This model is discontinued and is no longer available. The following information is provided for reference purposes only.

You've wasted your life, you know.

Here you are, sunk to the level of shopping for a microwave with deliberately ironic self-described 1920's Nouveau styling. The manufacturer knows it's just another microwave. You know it's just another microwave. But this one sets itself apart from the crowd by trying to sell you a fictional lifestyle. It's a whiff of zeitgeist for something that never existed in the first place.

We all know this trope: The trendy Soho loft apartment, maybe it's converted warehouse space, with eleven foot ceilings and windows that go all the way up. Outside, downtown's skyline shimmers against the night sky. It's all immaculately clean, a fusion of chic German Bauhaus elegance and ultra-modern Japanese minimalism. There's an impeccably prepared plate of expensive gourmet something on the coffee table. Hip twentysomethings are lounging on the sparse, whimsical furniture. Maybe they're smiling, laughing about something you can't hear because they're in freeze frame. They're cooler than you. In focus, in the foreground, this retro microwave.

Will a microwave make you as cool as them? Of course it won't. That's not you. But you tell yourself it could have been you. Maybe if you were cool enough in college to go out with that girl you had eyes for but never worked up the courage to speak to. Maybe if you took those couple of years off to backpack Europe instead of squandering your best years behind a desk. Maybe if you got around to writing that novel, or learned to play the guitar. Things would have been different, you tell yourself.

But no. You settled. You took what you could get. The urban loft with the eleven foot ceilings never happened. You live in the suburbs, now, in a tasteless styrofoam box just like ones next to it. The schools here would be better for the two-point-five kids, you both agreed. You sit in traffic two hours a day to work in the city instead. Maybe it's skyline really does shimmer like that in the night sky, but you'll never know.

But here in the early pre-dawn hours, before your family is awake, during the only solitude you have, you're standing in the dark in your kitchen. A plate of leftovers in one hand, finger poised over the button that reads "add 30 seconds" -- the only one you ever use -- you can just imagine. You're standing before your pretentiously styled microwave and, just for a moment, you are not a salaryman on the verge of your mid-life crisis. You are the eccentric novelist, taking a short midnight break halfway through the next great American novel. You are solo guitarist, just home from closing out the bar after the gig. Whatever it is, you made it; The faux-Nouveau Bohemian chic lifestyle. Modern. Elegant. Carefree. Minimal. Just like in the advertisement. It's all yours, for just 30 seconds, until the timer reaches zero.