I don't have very good luck with appliances, and it doesn't help that most of the ones I have are older than I am. Last week I tried to use my VCR to tape Friends and CSI for a friend. The VCR is so old that it a) doesn't have digital channels, it has about 13 bands that must be hand-tuned to the same band as real channels, and b) can only tape shows in 15 minute-increment lengths, but I've had so much experience with the beast that I can usually cajole it into taping the shows I want. I know all its intricacies, having used it many times to tape my favorite shows and to dub bootleg Smashing Pumpkins videos, but last week it came up with a new trick. After allowing me to set up the proper programs to tape, the time arrived for Friends to start and the VCR fired up as per usual, but instead of taping the show it whirred for about 5 seconds and then shut itself down. I tried pressing the record sequence manually, but got the same result. Apparently there is some belt or something broken, because the VCR can no longer advance the tape. Useful.

Then, yesterday while I was cooking a baked potato in my toaster oven which is presumably older than I am, I heard a crackling electricky noise coming from the kitchen. I looked over at the toaster oven but the noise had already stopped. This happened a few times before I started just staring at the oven waiting, daring it to make the noise again. Sure enough it did, and accompanying the noise was a shower of blue sparks coming out of the underside of the toaster oven. After using my pen to shut the oven off (so as to keep my hand away from the source of shockingness), I unplugged the oven from the wall and proceeded to burn my hand on the top of it as I was going to pick it up.

The good news is that now that both of these appliances have failed, I have exactly zero left in our common area. Everything else out there David or michael's, which presumably means that everything else functions in a non-fire-hazard sort of way. Now all of the danger is localized entirely in my room, which contains a guitar amplifier known to broadcast Spanish radio stations and also emit showers of blue sparks...