You Fortune Is Bright

Right around the corner from “Hatemonger’s Quarterly” Headquarters is a delightful Chinese food establishment called “Panda Food,” “Eat the Panda,” “Devouring Panda,” or some such. Every once in a great while—well, every once in a week, if you must know—a few members of our staff grab their lunches at this eatery, and shovel it in before the afternoon deadlines.

Unfortunately, we must report that the food at this local restaurant is well nigh inedible. The cuisine is about as authentically Chinese as Denzel Washington. No matter what you order, it ends up feeling as if you ate a heaping helping of “Disagreeing with Your Stomach” instead. If General Tsao would find out what they have done to his chicken, he’d be deeply upset.

You may be wondering, dear reader, why any staffers would take themselves to such a miserable establishment. Well, the best rationale we can come up with is: We forget on occasion. Although we ineluctably regret every meal we consume from this horrid place, it appears as if the recollection of this regret only lasts about a week. So, when, say, next Thursday rolls around, you can bet that a couple of junior and senior staffers will head to “Panda Snacks”—and spend an unfortunate afternoon on the toilet.

Yet we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” don’t want to spend today’s “post” complaining about the un-comestible victuals at this dive. Rather, we aim to spend today’s “post” complaining about the ridiculous fortunes we have received in recent fortune cookies. That, we figure, is a much classier topic of conversation.

After all, even an execrable Chinese food outfit such as “The Edible Panda” has the typical fortune cookies. They’re the one part of the meal even they can’t screw up.

And yet, as one of the junior editors here at “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly”—let’s just call him “Chip”—discovered, the folks at “Kill the Panda” can even ruin a perfectly good fortune cookie.

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.