Lousy fortune cookies

The hatemongers quarterly complains about the quality of fortunes in Chinese fortune cookies.

After all, even an execrable Chinese food outfit ... has the typical fortune cookies. They’re the one part of the meal even they can’t screw up....


Don’t believe us, dear reader? Well, then take a gander at this odd fortune found in “Chip’s” latest cookie: “Opportunity always ahead if you look and think.”

Uh, that’s not even a sentence. And it’s not a fortune, either. Frankly, it doesn’t even make that much sense. If you ask us, the people at the fortune cookie factory are coasting. When we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” break open a fortune cookie, we want to see something like “You will murder your second cousin on your father’s side,” or “You won’t be the next Billy Joel.”

You know: Real fortunes. None of this preachy “You should appreciate life/A man with a friend is a happy man” garbage. If we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” wanted hackneyed, ungrammatical bromides about the essential goodness of life, we’d watch Dr. Phil.

I've always felt that fortune cookies lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. I prefer fortune cookies that are more specific: "Sell Enron stock right away," would be a nice one, if you had gotten it early enough. Or how about, "Buy this hot new Internet stock and get in on the ground floor before the suckers find out about it."

That's a fortune cookie I could get behind.