If your future is now you can forget the past

Me (opening fortune cookie): Well, it's about time!

Male Friend: Does that have anything to do with this?

Chickity China the Chinese Chicken

Lately I've been losing my faith in Chinese fortune cookies. It seems as though they just dole out good advice rather than telling me my fortune. Here are a few examples:

• Put the data you have uncovered to beneficial use
• Find release from your cares, have a good time
• The mysterious side of your nature makes you most alluring
• Every able man has more able men behind him

Now, I don't think that any of these would qualify as a fortune per se. It's not like they're telling me anything about what's going to happen in the future. But, they do happen to be good advice. They're even better if you follow the age old tradition of adding "in bed" to the end of each statement. Well, all except for the last one that is. I'm not really into that.

Others don't make any sense to me at all. Like the one I got the other day:

• With integrity and consistency, your credits are piling up

Huh? What does that even mean? What credits are you even talking about? (college credits? I guess that could be the case) But more importantly, how is that a fortune? I want my fortune cookies to either tell me about something good that's going to happen, or to warn me about something bad. Either way is fine.

For example, "You will get to make out with three gorgeous women today" would be a good fortune. It might even become self-fulfilling in that I would probably just walk up and kiss the first three gorgeous woman I saw, whether I knew them or not, just because I knew that it was meant to be. Even if they got upset about it I could just show them the fortune and everything would be fine.

Or how about, "Today you will be raped by a psychotic Chinese restaurant owner." That would certainly get me to stop the chit-chat, pay the bill, and get the hell out of the restaurant (of course, if it was in the fortune cookie then it might be inevitable anyway, but at least I'd know to carry some vaseline or something for the rest of the day).

Now, having said this, I should probably point out that all hope is not lost. Two of my friends got fortunes that actually were fortunes the other day.

The first friend's fortune said, "You will travel to many exotic places in the next few years." He is also the friend who is moving shortly to start working on his Ph D, and just found out that his future advisor got a grant that will send him to Tanzania (and likely other parts of Africa) to do his dissertation work.

The second friend's fortune said, "An interesting musical opportunity is in your near future." This came just minutes after we had been talking about the Peanut Butter-Jelly dance, which he had never seen and we promised to email to him.

If that's not an interesting musical opportunity then I don't know what is.

So tell me Mrs. Rita, what's it say in my tarot?

The other night at my friend's birthday party she broke out a deck of tarot cards. I think that's a sure sign that she's a witch, but I can't be sure because we didn't throw her into the water to see if she floated or not. Maybe next time.

She was doing readings on people for fun, and she handed cards out to everyone in the room. She then went around and told everyone what their card meant. As we were waiting for her to get to us, my friend showed me his card. It had three girls dancing around some kind of plant. He said that it meant three hot girls were going to get him drunk and take advantage of him. Another friend showed me his and said it looked pretty scary. It had one of those dudes that looks like Pan (you know with a human head and torso and goat legs), but it didn't have a flute. It did look pretty scary, probably because it looked like the devil, but I cracked up when he followed that up with "it also looks kinda hot."

My card was the pinnacle of something or other, I don't really remember, but it had a person sitting cross-legged with three balls floating over their lap. My friend the witch said that it meant I was "holding on to some serious shit."

I personally don't think it took a tarot reading to see that. One look at me and anyone could pretty much tell that's the case. But really, isn't that pretty much the case with everybody? That's the problem with fortune telling. All it takes is for someone to make a very general statement, and someone who wants to believe it will be able to find something about themselves.

To be honest, I was kind of hoping that my tarot card meant that the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life was about to walk through the door and start making out with me, but I guess that was too much to ask. Maybe that'll be next time too.