Fortune Cookies

[GeneChing]

I gotta cutback on my Chinese food.

A focused mind is one of the most powerful forces. in the universe.

According to the interwebz, this is a fortune cookie quote.

[bawang]

fortune cookie is such a condescending lame food, is only for appeasing snow people. its just curly pancakes. the only fortune cookie i interested is the hairy kind

when i have to fortune cookie i throw away the fortune paper without looking, i believe it gives u good luck when u dont read that bullsh1t

[mickey]

the only fortune cookie i interested is the hairy kind

STOP THE LYING!!!



mickey

[GeneChing]

It's better to be the beak of a hen than the tail of an ox.

Here's another one that turns up fortune cookie references when googed. I rather like this one.

[GeneChing]

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter.

Allegedly a quote from Izaak Walton.

With our tournament this weekend, I'm not sure how to take this. I do work for a good company, but the way is fraught with challenges right about now.

[GeneChing]

A small donation is call for. It's the right thing to do.

Should be 'called'. This must be an authentic fortune cookie. I left a good tip.

[GeneChing]

For success today look first to yourself.

This is another fortune that when websearched, brings up mostly fortune cookie oriented sites. I'm amazed there are so many of those. There's also some business motivation sites.

[GeneChing]

A gambler not only will lose what he has, but also will lose what he doesn't have.

That's not a gambler. That's a loser. Some gamblers win, not all, but enough to invalidate this fortune.

[GeneChing]

He who hesitates is last.

My old fencing coach, the late Michael D'saro, used to say 'he who hesitates is lost' a lot. I can still hear him and his Brooklyn accent saying this.

[GeneChing]

There's a short vid too that says pretty much the same thing.

Meet the guy who writes the fortune in your fortune cookie
Story by Michelle Kim, CNN
Video by Tawanda Scott, Elias Goodstein, Zahra Haider and Cierra Smith
Updated 5:44 PM ET, Tue August 2, 2016

The man who writes your fortune 01:04

Story highlights
Writer Donald Lau has been writing cookie fortunes for decades
"I am the most read author in the United States," he says
(CNN)Crack open a fortune cookie, and you may find a strange message from the universe or a wise piece of advice. Whatever your interpretation of that slip of paper, fortune cookie writer Donald Lau only hopes it leaves you happy.

"I don't think I'm a fortuneteller," Lau says. "I don't think fortune cookies are meant to be like a horoscope. It's a way to end a meal in a Chinese restaurant and be happy when you leave."
Lau works as the chief financial officer at Wonton Food Company, the largest manufacturer of fortune cookies in the world. But he has also become the unofficial CFW, or chief fortune writer. Lau has been the sole hired fortune writer since the company acquired fortune cookie factories more than 30 years ago.
Finding inspiration from all aspects of life, from taking the subway to participating in business meetings, Lau used to write two or three axioms a day. Due to writer's block and the company's expansion, Lau now writes two or three fortunes a month.
"I feel that I will never be able to write the great American novel, but I can write the fortunes," he says. "I am the most read author in the United States."
This slowdown of fortune writing hasn't affected production. Wonton Foods has a database of thousands of fortunes, gathered from the ones Lau has written over the years, open submissions and the Internet.
Lau says the job was given to him by default, because he spoke the best English when the company was founded. But current Wonton Food CEO Norman Wong believes the job carries deep responsibilities in upholding Chinese tradition.
"We are a Chinese-American company," Wong said. "We see it as our mission to spread Chinese culture and philosophy around the world."
The origin of fortune cookies is much debated. Some say they're actually an American invention, originating from either a Chinese or Japanese restaurant on the West Coast in the early 1900s. Wong says they are rooted in Chinese history, when Chinese patriots rebelling against the Ching dynasty passed messages hidden in pastries.
Despite the company's fortune cookie distribution around the globe -- in the Middle East, Europe and South America -- the cookies still remain widely unknown in China. In the 1990s, Wonton Food opened a factory in Guangzhou, China, only to close it after a few years when the cookies failed to pick up steam in the country.
Wonton Food started as a noodle factory in Manhattan's Chinatown in 1973 and expanded into the fortune cookie business in the 1980s. Passed down from a father, Ching Sun Wong, to son Norman Wong, the business now produces 4 million cookies a day out of its factories in Queens, New York, and Houston.
In the early 1990s, Wonton Food was responsible for adding the Chinese lesson and the lucky numbers on the back of the fortune. The database of fortunes itself continues to be updated to make sure messages are kept modern while still being infused with traditional Chinese principles. An element of Chinese tradition Wong said he hopes the fortune cookies emphasize is taking time during a meal to have meaningful discussion with friends and family.
Throughout the years, the company has considered getting other writers, even reaching the interview stage, but Wong says they have not been able to find anyone who has the same cleverness and humor as Lau.
"It's a search that we have the luxury of doing slowly, making sure we find the right person," Wong says.
He's likely turning to one of Lau's fortunes for solace: "The opposite of stressed is desserts, need relief, order some more."

[GeneChing]

Pat yourself on the back for making that right choice.

I'll choose to pat myself where I please, thank you.

[GeneChing]

...but the parking lot was full, so I hit up my quick little Chinese joint again. It's bad when I eat there more than once in a week.

Optimists believe we live in the best of worlds and pessimist fear this is true.

[GeneChing]

You will love/hate Cards Against Humanity's new fortune cookies
BY SOPHIE HIRSH
AUG 26, 2016

If you've ever ordered Cards Against Humanity from the delightfully corrupt board game's website, you may have noticed how ridiculously simple their interface is.

So, the company behind the game launched Blackbox, a super easy-to-use shipping company for independent artists. To prove just how uncomplicated Blackbox is, the team put together OK Cookie Co, where you can fulfill all your horrible fortune cookie needs.

The fortune cookies each nestle a pessimistic or backhanded message on a slip of paper. For example, "Your wildest dreams will come true, assuming those dreams are about the extinction of honeybees." And, "You are perfect just the way you are. Maybe a nose job."


IMAGE: OK COOKIE CO.

OK Cookie Co's website is indeed very simple. It's just one page with some info about the product, an order button and an interactive slideshow of a few possible fortunes.


IMAGE: OK COOKIE CO.


IMAGE: OK COOKIE CO.

Blackbox has a detailed FAQ section on its website for interested businesses. According to the site, Blackbox’s tools helped get OK Cookie Co. up and running within days.

But the best part? The website is www.blackbox.cool. Not .com, but .cool. Cool.

We wonder if the technology also supports businesses that are for humanity.

Awesome. I should order some for the office.

[GeneChing]

From Cyborg. Now who might this be directed at?

Cris Cyborg Verified account
‏@criscyborg
Who's watching @SFY on @FS1 I'm going live after the commercial #teamcyborg



RETWEETS 10 LIKES 39
2:48 PM - 6 Oct 2016

[GeneChing]

Chinese Fortune Cookies Aren’t Actually Chinese
January 28, 2017 / 2:00 pm
BY BARCLAY BRAM


Photo via Flickr user Tim Ellis

By now, this being 2017 and the Internet existing and all, I think most people know that fortune cookies aren’t the most authentic of Chinese customs.

But what you probably don’t know is that fortune cookies come from a small town outside of Kyoto, that they reveal the history of how Chinese food came to dominate the American palate (there are more Chinese restaurants in the US than there are McDonald’s), and can paint a ****ing critique of the American psyche.

Pretty impressive for a tasteless cookie almost exclusively produced by a single company in Brooklyn.

Let me paint a picture for you. Fukakusa is the home of the Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine, one of the most prominent in Japan. Pilgrims come from all over the country to ring a pair of large bells while praying for health and good fortune. Around the shrine, a series of family bakeries sprang up, selling omikuji senbei (“fortune crackers”) or tsujiura suzu (“bells with fortunes.”) Their shape is supposed to evoke that of the temple bells and the fortunes acted as souvenirs for travellers.

The cookies were not widespread throughout Japan and remain very much a regional specialty. However, as the former New York Times journalist Jennifer 8. Lee discovered in her book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, in the late 19th century, an enterprising Japanese immigrant named Harigawa introduced the cookies to San Francisco.

He came to run the Japanese Tea Garden in the city’s Golden Gate Park and as a way to entice customers, decided to bring over these senbei, which he sold as Japanese fortune teacakes. Not a baker, Hagiwara outsourced their production to Benkyodo, a small Japanese bakery in San Francisco’s Japantown.


Modern-day Japantown, San Francisco. Photo via Flickr user Karl Baron

As time went on, the cookies became more popular and a few Chinese restaurants started to buy from Benkyodo, hoping to pass the cookies off as a pan-Asian delicacy. However, it was only in the 1940s that the cookie made the jump and became firmly associated with the Chinese.

In 1942, as the US began to fight Japan in the Pacific, the staff at Benkyodo was interned. Within the space of a year, the entire Japanese community in San Francisco was rounded up and bussed to camps. The same happened to Japanese communities throughout the US.

Benkyodo was taken over by enterprising Chinese businessmen, whose fortunes had suddenly turned. During the Second World War, the Chinese—the only immigrant community in the US to be explicitly excluded (unless Trump gets his way)—went from being marginalised and shunted into Chinatown ghettos to being allies in the fight against fascism.

More importantly, Chinese food, which made a little meat go a long way with dishes like chop suey, suddenly became an attractive alternative to American staples, suffering heavily at the time due to wartime rationing (meat-and-two-veg looks pretty **** with no meat). This is how Chinese food, which had previously only been eaten by Chinese locals or avant garde bohemians willing to venture into Chinatown, began to reach the mainstream palate. The economy in San Francisco Chinatown quadrupled between 1941 and 1943.

Rationing and a desire to appeal to the mass market also pushed Chinese restaurateurs to innovate at this time, creating a cuisine sufficiently Westernised to not offend the American palate, but different enough to remain “exotic.”

The fortune cookie’s profile was on the up, too. American soldiers sent to fight in the Pacific Theatre in the Second World War arrived in cities with large Chinatowns such as LA and San Francisco, where they discovered the cookies. When the War ended and the soldiers returned to their hometowns and went to local Chinese restaurants, they demanded fortune cookies with their meals, believing them to be a common part of the cuisine. Perplexed, the Chinese owners called relatives and friends based on the West Coast and sourced the cookies. Large-scale factories sprang up to service the demand.

But to call them “fortune cookies” is slightly misleading. As Lee discovered when she interviewed the writers of the fortunes inside the cookies, your creativity hits a wall pretty quickly in this job. After all, as she noted, there are only so many things you can predict—love, business, or health.


Photo via Flickr user Steve Harwood

Fortune cookie writers are also limited by the fact that Americans expect good fortunes. Customers complain to restaurants when they get a bad fortune and as such, companies peddling fortunes that are negative or ambiguous enough to be construed negatively quickly discover there is no demand for their product. It is ironic, therefore, that despite coining the phrase “that’s the way the cookie crumbles,” fortune cookies can also work as a metaphor for the fragility of the American ego.

In China, where fortunes and the concept of fortune-telling is more prevalent, it would be unthinkable to give only positive fortunes. There has to be balance and a negative fortune can be seen as giving a warning that forces preventative action. Without negative fortunes, there is no critical feedback.

Pushed into a corner by having to be universally positive and by the overall lack of things you can speculate on, American fortune cookie writers quickly struck on the idea of using proverbs, often translated directly from the Chinese. When these ran dry, pithy but non-offensive cliches came to rule the day, which can explain why a lot of “fortunes” don’t sound like fortunes at all. “Happiness is a full belly,” for example, isn’t going to do much for that situation with your boss or help you navigate Brexit.

Another unique feature of the American psyche that complicates fortune-writing is the fact that Americans always need new things. Diners at Chinese restaurants in the US don’t want to receive the same fortune twice and as such, they must be cranked out at a ridiculous rate.

Donald Lau has been the sole fortune cookie writer at Wonton Foods Inc, the world’s largest manufacturer of the cookies, for more than 30 years. At the height of his career, he was writing two or three fortunes a day—a target so high it caused him to suffer writer’s block and downscale his output to just three fortunes a month.

This could go some way in explaining why it is that no one has managed to re-engineer the fortune cookie on a mass scale and sell it back to the Chinese. It’s just far too American.

I want Donald Lau's job. As I've said here before, I've always dreamed of being a fortune cookie writer. Ironically, I have a cousin named Don Lau, but this is not him.