I thought that the water-stain Virgin Mary was an all-time low for humanity, but now I realize that I totally underestimated the idiocy of my fellow human. Charli Claypool believes that her coffee pot, which she has named William, is a conduit through which the dead speak to her...and she's not the only one.

Apparently there are a whole pile of people who are so afraid of their own mortality that they need to believe the background noise from their household appliances is proof of the afterlife. The American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena (AAEVP) seeks to refine and improve recordings from electronic appliances that sound like human voices chattering, and to use these recordings to uncover what happens to human consciousness after death.

The AAEVP makes frantic attempts to cloak their fantasy world in seemingly-scientific language, such as classifying sound recordings from their talking appliances from the easily-recognizable messages in "Class A" (anybody can recognize that the toaster was clearly telling me to kill) to the extremely faint or garbled mutterings of "Class C" (the toaster might just have been asking me to use rye instead of wheat). They also pamper the vanity of would-be toaster-listeners by explaining that some people have natural talent for hearing voices, but that we all can hone our schizophrenic abilities with practice.

The AAEVP even addresses the concerns of those who worry that listening to the voices in their appliances might summon demons who will attack them.

And the saddest part is, there is still more evidence for talking appliances than for the resurrection and divinity of Jesus Christ, so about 75% of America's population doesn't even have the right to laugh at the AAEVP.