The March Of The Toasters

On some days, I fear my toaster.

It sits in the corner of my kitchen, dowdy in shades of beige and silver, and emmanates a chilling smugness when I slot my bread warily into it's broiling depths. I'm not a technophobe, but more of an inadvertant luddite - on the whole, I approach technology with a certain clandestine joy, throwing the instruction manual gaily over my shoulder and bounding in to get happily covered in machine oil, choked with WD40, and peppered with splinters. Sometimes I finish using, making, or tinkering with something and find it hasn't impaled, burnt, or exploded at me. These are good days, and they are rare. For example, I once made a phone explode by looking at it. Sparks and everything. Often are the times when a friend will return from the bar, a parent from the garden, or a teacher from a quiet smoke, to find me cradling a smoking pile of twisted metal and making apologetic noises.

Truly, there is no hope for such as me. If the robots ever dominate this green globe of ours, then whatever band of desperate rebels remain will wheel me out into the ravaged landscape to combat hulks of metal and malice, where I will pull out my Phillips and Black & Decker and grin winningly as horribly beweaponed war-droids explode into despairing showers around me. I am, in my way, a sort of technological rapture, where the faithful (Simple things that I can't break - pestle & mortar, my aging ipod, and all Nokia phones) will live on, while the sinners (That bastard toaster, for one thing) will be plunged into the abyssal wheelie-bin.

I realize that most toasters are in the same league of dubious convenience as showers - devices where the merest nanometre to the left or the right means the difference between two degrees off ultimate zero and the surface temperatrue of the sun. I understand this, and realize I am not alone. However, I have proof that my toaster not only hates me but is actively trying to kill me.

I understand that the first setting on any toaster is not hot and the, say, fifth setting is burnt. Now then. Who designed that? Who sat down in their swively designers chair and basked in the halogen glow of their angle-poise lamp, thoughtfully sucking a biro, and thought, "Hmm, I sometimes fancy toast that is uncooked, and is therefore essentially bread, and yet in my mind, remains toast, despite the level of heat being equivalent to a Cornish breeze on a July evening. For this, I will devise Level One Toast. Equally, I sometimes like to eat bread that is so burnt it is essentially carbon, and yet I do not want to eat coal or indeed diamonds, as they are difficult to spread butter on, and in the case of diamonds, both harder to come by and considerably more expensive than Warburtons, so for this quandry, I will concoct Level Five Toast."

Presumambly this same designer thought that the idea of toast gently seared to a rich gold, with nary a hint of pallid nor burnt crumbs perverse and pointless, and left it out altogether.

I wouldn't mind, but Level Two And A Half doesn't give you that, as it logically should. It's this contradiction of logic that permeates all human society and exists solely to befuddle people like me. For example, 0 degrees is freezing and 100 degrees is boiling. That is fine, that is logical. But it doesn't stop me believing in my heart of hearts that 70 degrees should be a nice warm temperature.

Anyway, I don't want to get anal about toast. Who would? But to return to the toaster briefly. It is the most malicious item I have ever owned. It has, so far, mildly electrocuted me - possibly as a test to see exactly how much wattage would be needed to boil my internal organs, for maximum hilarity - burnt me more times than I care to remember, and (and this is the impressive bit) tripped me up. Yes, a toaster has indeed made me fall arse over tit twice. Once, when its lead had somehow managed to loop, like a sleeping boa, over the microwave, before falling to the ground and craftily snaring my foot like a triffid, and once again, when it pinged gloatingly at me when I shuffled downstairs once morning, causing me to slip up and deliver a beautiful header into the corner of the fridge. It is a nasty, vindictive bastard of a toaster. I am convinced that the real reason it hates me is because when it was bought I was eying up a sleek George Foreman grill, so now it has abandonment issues bordering on the psychotic, lapsing into murderous rage if I dare to use the grill.

This, really, is yet another example of mankinds mounting obsession with taking all the effort, hardship, and mental taxation out of life and replacing it with new, shiny, chrome-and-titanium effort, hardship, and mental taxation. My on-line banking is there so I can easily track, organize, and authorize my financial transactions at the click of a mouse, ensuring me fiscal security, a zen state of mind and a glowing complexion. However, it actually enables me to forget with depressing regularity a bewildering array of secret answers, user names, and passwords (Incidentally, the password selection process is indictive of the muted hatred technology has for us - only the other day I changed my hotmail password to have my laptop bark, "Too short! Too long! Must use at least one letter, number, and lower/uppercase!") and lock myself out, or, alternately, let myself in to find out just how poor I am (at the click of a mouse!) and thus sending me on a self-destructive path of financial fear all day that culminates in me resigning myself to my fate and buying wildly expensive because I've given up hope and might as well go out with a bang.

The only exceptions to this technological impasse are my ipod, which is old, scarred, slow, and chunky, like a veteran stray cat, my typewriter, which is one of the worst designed and viciously serrated pieces of equipment its ever been my (mis)fortune to have my fingers torn to ribbons by (Although it is very beautiful and I like the smell of india ink) and itunes, which is my pride and joy and keeps me sedated with Mogwai when I go through the rigamorole of on-line banking again.