360Digest

Matt Carter had a little post a while back he called “Confucius on mortgage fraud“, prompted by a gift of personalized fortune cookies he received from Interthinx, which offers an automated fraud detection system to mortgage lenders. I don’t know why I kept thinking about this, but Matt was somewhat offended by the “pidgin” English sayings on the fortune cookies.

Generally, I’d have to say I’m pretty sensitive to offending folks sensibilities in regards to race, religion, disabilities and the like, but I’m on the fence about this example. It’s not always so clear anymore, what is offensive or not. With the fortune cookie, it’s a Western construct, but the Chinese were the ones who adopted it here in the West and added the fortunes….

Anyway, the reason I noted this was that one of the best promotions I ever did was having custom fortune cookies made for a listing I had a few years ago that featured Asian-inspired architectural design. The fortunes read “You will buy this house today” and “Take time to ponder your future home purchase from Marlow”, “You will have good luck in your new home” and things like that. They were a hoot.

The local company I bought them from was from Short Order Fortunes, but there are plenty of other firms that will make and ship them around the country.

More Fortune Cookie sites:

Weird Fortune Cookie Collection

Fortune Cookie Generator

Tasteless Fortunes