Semi Truths A highly irregular weblog dedicated to Truth, Justice, and American Cheese…!

I love toast.

When I left home to go off to university, I spent the first three months living in a dingy hotel room and I ate submarine sandwiches every night (long story…) Over Christmas break, I learned that I got accepted into a Student Co-Op, and I celebrated by going to an all night diner that had toasters at every table. I ordered a slice of every kind of bread that they had and made toast after toast, and when I got through the first round I ordered another round, and another…

There is an art to toasting. You need to heat the bread to just the right temperature and sustain it just long enough so that the outer skin carmelizes. On one side, I spead a light layer of real butter, preferably Land O’ Lakes, but never margarine. If I want something more sweet, I choose honey over jam.

Ummm…toooastttt…

Flying Toasters made me comfortable with PCs. Before that, they were grey, hulking boxes. Flying Toasters showed me that computers could be fun, and may be indirectly responsible for my career.

Of course, Charlottesville is home to the world renowned (well, world’s only, anyway) Toaster Museum.

What began my musing about toast was this find: a company called Pop Art Toaster sells custom toasters that will actually burn your message of choice onto your toast. One set even comes with edible colored markers, so your kids can color their toast before eating it (the site makes no mention of whether the ink is butter flavored).

This is an awesome idea. Why propose to your girlfriend over expensive champagne, for example, when you could literally “pop the question” with a piece of toast? Let’s carry it a step further: I can imagine a toaster with a wireless internet connection (a genuine “kitchen applicance”) that uploads stock quotes or news headlines to your toast. I’d love to have one of those at work and connected to my calendar, so my next meeting reminder wouldn’t just pop up on my screen, but would literally “pop up” on my desktop.

And lest you think all this is a trivial matter, I reproduce here an article by physicist Robert Matthews which explains why toast always lands butter-side down.