The Old New Thing

When I was a kid, a couple of my parents' friends would play this game where, during a pre-determined period, whichever player successfully gives the other player something first wins. Could be anything from an expensive birthday present to just handing the other guy a pen or a piece of paper. They claimed the game originated in Persia.

Handing the other player this fortune sounds like it would be the ultimate finishing move.

My friends have a little "game" with fortune cookies. When you read a fortune add "in bed" to the end.

Have yet to find a fortune with this did not work and some are very funny with this small change.

Someone will give you something

becomes

Someone will give you something in bed

"British Gas have made a mistake - your rebate is in the post" was one rather optimistic one I once unwrapped. As I'm not a customer of British Gas that would have to be quite a mistake, so I'm still waiting. :-(

@Billy The Clown & @benryves

I think you need to combine these two things.

When reading a fortune, you should add "Your rebate is in the post" to the end. (Feel free to substitute "in the mail" if you happen to be American at the time.) Perhaps not as sexually charged as the classic "in bed" version, but likely to be much more surreal.

As a twist on the classic "in bed", I've found that adding "except in bed" can end up funnier.  The classic "in bed" relies on sexual innuendo, while the "except in bed" is good for (self)deprecating humor.

The "Except in bed" joke is an old XKCD comic.

At least not everyone is doing it. I got one from our local kosher Chinese outfit saying "Your current financial problems will be solved as if by magic" (hmm, how does adding in bed work with that one? Maybe if inserted after solved...). I thought, what financial problems? A month later I was laid off.

"A month later I was laid off."... in bed?

This fortune cookie is delicious! [more] It has a scrap of paper inside. It reads:

Actually I am a bit of a fortune collector.  What I like to do is take the fortunes on the front, and the 'learn Chinese' message on the back and try to apply them to each other.  Sometimes you get good results!

[ Teamwork makes the dream work. ]

[ Learn Chinese: Not. ]

[ There is a prospect of a thrilling time ahead of you. ]

[ Learn Chinese: I am a lawyer. ]

[ A charming friendship is in the making. ]

[ Learn Chinese: Drunk, tipsy ]

[ Important news will come from far away. ]

[ Learn Chinese: I need money. ]

Obviously the fortune cookie place in the local area has some pretty strange folk.  The best I remember was some time ago:

[ You need a change of environment, wallpaper your bathroom. ]

Did that one immediately come true when the waiter brought you the check? How DO they do it???

Of course, the opposite is that the fortunes can be too specific :)

"You will find true love on Flag Day"

Yep, even "The Simpsons" has this covered.

@Neil: Damn.  Now I'm not sure if we came up with that beforehand, or if suffering severe source amnesia.  The comic is only a year old, and I think we were using it well before then, but memory is tricky like that.  Of course, like many XKCD readers, I'm convinced Randall Munroe is spying on me for about half his comic ideas...

Link for the interested: http://xkcd.com/425/

@Boris: It's acceptable to insert a comma between the fortune and "in bed".  "Your current financial problems will be solved as if by magic, in bed" (Hooray for prostitution ;-) ).  If it strains the syntax too badly, I think most people accept mid-sentence insertion at a logical point.

A friend of mine once got the fortune:

"Digital circuits are made from analog components."

One of the craziest fortunes I've seen -- more along the line of Raymond's post -- was "a useless life is an early death". Gee, how uplifting.

My favorite fortune cookie fortune:

"It tastes sweet."

Oh, yes it does.

Myself I tend to oscillate back and forth between believing that the fortune cookies are random gibberish to being spot on real. It's so disturbing...

My favourite one: "Keep reading this until the others pay the bill"

Many years ago in college I spent a few months as a waiter in a Chinese food restaurant.  One day we got bored and used tweezers to pull the fortunes out of the cookies and replace them with fake ones we printed.    My favorite was 'Someone is stealing your car right now'.  Invariably if someone got that one they'd get up and check.

Re: "You will find true love on Flag Day"

I actually got that fortune from a cookie once, and thought it oddly specific. Two months later my daughter was born 2 weeks early on June 14th (Flag Day)

that one did it, I dont think it can get any less interesting.

My favorite fortune was "Things could be better, but they're good enough."

My favorite:  "You will receive a small fortune."

The best fortune I read was the one that the Linux fortune program picked for a root shell on one of my systems:

"You'll be sorry..."

I once got: "This fortune is false."

I didn't know whether to believe it or not.

I once got "Fortune not found: Abort, Retry, Fail?"

"You can't possibly live long enough to make all of them yourself."

Help me, I am trapped inside a Chinese fortune cookie factory...

I once got one that said "Wash face at morning, neck at night."

I tried it; it didn't work.

If you're going to explicitly define a background colour for some text, you should probably define the text colour as well.

People reading via RSS with dark backgrounds get to see white text in your yellow box.

"You Will Be Found In A Dumpster" -- Actually it didn't say that.  

More like -- "You Will Be Successful" which is a real pick-me-up in this economic climate!

Oh and once I received one that said, "You Will Win The Lottery".  Seriously.  But I never did.  Maybe tonight?  

One non-fortune that I've seen is "You will buy new clothes." Although an entirely accurate prediction for everyone, it's not a very interesting one.

enum FORTUNE

{

TRUE,

FALSE,

COOKIE_NOT_FOUND

};

@Skip:

You didn't work in Boulder, CO by any chance, did you?

I never got this one myself, but the folks at the next table one day were recounting the (scariest|funniest|whatever) fortune they'd received:

You have a secret admirer.

Lock your doors.

I once opened a Fortune cookie that was empty. A couple of my more superstitious friends avoided me for weeks.

My favourite fortune cookie said "Consolidate your interests while the lights are active".  I assume this is a word-for-word translation of some Chinese proverb -- if we translated "make hay while the sun shines" or "strike while the iron is hot" directly into Chinese it might make about as much sense. Anyway, I immediately emailed my financial advisor and told her that a fortune cookie had told me to consolidate my interests while the lights were active, and she said she'd look into it.

The fortune cookies from one place I go - Asian Too in Viera, FL - have amusing fortunes.

One read:

You are about to become $8.95 poorer ($6.95 if you had the buffet).

These fortunes also have a "learn Chinese" word on the back.

A recent one unfortunately had the Chinese word for disease: turns out it's pronounced "bing".

The best fortune that I ever received: "Lucky you. Get out your party clothes. The clean ones."

I keep it in my wallet.

They need to make 2 versions of cookies.

First one is "safe fortune cookie".

And second one "Interesting and scary cookie, but you have been warned!"

:))

You should try personalizing the cookies yourself, that can make it more fun and definitely more relevant. The worst one I have gotten recently is "Your lucky number is 9." That is NOT a fortune!

Hah, I've also been underwhelmed by "somebody will give you something".

My all-time favorite was "Everyone agrees that you are the best." Taped that one to my monitor for a while. I'm humble, too.