are increasingly misnamed.

Today, I got a real Fortune Cookie. Apparently, my Golden Opportunity is coming soon. "Neato!" I thought out loud after announcing my fate to the rest of the party. The rest of the party, though, appeared to have a completely different kind of cookie altogether.

In fact, not a whole lot of Fortune Cookies manage to deliver an honest fortune anymore.

Most of them, if you really think about it, are Attribute Cookies. "You have many loyal friends" and so on. As we all know, these are a real drag to get. Either it's true and you knew it already, or it's not true at all and the cookie is simply making fun of you.

Then, there are the Admonition Cookies, containing little nuggets such as "If you value tomorrow's happiness, attend to the success of the day."

Yes. That's what I need, a lecture from a bite-sized confection. Especially at what is probably the end of the day, where you're either on top of the situation already or much too far behind to worry about it anymore until morning.

Once I noticed this, I got to thinking: Why all the hedging? Why won't these smug little cookies just up and out with a fortune? I've been thinking about it for a while now, and I think I've got it. I believe that the Fortune Cookies... are too nice to tell you when something really bad is about to happen. Instead, they try to make you feel better by focusing on your strong points, or attempt to warn you off of tragedy with a snappy yet cagey two-line proverb.

I wish the cookies would just be up-front with bad news. "You will remain in your current social rut indefinitely" or "Watch for falling boulders" would be nice once in a while. But, no. They are diplomatic to a fault.

So, you know... look out for those other kinds of cookies.