Oster, why do you hate all living things?

Dear Oster Corporation,

Love my new toaster. I know I truly live in, as Voltaire showed, the best of all possible worlds when I enjoy a couple of poached eggs sprinkled with a dash of homemade habanero sauce atop two perfectly toasted slices of my neighbor's homemade sourdough bread. And it's a testament to the industrial revolution that I have not only the planet's hard-dug coal to fuel my toast needs but also your $19 Target toaster, its tiny coils harnessing hell's fire to lightly brown my bread in but a few seconds' time. But as I was copping a mild endorphin buzz this morning while enjoying my breakfast, one question did occur to me:

Why in the fuck does my toaster have lights?

Have you not heard of Al Gore? Do you not get Laurie David's e-newsletter? Do Leonardo Di Caprio's baby agates not haunt your every waking moment? Like seemingly all appliances these days, my toaster jauntily emits a blue light 24 hours a day, seven days a week, whether it's toasting or not. The lights indicate which setting the toaster is on -- "Toast," "Bagel," or "Frozen" -- even though none of us ever change the setting and instead just drop in the goods and push the lever. So, clearly, the lights aren't enhancing our toasting experience anyway. But what they are doing is sucking energy around the clock. Energy that could be better put to use writing letters to corporations that design shitty appliances with useless lights that waste energy.

So now I have to remember to unplug my stupid toaster whenever I use it, so it won't drain energy and my kids' kids will have some coal left to make toast, assuming you haven't destroyed the planet by then with your poorly designed products. In the future, if you would be so kind as to design toasters without energy-wasting unnecessary lights, I would really appreciate it. Oh, and if you run into Sunbeam at the "Destroy the Earth" conference, would you please tell them my coffee maker doesn't need a fucking clock?"

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Oh, For God's Sake