How did the fortune cookie get it's shape?!
Question:
How did the fortune cookie get it's shape?
Anyone know this? http://tools.atspace.org/programs.htm...
Answers:
The Fortune Cookie is a delicate, crisp cookie made from flour, sugar, butter, vanilla, and milk which is baked around a fortune, a piece of paper with words of faux wisdom or vague prophecy. In the United States it is usually served with Chinese food as a dessert. The message inside may also include a list of lucky numbers (used by some as lottery numbers) and a Chinese phrase with translation. Despite conventional wisdom, they were actually invented in California.
Etymology
The cookies are generally called by the English term fortune cookies, even by Chinese Americans, as there is no standard Chinese term for them. In the Chinese language, however, fortune cookie has been translated variously as 幸运签饼, 签语饼, 幸运饼, 幸运签语饼, 幸运甜饼, 幸福饼干, 幸运饼干, 幸运饼, 幸运籤语饼, 籤语饼, or 占卜饼.
Fortune cookie software
A number of web pages now include fortune cookie-like words of wisdom or other quotes. The Unix program fortune is sometimes used to generate these messages. There are software applications that will append a "fortune cookie" within a user's e-mail signature tag; that is, a random quote, item of trivia, joke, or maxim printed at the bottom of the sender's e-mail message. There are many different fortune cookie databases in public distribution, and some users will often assemble their own lists from various sources.
Fortune cookie payout
The U.S. Powerball lottery drawing of the March 30, 2005 game produced an unprecedented 110 second-place winners, all of whom picked five numbers correctly with no powerball number. The total came out to $19.4 million in unexpected payouts. 89 tickets won $100,000, but 21 additional tickets won $500,000 due to the Power Play multiplier option.[3]
Powerball officials initially suspected fraud, but it turned out that all the winners received their numbers from fortune cookies made by Wonton Food Inc.[4], a fortune cookie factory in Long Island City, Queens, New York. Apparently, number combinations printed on fortunes are reused in thousands of cookies per day. The five winning numbers were 22, 28, 32, 33, and 39. The sixth number in the fortune, 40, did not match the powerball number, 42.[3]
In popular culture
The non-Chinese origin of the fortune cookie is humorously illustrated in Amy Tan's 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club, in which a pair of Chinese immigrant women find jobs at a fortune cookie factory in America. They are amused by the unfamiliar concept of a fortune cookie but, after several hilarious attempts at translating the fortunes into Chinese, come to the conclusion that the cookies contain not wisdom, but "bad instruction."
There is a common joke involving fortune cookies that involves appending "in bed" or "between the sheets" to the end of the fortune, usually creating a sexual innuendo or other bizarre messages (e.g., "Every exit is an entrance to new experiences [in bed]"). [5] A similar joke appends "with a battle axe" (e.g. "You will solve your greatest problem [with a battle axe]").[citation needed]
Although many people do not take the message in a fortune cookie as a serious oracular device, many of them consider it part of the game that the entire cookie must be consumed in order for the fortune to come true.[6] Variations on this idea include not eating the cookie if a fortune seems unlucky, or the idea that the entire cookie must be eaten before the fortune is read. Or conversely, the fortune must be read before any of the cookie is eaten. Some people believe the fortune will not come true if it is read aloud. Additionally, the fortune is said to come true if one uses "your lucky numbers" on the back of the fortune to play, and win, a game of Krypto.
In an episode of Rocko's Modern Life, the Nickelodeon cartoon, Filburt got a fortune cookie that said, "Bad luck and extreme misfortune will infest your pathetic soul for all eternity." Filburt continued to have poor luck throughout the episode.
In the movie Spaceballs, Yoghurt gives Lone Starr a fortune cookie with the instructions of "open it before you eat it." Later, he gives it to Barf, who opens it and a vision of Yoghurt appears to give Lone Starr his "fortune."
In the movie "Short Circuit" The two main characters are locked up in a chineese freezer and sit and open a box of fortune cookies while they await to be resuced.