Thursday, September 1, 2011

Today's fortune: September 1, 2011

Today's fortune: You have a potential urge and the ability for accomplishment.

Huh.

Potential urge? I don't really have anything to say about that.

Fortunately, the internet has taken the liberty of examining the phrase for me. Being that this is the 21st Century, I Googled "potential urge." Unless the story was referring to a news headline (like "Industry Executives Tout Job Creation Potential, Urge Congress"), all of the links were references to this exact fortune.

And the bloggers who have taken a crack at this fortune have found themselves inspired by the phrase's silliness or touched by the profundity of the words. Let's take a look at the first three examples that came up in the Google search, in order:

1. A Usingenglish.com reader posted the phrase, and received a literal interpretation from many commenters, one of whom said "potential urge" means having the capacity to develop a strong impulse, or as an example, "(Someone) who has absolutely no evident desire or impulse to do anything at the moment - but there is the seed of an urge," the commenter wrote.

2. The Feuer Thoughts Blog believes "...the fortune was constructed by a computer program that semi-randomly throws words together or works through permutations of phrases." I hope not - that means writers are being put out of work by computers!

3. On his blog, Eric Haller writes, "This cookie is raising some issues of freewill and determinism." That's deep, Eric. But then Mr. Haller lessens the blow of his life-altering words by writing, "Or maybe it isn’t, maybe I’m overthinking what is just a cookie." Welcome to my life, Haller.

Since I can't seem to find much wisdom from the fortune, I'm choosing to be inspired instead by the cookie itself. The vessel with which this fortune was delivered to me this morning was burnt to a crisp and barely edible. Here is the half I couldn't choke down next to a regular fortune cookie:


So taking that as a cue, I'm going to eat something well-done this weekend. This should make my mother happy, since she likes her food one or two notches past well done.

I'll save this half of the cookie for you, Mom.

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