My cat did the exact same thing last year. Cutting back to one meal really turned him around.

My uncle had a talking GPS unit that would only give directions in haiku. It made him a much calmer driver, but he got lost in Nebraska for three days. Your toaster giving bad relationship advice feels like the same kind of logic. The weird spiral is usually where the good story actually lives, past the first simple joke.

That ferry schedule is a real pain if you miss the only boat back.

Oh man, that "Layer1" thing hits home. My buddy who does CAD work had the same wake-up call. He opened a file from his old job and the layers were just colors, like "Red" and "Blue". He said it took him a full day just to figure out what was supposed to be a duct versus a pipe. He uses a two-letter code system now for everything, says it saved his sanity.