Confucius say....WTF???

Okay, so today I go downstairs to the cafeteria to get a Noodle Bowl, and am delighted to find out that the Noodle Place gives you a fortune cookie with your food. I love fortune cookies, especially the vanilla-flavored ones (as opposed to the orangey ones) - it may be hard for your tastebuds to distinguish between the actual cookie and the paper fortune, but dangit, it's not about flavor, it's about the fortune. And sometimes the lucky numbers/say it in Chinese! feature on the back of the fortune. Frankly, there's a lot of enjoyment to be had in something so small and uncomplicated.

My delight was, however, significantly dampened when I realized that I had taken the World's Lamest Fortune Cookie (tm). You may ask, how Lame does a fortune cookie have to be to win the title of World's Lamest (tm)? I give you Exhibit A, my fortune:

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Take that step today!"

This is annoying on so many levels. First and foremost, it is NOT A FORTUNE. At best, it is advice - extremely vague advice at that, and not really very helpful, even if I WERE the type to make major life decisions based on what cellophane-wrapped desserts told me to do. But this sort of offense has reached near epidemic levels in the fortune cookie world, so it is hardly surprising. Secondly - that exclamation point. Fortunes should be vaguely, solemnly inspiring...not perky. There are starving aerobics instructors in Africa that would be thrilled to have that exclamation point - it's really just going to waste here. Perhaps most importantly, the fortune is not improved AT ALL by adding the words, "in bed!" Even the lamest non-fortunes become funny when you add "in bed," (i.e., It is better to give than to receive...in bed) and the best ones become that much better (i.e., You are the greatest person in the world...in bed). But not this fortune - the "in bed" appendix does nothing for it, and it's only marginally improved by the addition of "in my pants." But only because "in my pants" is an inherently funnier phrase than "in bed" - it still doesn't make any sense, but at least the "in my pants" is there to bring home the giggle. But oh...it gets worse. I flip my fortune over, only to find...no lottery numbers...no "how to say 'milk' in Chinese!" (that one's my favorite because dude, Chinese people are largely lactose intolerant - is it really a word I'm going to use much should I ever need to put my fortune-cookie language skills to use? Will I really ever find myself in a situation saying, "Dammit, if I only had the vocabulary, I could talk to this Chinese person about DAIRY!"?)...just the same damned fortune IN FRENCH. You know what? "Take the first step today!" in French? EQUALLY LAME.

Man. If a girl can't enjoy her Western bastardizations of Chinese culture, what reason is there to go on living? Or at least, to buy an overpriced noodle bowl?