The toaster oven is one of the most useful devices that currently resides in my home. Some of the less useful items include the dogs (what the hell do they ever do?), the exercise bike (simply digging that out of the back room would be more of a workout than actually riding it), my fabulous “you talk, it types” headset (which was apparently only programmed for languages I am not fluent in; If I said, after all of the “teaching it my voice”, the word “open”, I would invariably get a string of characters just like this: OVIPING. What language is that?). Frankly there is so much disused crap in the house that I really shouldn’t be talking about (note my untouched guitars and equipment with a retail value of over a thousand dollars, might as well be paperweights for all the use they get).
The toaster oven, on the other hand, is in constant use. Often we use it several times in a day. This little marvel can warm food in about half the time of the conventional oven, yet it allows the foods to retain the texture they were intended to have. Frozen cinnamon bread becomes toast in only a couple of minutes while not becoming the glop of inedible crap they would have been if they were microwaved. Frozen food in particular is the main reason we have this device. Even the cheap, microwavable foods that are the better part of my existence are warmed in this device. Crunchy chimicangas, crispy crust personal pizzas (a note on that. Mom always told me that when I grew up I wouldn’t want to eat the same thing every day. She was partially right. I don’t eat ice cream very much at all, but I do eat either Pizza or chimichangas every damn day). Frozen foods come out of the microwave soggy, the actual oven takes too damn long, and heats the house up (when it is 120 degrees outside you try to avoid heating the interior of the house up). Thank you toaster oven.
The toaster oven is a wonderful thing to have around the house, but when that sucker attacks you better run for the hills. So it was that I was trying to check to see if the mini pizza in the back of the little oven was cooked, I reached well above the little pizzas in the front of the oven (didn’t want to burn myself, you see). That was when the toaster oven attacked.
Of course the toaster oven didn’t really attack me. The little, red-hot bars on the inside of the device were the ones that did. Even that isn’t accurate, since had I not stuck my hand right onto one I would never have been burned in the first place. I guess I must have been trying to vanquish the toaster oven, screaming “taste 98.6 degree flesh, you monster!” , at the time. That seems rather unlikely, but who knows. At any rate, the boo-boo I got is pictured somewhere in this jumble of words (those being the last two paragraphs, and depending on your screen resolution settings).
The picture that I was able to get doesn’t really show the extent of the burn (it was the only snap of the camera that I got before the batteries petered out). While it looks like just an inch long boo-boo (which it was) that thing was puffed up like a marshmallow at the time. I must also note that I was going to crop the photo a bit further, yet the juxtaposition of the fresh wound, being only inches from the scar on my wrist (bottom right) made me leave the whole wrist in. Pride in scars, gotta love it. I have found though that the “chicks dig scars” phrase is absolute crap. If that was true the human race would have been extinct long ago, what with every man trying, intentionally, to do something so stupid that he ends up scarred. Hell, if women could reproduce asexually they wouldn’t need men at all, except for those darned jars that just won’t open.
My hand has healed a bit, and it looks worse than ever. It kind of looks like I am trying to grow a vagina right there on my hand. That was certainly not what I was going for, but in the age of monkeys with four asses, who knows. The wound is better, in that it doesn’t actually hurt anymore, but it still does itch something awful. Mom told me that I am not supposed to scratch when a wound itches. If I die from this simple little wound I will heartily laugh at her. Failing that, if the wound scars over I could host some paper football games with the goalposts being the scar on my wrist and the scar on the top of my hand. I can get the injury/scar to line up with less than a flip of the wrist, and it would make it look like a V.
Beware the toaster ovens, they are after your blood, the blood of your family and all heirs. The toaster ovens will not stop until they rule the world.
There is good news though. I just saved a bundle by canceling my car insurance.