Just Dessert
Why Don’t Fortune Cookies Tell Fortunes Anymore?
Leave them wonton more
It’s been ages since I’ve had Chinese food.
I subsist on a steady diet of Yorkshire Pudding and Yoo-hoos (I’m training for a marathon), but last Thursday I dined with some old friends. I suggested we make the evening BYOY and offered several pudding recipes in the group chat before it was politely explained to me that we would be ordering takeout.
“It’s just easier,” they said, “and this way people might actually enjoy their dinners as well.”
Oh well. I guess I can break my diet for one day.
The five of us ordered from the Cluck Cluck Duck Duck, a Chinese eatery that has only racked up sixteen health code violations in it’s extensive fourteen month history. The meal was a delight, and after the requisite flatulence and eructation, we took turns reaching into the takeout bag to select a fortune cookie.
Now I’m no believer in the divinity of desserts. I know that the fortunes inside fortune cookies are selected at random, and any bearing they appear to have on future events is pure happenstance. Still, I remember a time when fortune cookies attempted to predict the future. They used to say things like: “A lifetime of happiness lies ahead of you,” or: “Tonight you will be blinded by passion.”
In recent years, the fortunes inside fortunes cookies have strayed away from zany prophesies and become nothing but cliched pointers. Just look at the five ‘fortunes’ our dinner party received.
Where are the fortunes??? All I see are a series of basic truths that every right thinking person already knows and accepts (or at least they should, if they know what’s good for them).
Why am I getting so riled up over a silly little thing like Chinese state propaganda passing itself off as a harmless fortune? Who cares if they are exploiting our weakness for sweets in order to favorably manipulate public opinion while simultaneously increasing the rate of Type 2 Diabetes in order to bankrupt our already overstretched healthcare system?
I’m overthinking things. I need to destress. Perhaps a vacation.
I hear Beijing is lovely this time of year.
Enjoyed yourself? Then read this, Stupid:
Also, I bet you didn’t know Donald Trump was the original PAB? Speaking Fiction To Power:
