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The popcorn button on a microwave is a diversion from the company's inability to get it to make toast. The same thing happened to aliens: they could build a UFO but couldn't figure out the last ten feet, so they put out a ramp.
The failure looks large when you stop to think about it. A machine that can make a turkey in 11 minutes cannot make toast. Meanwhile the toast people are frantic over the microwave oven's prospects for toast making and what it could do to their business.
The man who runs the toast consortium is unbothered: they'll always have bathtub suicides. Frighten him by telling him dead-end jobs and loveless marriages have been outlawed, and then he'll start panicking, because as long as there's despair, they will sell toasters. The man was a psychopath.
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