Thursday, February 3, 2011

In the four months that have intervened since my run-in with authentic Chinese food, I’ve managed to hold true to my embargo on Asian cuisine. Fortune cookies have been exempt from this restriction, however, because they’ve been critical to a longitudinal study I’ve been conducting, wherein said cookies are posited as early indicators of economic recovery.

Let me explain, at the risk of channeling a poor man’s version of Freakonomics. During the housing boom, you may recall how these little slips of paper lost their punch. Rather than predict the future, they would make lame declarative statements like “you have a great personality,” or peddle aphorisms like “the early bird catches the worm (and deposits it in the wonton soup special).” Then the recession hit, with a glacial recovery in tow, and these fortunes hearkened back to the gutsy predictions of old. Take this one, for instance: “You shall soon make a long overdue personal decision.” Earthshaking? No, but at least the cookie attempted to call it. Or consider this one, which I squirreled away in my desk last fall: “Good fortune is yours when you stock tons of fortune cookies.” It’s a promissory metacookie, or possibly a middle finger to the diner, and really there’s nowhere to go from there but down.

This one, however, was collected this week, when the Dow reached a new milestone: “Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.” I mean, double-u tee fuck? I want my cookies to prognosticate, not hedge with a self-help one-liner. Then again, the theory is that when times are flush, these printers fear the lash of legal action, and so they water down their statements. But when times are tight, and people lack the funds to file frivolous lawsuits, these fortune printers cut loose. This means I should cross my fingers for something along the lines of “you may or may not have just eaten a cookie. Either way is totally fine.”