When I was a kid, I always looked forward to fortune cookies -- cracking open the tasty little munchy at the end of a long meal, finding that tiny slip of paper with a wonderfully vague fortune that's probably statistically calculated to happen to close to 85% of the people reading it. It always made me chuckle and smile, seeing what things the fortune cookie thought would suddenly be thrust into my destiny.
But somewhere along the way, fortune cookies stopped telling fortunes. In today's day and age, breaking open that hard-pressed mix of sugar and flour has begun to reveal some very startling messages; things like: "You are a very kind and generous person." What in the world is this? An observation cookie? Is that a joke?
The first time I cracked open a fortune cookie and was hit with such a randomly mediocre depiction of my personality, I was convinced that something had definitely gone desperately wrong with the printing, that the lines of communication had somewhere gotten crossed, and a mixed up message had been inserted instead. And so, I proceeded with special interest into the study of the fortune cookie, and found in despair, that what had begun as a fluke would soon become the standard for all the messages to come.
From my semi-professional study into the world of fortune cookies, it seems that within the last decade, fortune cookies have branched out into four distinct categories. The four new kinds of cookies are generally this: The Observation Cookie, The Advice Cookie, The General Wisdom Cookie, and if you're really lucky, you'll still get the genuine old-fashioned Fortune Cookie.
Advice cookies are always interesting. Things like: "You should go into business with a friend." Thanks fortune cookie, that's great advice! I have one for you:
"Advice from tiny, random slips of paper is usually pretty terrible. I probably really should NEVER go into business with a close friend. I, he, or we could both be terrible businessmen and could very easily ruin our friendship. Better yet, through our horrendously awful business plan, our lives could find themselves so completely undone that we inevitably end up as a brief story on the evening news with the headline: Business Endeavor Leads to Murder/Suicide.'"
Try fitting all that inside a cookie! Hmmm, I bet it's possible. We could name them Manuscript Cookies and they could each have a miniature magnifying glass with them. Hey, that's not a bad idea. Maybe I could find a friend to go into business and help me market it. Just kidding.
But of all the newer types of cookies to hit the market, I've got to say that the General Wisdom Cookie is probably my favorite. If I'm going to be forced to stomach a classic one-lined cliche, I'll take it while sitting at a fine restaurant munching a sugary morsel and not from the bumper of some schmo that just cut me off, thank you very much! The first time I stumbled upon one of these wayward cliches, I was so shocked that I saved it and put it in my wallet. It's still there to this day, waiting for its chance to once more whisper to me that "Words should be weighed, not counted."
Hey, that just gave me another brilliant business idea. We could introduce a Word Weigher into Microsoft Word. There's already a word counter, and after all, the fortune cookie clearly wrote that words should be weighed instead of counted. The word weigher could be that cold slap of realism that so much of us in the writing world need -- that stern, unrelenting critic unafraid to give us the hard truth that all our "supposed" snappy whiticisms are really just chaff borne on the wind. I think we might be on to something here:)
But somewhere along the way, fortune cookies stopped telling fortunes. In today's day and age, breaking open that hard-pressed mix of sugar and flour has begun to reveal some very startling messages; things like: "You are a very kind and generous person." What in the world is this? An observation cookie? Is that a joke?
The first time I cracked open a fortune cookie and was hit with such a randomly mediocre depiction of my personality, I was convinced that something had definitely gone desperately wrong with the printing, that the lines of communication had somewhere gotten crossed, and a mixed up message had been inserted instead. And so, I proceeded with special interest into the study of the fortune cookie, and found in despair, that what had begun as a fluke would soon become the standard for all the messages to come.
From my semi-professional study into the world of fortune cookies, it seems that within the last decade, fortune cookies have branched out into four distinct categories. The four new kinds of cookies are generally this: The Observation Cookie, The Advice Cookie, The General Wisdom Cookie, and if you're really lucky, you'll still get the genuine old-fashioned Fortune Cookie.
Advice cookies are always interesting. Things like: "You should go into business with a friend." Thanks fortune cookie, that's great advice! I have one for you:
"Advice from tiny, random slips of paper is usually pretty terrible. I probably really should NEVER go into business with a close friend. I, he, or we could both be terrible businessmen and could very easily ruin our friendship. Better yet, through our horrendously awful business plan, our lives could find themselves so completely undone that we inevitably end up as a brief story on the evening news with the headline: Business Endeavor Leads to Murder/Suicide.'"
Try fitting all that inside a cookie! Hmmm, I bet it's possible. We could name them Manuscript Cookies and they could each have a miniature magnifying glass with them. Hey, that's not a bad idea. Maybe I could find a friend to go into business and help me market it. Just kidding.
But of all the newer types of cookies to hit the market, I've got to say that the General Wisdom Cookie is probably my favorite. If I'm going to be forced to stomach a classic one-lined cliche, I'll take it while sitting at a fine restaurant munching a sugary morsel and not from the bumper of some schmo that just cut me off, thank you very much! The first time I stumbled upon one of these wayward cliches, I was so shocked that I saved it and put it in my wallet. It's still there to this day, waiting for its chance to once more whisper to me that "Words should be weighed, not counted."
Hey, that just gave me another brilliant business idea. We could introduce a Word Weigher into Microsoft Word. There's already a word counter, and after all, the fortune cookie clearly wrote that words should be weighed instead of counted. The word weigher could be that cold slap of realism that so much of us in the writing world need -- that stern, unrelenting critic unafraid to give us the hard truth that all our "supposed" snappy whiticisms are really just chaff borne on the wind. I think we might be on to something here:)