xp_journal | Mandarin class today...

...will meet in the kitchen. Why the kitchen, you ask?

Because we're making fortune cookies, of course.

Before anyone feels the need to point this out to me, yes, I'm fully aware of the fact that fortune cookies were invented right here in the good old USA early in the last century and are thus about as Chinese as... I'm lacking a good metaphor here, feel free to supply one yourself. But I've never believed that you should let cultural authenticity get in the way of an entertaining exercise in translation.

What I want you all to do is come prepared with an English fortune - a single sentence, that's all. While we're in the kitchen making the cookies, you'll swap English fortunes with your conversational partner and prepare an on-the-spot translation. Which will then be written down on the handy little paper strips I'll provide - look, exercise in the script, too! - and then, of course, inserted in the cookies.

Lorna, I promise, if they make a mess I'll make sure they clean it up...

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Steve Ping's All-Night Take-Away on Long Island? Great fries, but their sweet-n-sour chicken is a crime against poultry.

I really don't want to know, do I?

"Why was I at a Chinese take-away in Long Island" is actually more the story than "why is there an awful Chinese take-away in Long Island with great fries."

It's Pingstein, is the actual thing--he's some kind of really amazingly distant cousin of my friend Mr. Roth, and when he's not almost the only Jewish Chinese-restaurant owner in New York, he does homemade jewelry for fun, and can apparently get a really good price on stuff like gold wire. But it's still out of my price range.

Those fries were really, really good, though.

Cause seriously, Dude. Makin' pastry was not my strong point in cooking class. Now, if you let us cheat and use the pre-made stuff, I'll raise a place for you in the shrine of my ancestors...well, okay, my Grandfather would have something to say about that but, well, I won't blow up the kitchen in a freak pastry accident...

They're not that hard, and learning new skills is always a good thing.

It's not so much the learning that I mind, it's the fire and the screaming and calling on God that people seem to do when I get near an open flame...*grins suddenly* And I'm totally not being serious. This is gonna be the best class ever, Teach. Don't say I didn't warn ya, though. Knowing my luck with pastry it'll gain independant thought and try to take over the world...

Would it be -terribly- improper of me to point out that I could ensure that some of those fortunes were at least marginally accurate?

...but given that the accurate is rarely comedic, you'd probably be sucking the fun out of it to some extent.

I think "You will have an accident involving breakfast cereal, cold milk and your lap." is terribly funny. Unless it happens to me, in which case, it is a tragedy.

I'd trot out Obi-Wan on points of view, but I suddenly remembered an errand in the cereal cupboard.

as american as apple pie?

it's actually from Germany.

How about as American as corn dogs? *grins* Only you Yanks would eat those things... *flees*

And french fries. Pah. Shoestring potatoes are -not- French.

I'm so checking. Save me a fortune cookie, will ya? I want to taste them.

Mandarin class today...

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Oh dear lord...

Re: Oh dear lord...

Do our cookies need to be edible?

Don't be a wimp...

True, true.

Nathan?

No...

Re: No...

Re: No...

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