Forbes.

I’ve never been a big fan of fortune cookies. They are barely edible and they taste like cardboard (No, I have not tasted cardboard. I’m used the analogy for dramatic impact. If I could have inserted a drum-roll and mood music at that point I would have. I’d have had the camera pan in to a close up of the cookie’s face, the cookie would then, in a suitably deep and heroic voice, say “Come and get it motherfuckers.”

It always is “Come and get it motherfuckers.” and not “Come and get it motherfuckers!”. You cannot be heroic with an exclamation mark. And cookies are notorious for being completely deadpan, even in the most adverse of circumstances. The cookies that went down with the Titanic went down calmly, smoking cigars and playing poker. (The chocolate-chip cookie won the last hand with an inside straight. It however was the dealer and the oatmeal cookie suspected that it (the chocolate chip cookie) had been dealing from the bottom of the deck. The oatmeal cookie had politely coughed to indicate that it thought that something suspicious was afoot. But before it could say anything more. The fucking ship sank...If you do not believe me, see any one of those fucking innumerable documentaries about the Titanic sinking. Try for one of those that tries to establish an atmosphere of suspense during the documentary. Every fucking person knows that the fucking ship sank. The efforts to build suspense could be better spent in a documentary about Paint Drying. (The Paint Drying documentary is very good! It follows the paint from early childhood to it’s last days, as it sits at the head of the dining table, the Patriach of a large colourful family. ))),and not even cardboard fresh from the oven, but cardboard that never turned out right. The kind of cardboard that did drugs in school, graduated to petty crime and spent most of its adult life in prison.

Not only do they taste bad, they also are a prime example of false advertising. You do sometimes get a fortune, “Business will prosper today” or “You will reap the benefits of an old friendship”. (I like that second one. I’m getting this incredible urge to say “Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink, say no more”) Those are the fortune cookies that try to stick to the straight and narrow. And then those are those lazy bastards who come up with gems, gems such as “Hard work will help you succeed” or “Exercise is good for health.” That isn’t a fucking fortune cookie. That wasn’t a fucking fortune, it was a statement. Those should be called statement cookies. (Speaking of exercise, today at the gym I was subjected to a “documentary” showing people exercising. And one person exercised and then said that they felt empowered. I have no fucking clue what that meant. “Crunches have fucking empowered me.” Yeah? How? No, really. How? )

But today, the cookies sank to a lower level. I broke one open, and this is what the “fortune” said:

“Good bakers always make plenty of dough.” Yeah, that left me speechless…well it would have if had been talking to the cookie. Or if I had been giving a speech. What’s next?

Insult cookies?

“You are dumb. Fuck off.”

“Loser!”

News cookies?

“Bombs exploded somewhere.”

“Armies invaded that country.”

Small talk cookies?

“How ‘bout that weather, eh?”

“How ‘bout that game/match/show last night, eh?”

Creepy cookies?

“Oh yes, shake those buns baby.”

“Have I got something baking for you?”

(Nicely done baking references over there I do think)

I’d like a fortune cookie. One with an actual fortune. One that says, “Here’s a billion dollars” and actually comes with a billion dollars.

(I’m sleepy and I’m not going to proof read or spell check.)

Feline culinary delights

Read a sign at a restaurant that said, “The world’s best fries.” How does one judge what the world’s best fries are? There is no objective way of measuring it. you can say the fires are good, or that they suck. But best? I beg to disagree. There will always be one fry around the corner, the one which you have not tested which could be a better fry. It’s like Schrödinger’s cats, if the cats were made out of potatoes and deep fried.

Alternatively you could have the fried Olympics, where fries from all over the world competed to judge who was the best fry of them all. Fries in track and field events and in aquatics. Competing against each other, to judge the best fry of them all. And the winner of the main events, a triskadecathalon, would ascend the podium to receive his or her medal right after which he/she would be promptly eaten by one of the judges.

(As you may have guessed, these bracketed sentences are here for me to express my inability to write anything meaningful. I’m at a loss to even fill these brackets.)

You’d think a freak accident would involve mutated mushroom, a three headed antelope and Spiderman bumping into each other in a hallway and ending up in an ungainly pile. Freaks and an accident. A freak accident.

Sadly that isn’t the case. A freak accident is when a large spool of cable TV wire falls off a truck passing you in the opposite direction, and proceeds to completely mangle your front bumper. A mutant accident created in a secret laboratory by a mad scientist, a freak accident?

A brief study of space in more than four dimensions.

One of the lesser known laws of physics in the “Law of Wallet-detritus Attraction”. It isn’t a very catchy title but it works. Badly and creakily, but it works. It is the property by which a guy's wallet in a state of existence attracts objects that have no business existing. This leads to a the wallet expanding in every possible dimension and a couple of improbable ones. (Sockspace, where all missing socks go from the portal in the dryer. DiskSpace, which is a kind of negative space in that it never is enough. Mostly because, well, wallets are impinging upon its boundaries).

My wallet is no exception. It has stuff in it that clearly does not belong. Receipts for things I bought. Receipts for things I returned. Receipts for things I would never buy. Receipts so faded that I do cannot make out which of the previous three categories they belonged to.

ID cards of every possible variety and vintage. Driving licenses, one valid, some expired and one not quite expired but where I am eminently unqualified to drive. I really should get rid of most of those. They contain photographs that I would rather forget. The only ones I like are the ones in which I perfected my smirk and my hair is uncombed.

(That last bit may not quite make sense. But this is the way my hair works. If I try to subdue it, it will rise up in a state of rebellion and there will be hell to pay. Villages will be burnt and sheep will be stolen. Chaos will rule supreme. However, if I run my fingers through it in the morning and forget about it for a couple of hours it will generally behave.

My hair is much like a computer in that way. Apart from occasionally coming up with a blue screen of death, like a computer, it will behave itself if left well enough alone)

A ten rupee note and a ten euro note. (I’ve had those from before grad school. They’ve moved from one wallet to another. So I carry money in my wallet that I do not ever plan on spending. That’s normal)

Ticket stubs from movies I enjoyed, from movies I did not, from movies I never watched and will continue to deny that I ever watched.

A post-it note that has something possibly important written on it. Having lived in my wallet for a year now, all I can make out is it saying, “G__or 78_9823”. Or maybe Space Alien Pirate Ninja from Outer Space. It’s one of the two. I’ll figure it out eventually. Or maybe not.

Well…you get the point. Wallet filled with too much crap, roughly seven inches thick and completely spoiling the line of my trousers. And so I removed everything, trimmed the wallet down to a manageable three inches and left the damned thing alone for a while.

When I returned an hour later it was back to being seven inches thick and not content with doing that, it was now glowing faintly green and making hungry noises. And I need to put that down my front pant pocket. Joy.