Candy and the Lies It Tells

When I was a kid, my family ate Chinese food nearly every Sunday after church. No matter what Chinese restaurant we went to, my grandma always ordered the chopped sirloin. That's just an interesting side note. The point is, fortune cookies always rocked. Reading our fortunes out loud was always fun. Then there was the crunchy cookie with its almond-y goodness.

Of course, there are the "bad fortune cookies" that Sue recently found that had sayings such as "your friends don't really like you." The Bitter Train would like to award the "Biddy" in Food Marketing to the bitter fortune cookie. Kudos to you.

Not content to let the Chinese corner the market on food messaging, Dove has their "Promises" line of chocolates.

I say, stick to Bitter chocolates. Who does Dove think they are? I mean, I opened one chocolate and the message on the foil was "Learn from the past but live in the present." Snore. Please? This is wisdom? The next wrapper told me to "Be proud and just run the race, no matter the finish." Really "Joni" in Miami Lakes, Florida? I should run, with a sense of pride, into a brick wall? This is not wisdom. It is tomfoolery (I've been just waiting to use that word).

As you can imagine, the majority of the messages run from the banal to the ridiculous (I won't tell you how many I ate). But what one message really put me over the edge was "Most things you worry about never happen." Yes, this is true. Most of the things that have happened to me I never imagined - it was always so much worse. Thanks, Dove Chocolates, for setting society's sights too darn low.

And just shut up "Kallana" in New York - "He who walks in another's tracks leaves no footprints." Does it not snow in New York? The false optimism of "There are new opportunities around every corner!" doesn't fool me "Toby" in California. Who told you that? Your grandmother?

Perhaps I'll follow "Michelle's" advice from Georgia, "Laugh every day - it's like inner jogging." Because it makes no damn sense.