My recent posts all seemed to tip toward politics, media-scolding, wonkishness or some mutant combination of the three. It’s time to get out of that rut and instead focus on something important — specifically, the alarming decline of Chinese fortune-cookie fortunes.

It’s been a long time since I cracked open a cookie and found anything resembling an actual fortune inside. Here, for example, is the “fortune” from one of the cookies dropped into my take-out bag of moo shu pork a few weeks ago:

People always know what they are saying, just never listen.

That’s not a fortune, that’s a platitude. It’s something you’d hear from your Aunt Ethel, the aging spinster who pretends to like children but can’t stop herself from offering an endless stream of vaguely disapproving observations every time they visit. Yo, fortune-cookie writers: A fortune is something like, “A financial windfall is in your future,” or maybe “You will find love unexpectedly.” It ain’t “Sit down and be quiet, you little snot.”

Still, that fortune was an improvement over the other one which emerged from the second cookie that night. It said:

The rubber bands are heading in the right direction.

Huh? Rubber bands? Right direction? This doesn’t even make sense. It’s Aunt Ethel after her third martini.

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