Here is some humor to keep you toasty in the coming cold months (some I found on the 'Net, others I have devised myself):

• If IBM made toasters... They would want one big toaster where people bring bread to be submitted for overnight toasting. IBM would claim a worldwide market for five, maybe six toasters.


• If Xerox made toasters... You could toast one-sided or double-sided. Successive slices would get lighter and lighter. The toaster would jam your bread for you.


• If Radio Shack made toasters... The staff would sell you a toaster, but not know anything about it. Or you could buy all the parts to build your own toaster.


• If Oracle made toasters... They'd claim their toaster was compatible with all brands and styles of bread, but when you got it home you'd discover the Bagel Engine was still in development, the Croissant Extension was three years away, and that indeed the whole appliance was just blowing smoke.


• If Sun made toasters... The toast would burn often, but you could get a really good cuppa Java.


• If Cray made toasters... They would cost $16 million but would be faster than any other single-slice toaster in the world.


• If Sony made toasters... The ToastMan, which would be barely larger than the single piece of bread it is meant to toast, can be conveniently attached to your belt.


• If Fisher Price made toasters... "Baby's First Toaster" would have a hand-crank that you turn to toast the bread that pops up like a Jack-in-the-box.


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  Photo: Grain Foods Foundation
  If the Franklin Mint made toasters... Every month you would receive another lovely, authentic, hand-crafted, Civil War pewter toaster. When it came time to sell your collection you would be lucky to receive 25% of what you paid.


• If Bob Barker made toasters... The 'price would be right'.


• If CostCo made toasters... They'd be really cheap, as long as you bought a six-pack of 'em.


• If the NSA made toasters... Your toaster would have a secret trap door that only the NSA could access in case they needed to get at your toast for reasons of national security.



• If The Rand Corporation made toasters... It would be a large, perfectly smooth and seamless black cube. Every morning there would be a piece of toast on top of it. Their service department would have an unlisted phone number, and the blueprints for the box would be highly classified government documents. The X-Files would have an episode about it.


• If Hewlett-Packard made toasters... They would market the Toaster for $19.99, but the special bread to fit the toaster would be $59 a loaf.


• If Barack Obama made toasters... He would only charge people who made more than $250,000 a year and, to be fair, the rest would be given away free to the poor and minority groups. Everybody of course, would share the bread.


• If Joe Biden made toasters... Everyone would go out and buy one.


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  Photo: Trabo
  If Muslims made toasters... Ha, that's funny - Muslims don't make anything. They buy things with our oil money. Read Mohammed invents a Toaster.


• OK seriously - If Muslims made toasters... They would explode on the roadside.


• OK OK, really seriously - If Muslims made toasters... The bread would have to be Halal.


• OK already, be really serious - If Muslims made toasters... The bread would be for prophet.


• No joking now, If Muslims made toasters... It would be shaped like the Kaaba and Muslims would have to face toward it whenever they ate toast.
  


• If the Social Security Administration made toasters... Young people would have to put in 4 slices of bread but wouldn't get any toast for 40 years, if at all. Meanwhile, old people who perhaps put in a few slices when young would be pulling out loaves of toasted bread every month.


• If Al Gore made toasters... Actually he invented them and received a Nobel Price for it.


• If the Federal Government made toasters... They would come with 500 pages of instructions and cost $1800.


• If the Mafia made toasters... You would have to give them your bread or you’re toast.


• If airline baggage handlers made toasters... your toast would end up in Cleveland.


• If Martha Stewart made toasters... That would be a good thing.


• If Detroit made toasters... They would cost $2600 more than comparable models from Japan, and last half as long. To put bread in the toaster you would need a Union foreman to sign off on the job.


• If Las Vegas made toasters... Whatever you toasted in Vegas would have to stay in Vegas.


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  Photo: Toaster.org
  If cigarette manufacturers made toasters... They would smoke all the time.


• If Microsoft made toasters... Every time you bought a loaf of bread, you would have to buy a toaster. You wouldn't have to take the toaster, but you'd still have to pay for it anyway. Toaster'95 would weigh 15000 pounds (hence requiring a reinforced steel countertop), draw enough electricity to power a small city, take up 95% of the space in your kitchen, would claim to be the first toaster that lets you control how light or dark you want your toast to be, and would secretly interrogate your other appliances to find out who made them. Everyone would hate Microsoft toasters, but nonetheless would buy them since most of the good bread only works with their toasters.


• If Apple made toasters... It would do everything the Microsoft toaster does, but 5 years earlier.

A tip of the turban to the following sites: Humor Power, Clown Ministry for some of the toaster jokes.

Some toaster trivia: A recent nationwide survey conducted by Harris Interactive® for the Grain Foods Foundation found that nearly 10 percent of Americans are more passionate about toast than they are for, well, passion. One in ten said they "would rather eat toast in the morning than have sex."

The exact opposite applies in Islamic countries: 90% of Muslims said they would rather rape a woman than have toast. The other 10% said they would rather rape a goat.

Despite all the years of research in trying to make toasters safe, some people are still being killed by toasters:

DADI.org, 18 Nov 2002, Harris County charges Victoria woman with murder

A Victoria woman has been charged in a Harris County court with murdering her husband in Victoria.

Mariela Quinonez Karbowski, 29, is accused of beating her estranged husband, Terry Karbowski, 63, to death with a two-slice toaster in early August when he came to her Victoria home on a visit from Houston.

Her marriage is now toast I hear.