This is a very expensive restaurant. A bowl of fortune cookies lies on the table between you as you eat your meal. Tiny microphones pick up your conversation and relay it to a team of analysts of impeccable confidentiality and integrity. If an unanswered question or elusive fact crops up in your conversation ("What *was* the name of the actor who played The Fonz in Happy Days?") the analysts send the answer to the bank of powerful X-Ray lasers in the ceiling above your table. None of these lasers is, on its own sufficiently powerful to burn or damage anything, but where their beams intersect, they are just powerful enough to lightly char paper. A camera in the ceiling analyses the position and orientation of the top fortune cookie on the pile between you and the lasers focus and direct their beams so that, together, they write the answer to your question on the blank slip of paper inside the fortune cookie.-- hippo, Nov 17 2010 Henry Winkler wasn't it?-- zen_tom, Nov 17 2010 "You will soon get the bill"?-- pertinax, Nov 17 2010 Wouldn't the paper need to be laid out nice and flat for this to work?-- DrBob, Nov 17 2010 I NEVER pick the fortune cookie on the top!! I swish them around like a grab-bag game so this wouldn't work for me.-- xandram, Nov 17 2010 Most chinese restuarants I've been to bring the fortune cookies with the bill, at the end of the meal. So, would it not be easier to just make the uncannily relevant fortune cookie back in the kitchen using the information gathered?
[+].-- MikeD, Nov 17 2010 IR lasers might be a better choice. +-- csea, Nov 17 2010 "You will be hungry again in three hours."-- Boomershine, Nov 17 2010 Yeah, but with [MikeD]'s approach, one will get a sense of the freshness of the cookie thus making the whole affair a little fishy.-- daseva, Nov 17 2010 OK, if you go with [MikeD]'s idea, I'll give a fortunate bun! (It reminds me of the most scary fun house I went in years ago at Virginia Beach...people behind the walls listened to what was said and then followed you mimicking your words! (they also chased us with chain saws running!!)-- xandram, Nov 17 2010 "You will develop strange lines of melanomas on your right hand. They will spell out the message "You will develop strange lines of....""-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 17 2010 For a dinner date: "You will get laid tonight," Or "You will NOT get laid tonight," determined by the timbre of the conversation...and given to both diners, just to facilitate matters.
THE best fortune I ever got, without question: "You will earn thousands of dollars by doing nothing." I am not kidding...and there were THREE copies in the same cookie.
Now, I just sit back and wait....and wait.-- Boomershine, Nov 17 2010 Boomershine must work for the Italian Government.-- RayfordSteele, Nov 17 2010 //Wouldn't the paper need to be laid out nice and flat for this to work// in bed.
//IR lasers might be a better choice// in bed.
//You will be hungry again in three hours// in bed.
//You will develop strange lines of melanomas on your right hand// in bed.
//You will earn thousands of dollars by doing nothing// in bed.
//You will NOT get laid tonight// in bed.
//Now, I just sit back and wait....and wait// in bed.
//This could easily end up being the inverse of the MP philosophers sketch// in bed.
//Boomershine must work for the Italian Government.// in bed.-- infidel, Nov 17 2010 [-] before or after the breach-of-privacy lawsuits ? Cute but the wisps of smoke from the fortune-cookie bowl and the forehead bruises from the dangling microphone might make it less than believable.-- FlyingToaster, Nov 17 2010 I'm quite sure this will never work.... he he-- xenzag, Nov 17 2010 [infidel] Hey, that really works! About as well as "That's what she said."-- Boomershine, Nov 17 2010 This whole fortune cookie thing has long been a minor issue with me. Most aren't fortunes at all, just some dumb astrological sort of thing, like, "You make friends easily," or some other drivel.
I want a damn PREDICTION of something that IS GOING to come true...like "Making thousands doing nothing." I'm not letting go of it, either. If I work for the Italian gov't (news to me), I should be getting a check, shouldn't I?-- Boomershine, Nov 17 2010 //I should be getting a check//
Start with STDs, cardiac, renal, bloods and an MRI of your brain.-- infidel, Nov 18 2010 Good point. Plus, I'd get a better look at the future from those.-- Boomershine, Nov 18 2010 //Cute but the wisps of smoke from the fortune-cookie bowl and the forehead bruises from the dangling microphone might make it less than believable.//
When did you become such a sour-puss, [FT]? I seem to remember you being a helluva lot more fun...
//"You will get laid tonight,"//
You'd better have a hooker on alert, in case I fuck up the end-game. I will not tolerate having my hopes built up like this, just to be let down.-- MikeD, Nov 18 2010 //I want a damn PREDICTION of something that IS GOING to come true//
Nobody Reeeeally wants to know their future for sure. If someone could reliably predict things about to happen to you the helplessness brought on by the lack of causality would make a person rail against fate and do everything in thier power to try and change the prediction. If even under those conditions the predictions still come true then I imagine that that person would find it necessary to do away with the oracle.
Maybe the cookies are ambiguous on purpose.<shhh they'll hear you>-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 18 2010 //Maybe the cookies are ambiguous on purpose.//
Of course they are. Just like horoscopes and the lot. I just think it would be more fun if those fortunes were more specific and predictive, not analytical or advisory.-- Boomershine, Nov 18 2010 //I should be getting a check//
Sp.: cheque. This colonial spelling is just a fad.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 19 2010 Apparently, colonies were just a fad, too.-- Boomershine, Nov 19 2010 //Apparently, colonies were just a fad, too//
I think the Iraqis and Afghans are about to teach that to the US government sometime soon.-- infidel, Nov 19 2010 //about to teach that// Remains to be seen. One can't be said to have taught anything unless the student learns it.-- mouseposture, Nov 20 2010 That's true, though Russia, Britain and Alexander's Macedonia got the lesson in the long run.-- infidel, Nov 20 2010 "That wasn't chicken."-- Grogster, Nov 20 2010 [Grogster] Not a prediction. I suggest "You will soon start a course of antihelminthics."-- mouseposture, Nov 20 2010 //"That wasn't chicken."//
See, that 'fortune' although somewhat funny, is not a fortune, as [mouse] points out. Turn it into, "You will feel sick soon," and you have something more like what I had in mind. They don't all have to be good fortunes.-- Boomershine, Nov 21 2010 "Psychics will lead dogs to your body."-- Grogster, Nov 21 2010 "You will be host to a party of billions."-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 21 2010 random, halfbakery