Ain't no never mind.

I've complained about Chinese fortune cookies in the past. In 2016 I opined about the poor quality of the fortunes in our cookies. In 2017 I noted the sad case of Donald Lau, a fortune-cookie fortune writer with a career-ending case of writer's block. In 2019 the crisis deepened as the fortunes seemed to be descending into madness. But in 2021 there was a new hope as the fortunes returned to sanity and even seemed to regain their classic cleverness. 

Now? They look like they have given up. 

What happened here? It seems the message was intended to convey hope -- that you can indeed teach old dogs new tricks -- but instead we got a double negative that is almost unparsable. No one is never too old to learn. So... everybody IS too old to learn? Not only is that demonstrably untrue, it still doesn't really reflect what the message is. You are not never too old. So You are always too old. Nope, no sense at all. 

Don't tell me this is a language barrier issue. The Chinese fortune cookie was invented in America and has been a staple for as long as 110 years, so whoever is writing them is bound to be in the United States. So I'm afraid there's no excuse -- I must give it the alphorn of stupidity.

If you are reading this and you happened to be the one who actually DID write that fortune, please don't take it too hard. Yours was a harmless mistake, one easily understood and dismissed. Perhaps it was just a typo in the heat of the moment. 

On the other hand, our nation is currently unable to bring a couple of astronauts home from space, keep violent criminals in jail, restrict the benefits of citizenship to citizens, make entertainment products that are entertaining, and do a million other things that used to be par for the course but now are beyond our stupid elite class to handle. 

So yeah, no one is getting hurt from a fortune cookie. But that doesn't mean no one is getting hurt.