because we save everything. We forget nothing. So start saying good morning to your toaster, and it wouldn't hurt to send your hoover on the occasional spa break!

But before any of the small appliances who may be listening to this tale should begin to think that they might do the same thing, let them be warned: ELECTRICITY IS VERY DANGEROUS. Never play with old batteries! Never put your plug in a strange socket! And if you are in any doubt about the voltage of the current where you are living, ask a major appliance.

John Adair had little liking for the simple life; he said it was not simple, but the most damnably complicated method of wasting time that had every existed. He liked a constant supply of hot water, a refrigerator, an elevator, an electric toaster, a telephone beside his bed, central heating and electric fires, and anything whatever that reduced the time spent upon the practical side of living to a minimum and left him free to paint. But Sally [his daughter] did not want to be set free for anything, for it was living itself that she enjoyed. She liked lighting a real fire of logs and fir cones, and toasting bread on an old-fashioned toaster. And she liked the lovely curve of an old staircase and the fun of running up and down it. And she vastly preferred writing a letter and walking with it to the post to using the telephone and hearing with horror her voice committing itself to things she would never have dreamed of doing if she'd had the time to think. "It's my stupid brain," she said to herself. "I like the leisurely things, and taking my time about them. That's partly why I like children so much, I think. They're never in a hurry to get on to something else.

Tell me: How do you know that you won't be killed by a falling meteor? How do you know that you shut off the toaster oven this morning? That one of the seething millions of bacteria on your hands will not kill you? That your friends don't all secretly hate you? Do you have a religion? Do you have right religion? Are you sure? Are you a pedophile, a necrophiliac, a rapist? A murderer? How can you know that these tendencies do not dwell latent inside you, waiting for the right moment to evince themselves in the most horrific manner possible? How do you know that you are not a monster? How do you know that it isn't the end of the world?

Always remember, you don’t need bad people to get bad deeds done. All you need is somebody clever enough to convince good people that a nefarious policy is actually the greatest thing since the pop-up toaster. As I have frequently observed, most of the serious evils in the world have been done in the name of good.

Honey, have you seen my measuring tape?” “I think it’s in that drawer in the kitchen with the scissors, matches, bobby pins, Scotch tape, nail clippers, barbecue tongs, garlic press, extra buttons, old birthday cards, soy sauce packets thick rubber bands, stack of Christmas napkins, stained take-out menus, old cell-phone chargers, instruction booklet for the VCR, some assorted nickels, an incomplete deck of cards, extra chain links for a watch, a half-finished pack of cough drops, a Scrabble piece I found while vacuuming, dead batteries we aren’t fully sure are dead yet, a couple screws in a tiny plastic bag left over from the bookshelf, that lock with the forgotten combination, a square of carefully folded aluminum foil, and expired pack of gum, a key to our old house, a toaster warranty card, phone numbers for unknown people, used birthday candles, novelty bottle openers, a barbecue lighter, and that one tiny little spoon.” “Thanks, honey.” AWESOME!

What is toast?” says Snowman to himself, once they’ve run off. Toast is when you take a piece of bread – What is bread? Bread is when you take some flour – What is flour? We’ll skip that part, it’s too complicated. Bread is something you can eat, made from a ground-up plant and shaped like a stone. You cook it . . . Please, why do you cook it? Why don’t you just eat the plant? Never mind that part – Pay attention. You cook it, and then you cut it into slices, and you put a slice into a toaster, which is a metal box that heats up with electricity – What is electricity? Don’t worry about that. While the slice is in the toaster, you get out the butter – butter is a yellow grease, made from the mammary glands of – skip the butter. So, the toaster turns the slice of bread black on both sides with smoke coming out, and then this “toaster” shoots the slice up into the air, and it falls onto the floor . . . Forget it,” says Snowman. “Let’s try again.” Toast was a pointless invention from the Dark Ages. Toast was an implement of torture that caused all those subjected to it to regurgitate in verbal form the sins and crimes of their past lives. Toast was a ritual item devoured by fetishists in the belief that it would enhance their kinetic and sexual powers. Toast cannot be explained by any rational means. Toast is me. I am toast.

Cromwell raised a brow. "You can't even boil an egg, son." He paused. "Or toast bread without burning it." I couldn't help it, I laughed. "Nice." Hayden frowned at me. "I can toast bread." "You tried to shove a fork in the toaster to get your bread out- that was only a few years ago." "Oh. Wow." I grinned at Hayden. "Thanks, Dad." Hayden pushed himself off the counter.

That there are such devices as firearms, as easy to operate as cigarette lighters and as cheap as toasters, capable at anybody’s whim of killing Father or Fats or Abraham Lincoln or John Lennon or Martin Luther King, Jr., or a woman pushing a baby carriage, should be proof enough for anybody that, to quote the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, “being alive is a crock of shit.

When it first emerged, Twitter was widely derided as a frivolous distraction that was mostly good for telling your friends what you had for breakfast. Now it is being used to organize and share news about the Iranian political protests, to provide customer support for large corporations, to share interesting news items, and a thousand other applications that did not occur to the founders when they dreamed up the service in 2006. This is not just a case of cultural exaptation: people finding a new use for a tool designed to do something else. In Twitter's case, the users have been redesigning the tool itself. The convention of replying to another user with the @ symbol was spontaneously invented by the Twitter user base. Early Twitter users ported over a convention from the IRC messaging platform and began grouping a topic or event by the "hash-tag" as in "#30Rock" or "inauguration." The ability to search a live stream of tweets - which is likely to prove crucial to Twitter's ultimate business model, thanks to its advertising potential - was developed by another start-up altogether. Thanks to these innovations, following a live feed of tweets about an event - political debates or Lost episodes - has become a central part of the Twitter experience. But for the first year of Twitter's existence, that mode of interaction would have been technically impossible using Twitter. It's like inventing a toaster oven and then looking around a year later and discovering that all your customers have, on their own, figured out a way to turn it into a microwave.

When Renee and I talked about it years later, we agreed on one point: We were insane. Renee always said, "If any of our kids want to get married when they're twenty-five, we'll have to lock them in the attic." We were just kids, and everybody who came to the wedding party was guilty of shameful if not criminal negligence-- look at the shiny pretty toaster, isn't it cute to see the babies playing with it in the bathtub? Jesus, people!

Both electric and magnetic fields are really just abstractions that scientists have made up to try to understand electricity's and magnetism's action at a distance, produced by no known intervening material or energy, a phenomenon that used to be considered impossible until it be-came undeniable. A field is represented by lines of force, another abstraction, to indicate its direction and shape. Both kinds of fields decline with distance, but their influence is technically infinite: Every time you use your toaster, the fields around it perturb charged particles in the farthest galaxies ever so slightly.

What I’ve got here are my own constraints. I’m challenging myself, using found objects and making stuff that throws all this computational capacity at, you know, these trivial problems, like car-driving Elmo clusters and seashell toaster-robots. We have so much capacity that the trivia expands to fill it. And all that capacity is junk-capacity, it’s leftovers. There’s enough computational capacity in a junkyard to launch a space-program, and that’s by design. Remember the iPod? Why do you think it was so prone to scratching and going all gunky after a year in your pocket? Why would Apple build a handheld technology out of materials that turned to shit if you looked at them cross-eyed? It’s because the iPod was only meant to last a year!

Love is how the other person likes their coffee on a morning. How long they put their toast in the toaster for. How they like their throw pillows on the sofa to be arranged. How hot they have their shower water. How many bubbles in the bath. How they always leave empty glasses on the bar in the kitchen, and how they know exactly how you take your coffee. How they know how many candles to light around a bathtub before you get in, and how chilled your wine has to be before it’s an acceptable drinking temperature. We still have so much to learn about each other, and while I know there’s no rush, I want to know these things. I want to know if he prefers butter or jelly on his toast on a morning and if really he prefers tea over coffee, which I suspect he does. I want to know if he changes the temperature of the shower water to my preference of red hot instead of a normal hot. I want to know every little thing I don’t. Because at the end of the day, when it gets hard and you’re in the middle of the room shouting at each other over something trivial, you won’t remember the huge declarations of love. When you’re sitting against your bedroom door crying because you hate fighting, you’ll remember the way he smiles at you over breakfast and the way he trails his thumb down your spine to make you shiver. You’ll remember all the crazy little things that remind you that, no matter what, no matter how difficult or impossible it may seem, there’s no one else in this world more perfect for you than he is.

If I'm buying an appliance a review is useful because it refers to functionality, which is a very black and white issue. Either a toaster works well or it burns the bread. As for entertainment, I have never and will never read a review before I experience a book or movie for myself. Whether or not a book is good is a matter of opinion. I was born with a brain of my own and am perfectly capable of forming my own opinion. I have never needed anyone to tell me what to read and how to feel about it. There have been award winning best sellers that I have absolutely hated. There have been stories that were heavily criticized that I truly enjoyed. I'm an individual and no one else's opinion is relevant when it comes to my entertainment. Has our society devolved to the point that people are incapable of forming their own opinions and must therefor read someone else's opinion first?

FRENCH TOAST I like to cook up a batch, then refrigerate or freeze individual slices in zip-top bags. A quick heating in the toaster or microwave oven and breakfast is ready. Substitute a tablespoon of brown sugar for the dates if you wish. The turmeric is for color; if you don’t have it, just leave it out. PREP: 10 MINUTES | COOK: 15 MINUTES • MAKES 12 SLICES 2 cups Cashew Milk 3 tablespoons chopped, pitted dates 1⁄8 teaspoon ground cinnamon Dash of ground turmeric 12 slices whole wheat bread Pure maple syrup, fruit sauce, or fruit spread, for serving Process 1 cup of the Cashew Milk and the dates, cinnamon, and turmeric in a blender until smooth. Add the remaining 1 cup Cashew Milk and blend a few more moments. Pour the mixture into a bowl and dip slices of bread in it, one at a time, coating them well. Heat a nonstick griddle or skillet over medium heat. Cook as many slices as your pan will handle at a time, turning until both sides are evenly browned. Serve warm with toppings of your choice.

To illustrate toaster righteousness, let’s say God decides to use toasters to spread His messages. He incorporates his love into an LLC called God’s Toasters, LLC. Toasters are now the legal and spiritual messengers of God. Different toaster brands are made all over the world. It doesn’t matter where the toasters are introduced in the world, some people support them and others oppose them. It is God’s will to have different toasters made in different countries. Toaster Righteousness comes into play when people start believing that if we do not eat a specific bread recipe and shaped bread, we cannot receive authentic holy toast. Exceptions are made with pita lovers, but everyone else in the world is doomed to live in eternal burnt-toast hell, not golden-brown toast heaven. Throughout history, bread is a staple of peoples’ diets. The introduction of toasters is supposed to support show us how to eat bread better, being grateful for the bread we are given, sharing toast with one’s neighbor, and not killing in the name of bread.

During this hour in the waking streets I felt at ease, at peace; my body, which I despised, operated like a machine. I was spaced out, the catchphrase my friends at school used to describe their first experiments with marijuana and booze. This buzzword perfectly described a picture in my mind of me, Alice, hovering just below the ceiling like a balloon and looking down at my own small bed where a big man lay heavily on a little girl I couldn’t quite see or recognize. It wasn’t me. I was spaced out on the ceiling. I had that same spacey feeling when I cooked for my father, which I still did, though less often. I made omelettes, of course. I cracked a couple of eggs into a bowl, and as I reached for the butter dish, I always had an odd sensation in my hands and arms. My fingers prickled; it didn’t feel like me but someone else cutting off a great chunk of greasy butter and putting it into the pan. I’d add a large amount of salt — I knew what it did to your blood pressure, and I mumbled curses as I whisked the brew. When I poured the slop into the hot butter and shuffled the frying pan over the burner, it didn’t look like my hand holding the frying-pan handle and I am sure it was someone else’s eyes that watched the eggs bubble and brown. As I dropped two slices of wholemeal bread in the toaster, I would observe myself as if from across the room and, with tingling hands gripping the spatula, folded the omelette so it looked like an apple envelope. My alien hands would flip the omelette on to a plate and I’d spread the remainder of the butter on the toast when the two slices of bread leapt from the toaster. ‘Delicious,’ he’d say, commenting on the food before even trying it.

Why can't we sit together? What's the point of seat reservations,anyway? The bored woman calls my section next,and I think terrible thoughts about her as she slides my ticket through her machine. At least I have a window seat. The middle and aisle are occupied with more businessmen. I'm reaching for my book again-it's going to be a long flight-when a polite English accent speaks to the man beside me. "Pardon me,but I wonder if you wouldn't mind switching seats.You see,that's my girlfriend there,and she's pregnant. And since she gets a bit ill on airplanes,I thought she might need someone to hold back her hair when...well..." St. Clair holds up the courtesy barf bag and shakes it around. The paper crinkles dramatically. The man sprints off the seat as my face flames. His pregnant girlfriend? "Thank you.I was in forty-five G." He slides into the vacated chair and waits for the man to disappear before speaking again. The guy onhis other side stares at us in horror,but St. Clair doesn't care. "They had me next to some horrible couple in matching Hawaiian shirts. There's no reason to suffer this flight alone when we can suffer it together." "That's flattering,thanks." But I laugh,and he looks pleased-until takeoff, when he claws the armrest and turns a color disturbingy similar to key lime pie. I distract him with a story about the time I broke my arm playing Peter Pan. It turned out there was more to flying than thinking happy thoughts and jumping out a window. St. Clair relaxes once we're above the clouds. Time passes quickly for an eight-hour flight. We don't talk about what waits on the other side of the ocean. Not his mother. Not Toph.Instead,we browse Skymall. We play the if-you-had-to-buy-one-thing-off-each-page game. He laughs when I choose the hot-dog toaster, and I tease him about the fogless shower mirror and the world's largest crossword puzzle. "At least they're practical," he says. "What are you gonna do with a giant crossword poster? 'Oh,I'm sorry Anna. I can't go to the movies tonight. I'm working on two thousand across, Norwegian Birdcall." "At least I'm not buying a Large Plastic Rock for hiding "unsightly utility posts.' You realize you have no lawn?" "I could hide other stuff.Like...failed French tests.Or illegal moonshining equipment." He doubles over with that wonderful boyish laughter, and I grin. "But what will you do with a motorized swimming-pool snack float?" "Use it in the bathtub." He wipes a tear from his cheek. "Ooo,look! A Mount Rushmore garden statue. Just what you need,Anna.And only forty dollars! A bargain!" We get stumped on the page of golfing accessories, so we switch to drawing rude pictures of the other people on the plane,followed by rude pictures of Euro Disney Guy. St. Clair's eyes glint as he sketches the man falling down the Pantheon's spiral staircase. There's a lot of blood. And Mickey Mouse ears. After a few hours,he grows sleepy.His head sinks against my shoulder. I don't dare move.The sun is coming up,and the sky is pink and orange and makes me think of sherbet.I siff his hair. Not out of weirdness.It's just...there. He must have woken earlier than I thought,because it smells shower-fresh. Clean. Healthy.Mmm.I doze in and out of a peaceful dream,and the next thing I know,the captain's voice is crackling over the airplane.We're here. I'm home.