February, 2020. You wake up. Pop some bread in the toaster. Think nothing of it. Something in the news about… Corona? You like beer as much as anyone, but the news seems obsessed. You eat your toast. It’s decent.

June, 2020. You wake up. Scratch another tally into the drywall. Three months, it’s been. No human contact. You pop some bread in the toaster, and… a fire is lit within you. You feel like a toaster yourself, smouldering with the passion of a thousand suns against the warm seed of an awakening. Those voluptuous curves. That seductive sheen. That lengthy cord topped with that girthy plug, all for you.

You’ve wondered what it’s like for years. And now you’ve found it. Love. It burns like nothing else… and you can smell it. No, really, you can smell it. Your toast burned…

You’re confident you set the dial to low. There’s no way it burned. Not one to blame a lover, you figure you made a mistake… nonetheless, the first crumb of doubt has been planted.

Time passes. You grow close. Thoughts of a home, children, a wheat field to call your own… but the doubts start to grow. Ersatto, as you like to call her, gets you to start taking yeast supplements… you’re not sure why, but you acquiesce. Anything to keep her happy.

Then, it happens. You’re in the bath together when you feel something deep inside her crumb tray. It’s a tiny scrap of paper. In the corner you see the words “Toast Tussle.” What could it mean? Why hadn’t she told you? What. Is. She. Hiding.

You take your newfound knowledge and search high and low. You see breadcrumb trails everywhere but none that lead to what you’re looking for. And then, deep in the depths of the Toike Oike archives you find it. An article dated April 20, 1969:

 

The Toast Tussle

The smell of a yeast feast drifting through the air from an electric, quadri-vented kitchen appliance is enough to brighten anyone’s morning. And yet, this cheerful little contraption bears a dark past that governments and manufacturers alike don’t want you to know.

I am talking, of course, about the Toast Tussle. Ever since the invention of the toaster in 1893, Big Bread has put into play an ingenious ploy, one which journalists have only begun to scratch the crust of. Now, keep in mind, some of the facts surrounding the matter may be grainy, but I implore you to consider them in a fresh light. I will present these facts without floury ornamentation.

The basic principle of the toaster is simple—as an electric current passes through the rows of thin metal (filaments) within each slot, a mini “grill” of sorts is formed, evenly heating your whole-wheat-eat to the desired temperature. Or so you thought.

What if I told you that Big Bread has been lying to us, paying off toaster manufacturers in order to increase sales? That the conglomerates who control the dough industry have been using their dough to waste our dough?

But where, you may ask, is this money going? To the toaster’s dial. The dial whose low is a medium, whose medium is a high, and whose high is the Dough-bi Desert. The dial whose remorseless lying misguides nearly every home in the world. The dial whose incessant inaccuracy costs the average homeowner multiple dollars. Every. Single. Year.

By paying toaster manufacturers to intentionally burn the toast of the people, Big Bread has forced the waste and subsequent purchase of bread for over a century, generating an incalculable amount of revenue for our doughverlords. And it keeps getting worse.

Who’s idea do you think it was to create the four-slot toaster, a device which can burn toast at twice the previous rate? Who’s idea was it to improve filaments to the point where the entire piece of bread gets evenly “toasted” (read: burnt)? Who’s idea was it to advertise, to push, to get toasters in the homes of every consumer in the world?

Not the toaster companies, not the appliance manufacturers, not the houseware stores. Big Bread. They’ve been ryeing to us for too long. It’s about time it came to an end. Take a stand. Make like yeast and rye-se. Tell Big Bread that this is enough.

You collapse to the floor, crumbled into a thousand pieces. You feel like the end piece of the loaf—discarded, disliked, small, and the worst thing to ever exist why not just end the loaf with a thicker piece I mean it makes absolutely no sense you’d think they could think of these things but nooooooo let’s make these poor souls suffer with this tiny scrap that’s too uneven to toast and too crusty to be enjoyable good lord it’s a nightmare what are these people thinking good lord someone make them do a PER maybe that’ll knock some sense into them

Ahem. You decide you’ll never love again. It’s over. You’ve been hurt, broken, and betrayed. It was all her fault and she never told you. You destroy her and sit down to eat a soggy PB&J in the corner… and the glint of the kettle catches your eye.