You know how sometimes you buy a DVD called something like "51 SAS Choke Holds", or "10 Ways to Please Your Man" or "11 Amazing Quiche Recipes". Or possibly a book, or a video. Also, you may steal it, or possibly intuited it from the astral plane. Anyway, regardless of what it is and how you got it, that's all fine so far. The part that bugs me is when they then add a "BONUS TECHNIQUE!!!"

It's an arbitrary number, douchebag! It's not like I paid for 10 candies, and you threw in an extra one 'cause you're a good buddy. No, you just falsely reported the content of your book. And now I'm supposed to be thrilled because you lied to me. Just call it "52 SAS Choke Holds" already. Are there people out there who say "Well, the book cost me $130, so that's $2.50 per choke hold. Score, that bonus choke hold was worth ten wings on Thursday night!"

Okay, so a group of people are making a horror movie, and set up at an old house in the middle of nowhere. Charlie, the young PA, meets the groundskeeper, who teaches him about his super powers. Unfortunately, the ghosts in the house drive the lead actor insane, and he starts killing the rest of the cast and crew. Finally, at the end, Charlie calls upon his tiger blood powers to save the day by killing the ghosts and simultaneously playing every (male) part in the movie. Finally, he achieves fame and fortune, and retires along with both of the lead actresses and an unexpectedly hot makeup girl.

I call it "The Sheening."

A physicist and his friend meet after work to talk. "Hey," says the physicist, "Guess What? I got that job working on the large hadron collider!"

"What? But didn't you already accept a job at Oxford University?"

"Yeah, I'm totally psyched to start that."

"But if you're going to work at Oxford, how could you accept another job on the continent?"

"Well, they offered me a super position."

English Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding (4)
The roast beef flavour is spot on here, but I'm having trouble picking out the yorkshire pudding. Wierdly, the roast beef is extremely accurate, right down to the occaisional line of fat streaked through the beef. I'm not a huge fan of this flavour, but it certainly does a good job of capturing the roast beef experience, and fans of that dish should give it a try. Fans of yorkshire pudding may want to skip it, though.

French Garlic Baguette (1.5)
Bland and innofensive, one can barely taste the garlic. The greasy aftertaste is possibly more flavourful, albiet less pleasant, than
the chip itself. They also have a wierd texture, more like Pringles than a real potato chip. They do have a very satisfying crunch to them, but otherwise they are barely passable - any worse and I couldn't have finished the bag. Once again, the French drop the ball.

German Bratwurst Sausage (2)
This chip has a robust, full bodied flavour that explodes across the palette, but alas while strong the flavour is so-so at best, with a vague undertone of organ meats that I could live well without. Still, it is one of the more accurate flavors, and certainly quite sausagy.

Japanese Teriyaki Chicken (4)
At first this flavour seemed bland, but after a few chips I began to see that it is also subtle. The flavour is layered and complex, slightly sweet, slightly spicy, slightly savoury. It doesn't taste particularly like teriyaki chicken to me, but it's certainly a pleasant enough flavour. For some reason, it tastes much better when I lick the residue off my lips that when I actualy eat the chip, however.

Well, the British import store down on Columbia Street just got in the new, experimental flavours of chips. Last years flavours were somewhat questionable, but this time around they have either better ideas or better implementation. In any case, I haven't yet regretted eating the new flavours, so they're a step up. Anyway, I've eaten four bags so far, and written reviews as I did it. The reviews aren't funny, unless it's because my life is so entertainingly pathetic, but they do describe the new flavours accurately, to my mind.

Argentinean Flame Grilled Steak (3.5)
You can realy taste the 'flame grilled' component of this chip. The steak taste is somewhat compromised by the potatoish undertones, but the aftertaste is quite meaty. Overall, a little bland, but certainly worth checking out.

American Cheeseburger  (3.0)
Cheeseburger is a complex taste, constructed from multiple layers, and any attempt to compress it into a single flavour is doomed to failure. Is it tasty? Yes. It's a little bland, but it has depth and complexity to it. Does it taste like cheeseburger? No, it doesn't.

Brazilian Salsa (2.0)
It's not that this flavour is bad. It tastes pretty decent. It even tastes very like salsa. The one thing it does not do, however, is compete with actual salsa on chips. If this were something not ordinarily dipped in salsa, I'd probably give it a 3, but as it is I feel this snack falls short. I have a feeling they'd be amazing with salsa con quesa.

Dutch Edam Cheese (2.0)
Nothing realy new here, as we're all familiar with generic chip-cheese flavour. No, it's not quite the same, but pretty close. To be fair, edam cheese is much cooler for its wax than its flavour, but still - this flavour combines the worst of the chip and edam worlds. Still, they are fairly tasty, which is mostly what a chip is about.

Yep. For want of anything better to do, I've decided to share some more of what I assume is wisdom. All in all, I prefer my cookies to be filled with some kind of creamy filling, or at least chocolate chips, but wisdom is good too, I suppose.

"Imagination rules the world."
So if I imagine imagination passing the reigns of power to me, how does that work?

"Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing perfectly."
Clearly, this cookie lacks tao.

"What is to give light must endure the burning."
I like this one. It feels profound. That's much more important than actually being profound, for a fortune cookie, because let's face it, anyone who turns to fortune cookies for serious advice about their life is probably not going to go too far, but people who look to fortune cookies for neat quotes they can put on their facebook page will probably average around 33%.

"Judge each day not by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant."
This advice is as good as your knowledge of agriculture. If you are planting your seeds in poor, arid soil, then I guess it might make you feel better about yourself, right before you starve.

"So live that you wouldn't be afraid to sell the family parrot to the town gossip."
Simple, earthy advice, posed in a manner that is neither simple nor earthy. This is everything fortune cookies are about - you start with a single nugget of the distilled wisdom of the ages, and then you bury it in bullshit and pass it on. Seriously, who has a family parrot?

"Failure is the virtual way to prepare you for great responsibility."
I can only assume that this fortune is preparing its writer for the task of ruling the world. Assuming, of course, that it can get imagination to move over and let him share the throne.

"The path of life will lead upwards for you."
I'm sure this is supposed to be a good thing, but clearly the writer didn't think it through. Possibly he's never walked uphill before...

Well, there you go. I hope you found something here to guide your life along a better path. Or at least you memorized that light/burning one, so that you can repeat it at an apposite moment, and seem all deep and profound.

For some time now, every time I have had Chinese food, I have collected the slips of paper from the fortune cookies. As a result, I now have a bowl full of wisdom to share with the world, and have decided to share some of that wisdom with the world, through this page. Enjoy.

"Your enthusiasm towards work will soon pay off."
I like this one because of the assumptions it makes. Of course the person reading this is enthusiastic about work! Why wouldn't they be. I guess writing slips of paper for fortune cookies must be a pretty great job. Actually, now I think about it, it sounds like an awesome job. I should totally get on in that racket.

"You will become a great philanthropist in your later years."
No doubt with all the wealth generated by my enthusiasm about my new fortune cookie job.

"You may be hungry soon: order a takeout now."
Seriously. I'm not making this up, I promise. I'll try to get it scanned, because I realise how preposterous it sounds, but yes, someone really is THAT brazen.

"A smile increases your face value."
Sometimes I wonder... Is this just a silly pun combined with a trite platitude, or is there some inscrutable wisdom behind it, some transcendent mind that sees the world in ways I could never begin to understand, and attempts to communicate that vast wisdom using a language poorly suited to the task. I guess I'll never know.

"Everyone agrees you are the best."
Yay me!

"Take that luxury way, what you spent will get pay back."
Thank you fortune cookie man, your financial acumen is as dubious as your grammar.

"Love is like sweet nectarine, good to the last drop."
Possibly he is thinking of sweet nectar. Also, possibly he is confusing love with Pepsi.

"In order to discover who you are, first learn who everybody else is. You're what's left."
I'm not sure what to make of this. It seems like I'd be a lot of things - unicorns, trees, star dust, piles of rocks... Then again, maybe on closer examination, other people will prove to be all of those things, and I'll just be me. Either way, it seems like an unnecessarily circuitous methodology.

"The worst bankruptcy in the world is the person who has lost his enthusiasm."
I wonder if I can qualify for a bailout?

"Right now you need to be patient."
And so do you, because that's it for this update. Talk to you next time.

It just occured to me that Sadam would probably have happily sold Iraq to the US for .5% of the money it's cost them so far. If they'd invested another, say, 1.5% of that money in a combination of advertising and social programs in Iraq, they might even have gotten some hearts and minds on their side.

It would still probably have been a poor investment, but less people would have died.

Today I will be taking on the various denizens of the supernatural world that threaten our very existence as a species. Or, you know, would if they existed. Whatever. I'm not too proud to rate things that probably don't exist. Hell, I rated hippos, and I'm not 100% convinced they're not actually robots.

Vampires
Blood sucking fiends, vampires have a vast array of supernatural powers with which to overwhelm their opponents. On the other hand, they also have a nearly as vast array of weaknesses. Now, some of their weaknesses are pretty acceptable. They can be killed by decapitation or a stake through the heart, but I can't really mock them for that, since those things also kill me. On the other hand, they are unable to look at crosses, cross running water, cross a threshold uninvited.... Oh, and the sun kills them, so they're vulnerable to being outdoors about 50% of the time. Oh, and lets not forget garlic. Seriously, it's quite possible that vampires did exist, but went insane trying to keep track of all their vulnerabilities after half their numbers were wiped out in the great meatloaf fiasco. All in all, vampires just aren't that scary. Plus seriously, vampires would be a lot cooler if they just completely banned women from writing books about them. 6/18.

Demons
Demons are the rockstars of the world of darkness. Well, I guess technically Marilyn Manson is the rockstar of the world of darkness, but compared to demons he's The Partridge Family. These things have a wide and often disgusting range of powers, from possessing people to taking on corporeal form and eating them. As for weaknesses, they're just plain unreliable. Sure, a cross might repel a demon, or it might cause the demon to laugh mockingly and make a long, gothy speech that makes you wish you were dead before it, well, grants your wish. The fundamental flaw with demons is that they are kind of a big giveaway. I mean, if a ravening demon is about to eat you, that pretty much answers the whole religion question. As long as you repent before it can finish killing you, the demon has pretty much given you a free ticket up to heaven. All in all, being attacked by a demon would have so many fascinating philosophical implications that it might be worth it. You know, unless it's one of those sneaky, subtle demons that acts primarily through human dupes. That would just be unpleasant. 18/22.

Dinosaurs
I'm pretty sure these are fictional creatures invented by cavemen to terrify children into unquestioning obedience. Later years brought superior child-scaring devices, capable of fitting under beds and into closets, and thus more able to invade the childs world. I mean, after a while, children are going to start wondering how the dinosaur even knows how late they're up, but a monster that lives under your bed? Obviously it knows exactly when you're in bed. And it'd better not be later. Still, the dinosaur myth carries a sense of epic grandeur that is missing from other, smaller terrors of the night. Plus, I bet you could go down a t-rex's throat still alive, if you were quick and agile. Then you could punch your way out of it from the inside, and all your friends would be super-impressed. 197,000/200,000.

Cursed Dolls
At first, the cursed doll concept seems totally ridiculous, but that's because movies with cursed dolls are generally not available to anyone who actually owns dolls. I bet if you showed those movies to a child with a collection of similar dolls, the kid would find it pretty scary. I guess these dolls have superhuman strength to make up for their lack of leverage, since otherwise they wouldn't be very challenging in a fight. The problem with these dolls is that ultimately, they're just too destructible. I mean, they have all the weaknesses of a doll, except for mindlessness and total immobility. Admittedly, those are certainly a doll's biggest weaknesses, but most dolls are also vulnerable either to fire or crushing, neither of which is all that tough to arrange for a shin-high opponent. It would be kind of cool to capture some cursed dolls and make them run mazes and stuff. 3/75.

Somewhat confused, he puts the coconut in the lime. He is too exhausted to shake it all in even a single place, for it was not easy. The lime resisted mightily. As he recovers, he notices the smug expression of the coconut. It will soon fade, when it finds out where the watermelon is going.

That night, he is killed in his sleep by a gang of terrified grapes.