Category Archives: Toast Poast

Toast Poast Number Triskaidekaphobia

Posted on July 23, 2016 | Leave a comment

Well, this story, FORGET POWER STATIONS WORRY ABOUT TOASTERS, CYBER EXPERTS SAY, is a Fahrenheit -47 degrees downer, partially because Bloomberg Technology seems to have forgotten punctuation. How can we worry about our toasters when we are terrified about a misplaced apostrophe? Imagine a cyber expert busting down the door to seize your toaster’s? Now that would indeed be dreadful.
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We did not predict our love affair with smart phones, so I will take it on faith that our love affair with smart appliances will be equally enthralling. There is no falling without fall out – bumps, scratches, scrapes and bruises. Leaps of faith include getting banged up, right? Though I would not have pegged the docile toaster as a potential cyber-heart land-mine.

When the Internet of Things – that’s right, the INTERNET OF THINGS – gets a hold of our appliances, we are done for. Done. For. And then we will figure it out. Ann Landers, I hope you are getting an advanced diploma in cyber security.

Thank you, Sorry-Birds Ellen, for putting terror in my heart. To toast or not to toast? With intelligence. That is the 13 million dollar question. Can we hack it???

 

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Toast Poast Number: Wakey, Wakey, Eggs and Bakey

Posted on January 19, 2016 | 2 comments

Love Poem With Toast

Some of what we do, we do

to make things happen,

the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,

the car to start.

The rest of what we do, we do

trying to keep something from doing something,

the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,

the truth from getting out.

With yes and no like the poles of a battery

powering our passage through the days,

we move, as we call it, forward,

wanting to be wanted,

wanting not to lose the rain forest,

wanting the water to boil,

wanting not to have cancer,

wanting to be home by dark,

wanting not to run out of gas,

as each of us wants the other

watching at the end,

as both want not to leave the other alone,

as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,

we gaze across breakfast and pretend.

—Miller Williams

Thanks a million pieces of toast to Sorry-Birds Ellen for sending this wonderful poem to our Lunch Counter. Miller Williams is a treasure. Perhaps he’ll stop in for a sandwich someday.

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Toast Poast Number 7 For All Mankind

Posted on January 16, 2016 | Leave a comment

Turning towards collaboration rather than competition in this new year. A hard turn. Collaboration is my preference, but I am pulled by competition. Me, me, me and mine, mine, mine.

Hierarchy versus democracy. How do we turn towards democracy after being raised in a hierarchy – adults ruling children? Hierarchy has got to feel more comfortable out of familiarity. And now, being adults we gotta compete to find our place and keep ourselves there. It just feels normal and right.

And so wrong.

Ugh, what a tedious struggle. And futile. Separating, isolating, ineffective.

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So, vertere, to turn. And versus, its past participle. To turn. So, yeah, how about turning towards, rather than away from. Towards, not in defiance or dominance, but compassion, collaboration. Towards.

The etymology of versus is fraught with contradiction. I take that as a message towards being conciliatory, not conflictive.
In Latin, versus: turned toward or against
To turn, turn back, be turned, convert, transform, translate, be changed
Are we not changed through collaboration?
Cognates: Toward,  befall, fate, destiny,
What befalls one, literally. To turn, to bend
In Sanskrit, vartate: turns round, rolls
Turn round towards, bend, change, transform.

Are we not bendy, inclined, turning, flipping before landing, butter-side-up? Let your fate befall you. Turn towards it and transform!

Thank you, Sorry-Birds Ellen!

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Toast Poast Number Brand New Year 2016!

Posted on January 1, 2016 | 2 comments

Go forth with gusto. Toss the manual, build it to suit yourself, throw out the extra pieces!

In the words of Brian Henneman of the Bottle Rockets, “Thanks for one more try.” And in case you have not heard, best album of the year – South Broadway Athletic Club. Go forth and buy it. Buy two, with gusto. No manual needed.

Happy new leaf, new day, new love, new hairdo, new outlook, new year!

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Thank you, Teddy Telzrow, mad Pearls fan, for sharing this strip with me. The boy knows the way to the heart of my heart.

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Toast Poast Number 1/24/1947

Posted on December 1, 2015 | Leave a comment

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Dear Mr. Zevon,

It’s been a few days since I have written. During that time the gratitude has been flowing. I heard on the radio that it’s good for your health. That and warm, buttered toast. For today and all days I am grateful to have lifelong friends who will play paddle ball with me, were I to ask. While I did not have an opportunity to play paddle ball, I did share toast with my friend Janie – toast with butter, honey and mashed blackberries. A bit ad hoc and super tasty. 

Your devoted fan,
Midnight Snack



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Toast Poast Number 1926

Posted on November 23, 2015 | 2 comments

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“Make electric helpers do all your tiresome, beauty-consuming tasks.”

— Ad for General Electric appliances, 1920s

Because, yeah, I have other things to do, like a big, fat nothing, like looking at the sky, like cutting herbs and smelling the shears, like sitting in the sun.

What hath toast wrought?

Could I get some help over here? My beauty is at threat of being consumed.

Me! Me! Me!

  1. Bring my tiara.
  2. Turn my bread into buttered toast.
  3. Tell me something funny.
  4. Look deep into my eyes and lie to me about myself.
  5. Read to me from Billy Collins.

The Dead
Billy Collins

The dead are always looking down on us,
they say,
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats,
of heaven as they row themselves slowly through eternity.
They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
And when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
Drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
They think we are looking back at them,
which makes them lift their oars and fall silent and wait,
like parents,
for us to close our eyes

In other, more prosaic words, “enjoy every sandwich”.

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Posted in Antique toasters, Toast Poast, Toasters

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Toast Poast Number 3 Pounds

Posted on July 21, 2015 | 2 comments

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We may have 100 billion neurons in our brains, weighing in at a measly three pounds, but none of them can truly imagine time. We think there is such a thing as the present – don’t we? – but there is not. Time is constantly moving, yes? And as my son pointed out at the ripe old age of three, “It is never any time exactly, mom, it is always becoming that time.” Or that time has already come and gone, I am adding. There is future, there is past, but there is no present. We stand between our befores and afters.

Oh, the thought of that makes my head feel  heavy, as though  loaded down by an industrial toaster.
Thank you, Anna St John for the thought provoking ToasTerheAD.

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Toast Poast Number 50 Meters

Posted on May 19, 2015 | Leave a comment

Who needs a swimming pool?
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When one could haveScreen Shot 2015-05-18 at 9.27.23 PMInflatable Toast Mattress

At 1/217th of the cost?

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Toast Poast Number 1961

Posted on February 21, 2015 | 4 comments

Toaster Valentine

Oh drat oh drat oh drat oh drat! I forgot to post this last week. My excuse is a good one – broken wrist mayhem – but it’s still just an excuse. There is really no such thing as a good one. A good excuse is called a reason.

My son forgot to make me a valentine so I put in a special request. Presented with his so-called valentine for me, on purple paper, I was unimpressed. All about him, the note he penciled was simply an excuse for why he had forgotten. Call me ungrateful. Call me never satisfied. I call this preparation for the pitfalls of romance. Ha. Poor boy.

Back to the drawing board, I put together a Madlib and he put it right with me.

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Toast Poast Number 1 Through 6. Where Are You on the Spectrum?

Posted on February 20, 2015 | Leave a comment

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What is happening? What cultural through-line has emerged that would join such surreal-life bedfellows as a pop-piano-playing crooner, a flamboyant professional basketball player, a reclusive children’s-book author, a twentysomething Internet gazillionaire, and a genocidal madman together in diagnostic brotherhood?

Screen shot 2015-02-20 at 5.57.04 PMDo you see yourself? How could you not? If not here, then on some other much discussed continuum. Something fluid, drawn in every shade but black or white.

Is Everyone On the Autism Spectrum?

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