So the Local Cool Guy and I were at one of our happy places. We were at the Mongolian Barbecue. Mmm...Mongolian Barbecue. We love the Mongolian Barbecue. We love the soup, and we love the fact that LCG's stir-fry always ignites and shoots flames at least a foot into the air. ("There's no such thing as too much cooking wine," says he.) And I really love the fortune cookies.
I get the best fortunes ever at that restaurant. They are always things like, "You have impeccable taste in music and your hair smells terrific!" And LCG always gets, "Your friend across the table is the greatest friend you will ever have." So it's really win-win for me.
Okay, maybe not. But I do have two fortunes that I have gotten there that I carry in my pocket. One is, "You are a lover of words someday you will write a book." Woo-hoo! That means we can all look forward to Rocksnobs: The Novel at some point. (Although whoever wrote that fortune could use a brief tutorial on grammar. Or at least punctuation.) The other fortune I tote is, "Your love of music will be an important part of your life." Woo-hoo! The cookie told me that I could make a living off the web site. The cookies rule!
But recently, I got the stupidest fortune ever. It read, "Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it." What? What happened to the goodness of the cookies at the Mongolian Barbecue? Why did that fortune have to suck so much? But then I realized that there was a typo. There was a capital letter missing. It should have read, "Absence sharpens love, Presence strengthens it." They didn't mean presence as in proximity, they meant Presence as in the Led Zeppelin album.
Well, wait now. That isn't much better, is it? There is nothing strong about Presence, is there? I am not the last word on Led Zeppelin, because, you know, I hate them, but isn't it safe to say that Presence is the weak link in their chain? You might just as well say that "Absence sharpens love, Unmasked strengthens it." Or Hot Space. Or The Doctor. Or The Spaghetti Incident.
I mean, if the cookie people are going to write really lame fortunes that happen to contain album titles, they should put a little more effort into it. They could maybe select some better albums, for starters. I, for one, would be very happy if I finished up my delicious Mongolian Barbecue and cracked open a cookie that said, "You will find love in the court of the crimson king." Or what about, "Take some time this week to get yer ya-ya's out." These would tell me that the cookie people were trying. Unless, of course, I opened my cookie and found the one written by the disgruntled fortune cookie writer. The last one he wrote before he left for lunch and never came back. Then I would end up with, "You seem to have that invisible touch-eh."