There’s plenty of wisdom online—or is there?

Is there anything you can’t get online these days? That’s a rhetorical question; there’s isn’t. Anything you can’t get, I mean.

You can buy everything from cars to shoes to surgical procedures online. I met my fiancée online. I took my cat to get “fixed” yesterday, at a veterinary office I discovered—you got it—online. When I want to talk with my kids or find out if any of them have recently gotten married, divorced or convicted of a felony, I go online to their Facebook pages. The kids tell me nothing; they tell the world everything.

I pay my bills online, or rather I go online to explain to my numerous creditors why I am not paying my bills this month. The only bill I’m never late with is my Internet bill, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to contact all the other people I owe money to. (At this point, I could launch into a diatribe on how much fun it is to be unemployed these days in Michigan, but why? Most of you know already.)

At any rate, I’ve grown used to handling everything, from research to romance, online.

But even I was taken aback last week, when after dining at a neighborhood Chinese restaurant (all you can eat buffet; only seven bucks!) the waitress delivered my bill, along with the requisite fortune cookie.

Now, I love fortune cookies. I choose to believe everything printed in red on the little slip of paper inside them, including my lucky numbers. Some even have Chinese-to-English translations printed there, the idea being that if you eat enough Moo Goo Gai Pan, you will eventually be able to speak fluid Cantonese. (“Gung ho fat choy” for instance, means—if memory serves—“You are one gullible Yankee!”)

The fortune in this particular cookie, however, contained something more—a web address. Following the fortune: “You will win success in whatever calling you adopt” (proof positive that fortune cookies are not always right) was printed: “Want more? Visit: www.myfreefortune.com.”

Naturally—as I always do whenever an anonymous company tells me to visit their website—I rushed home, switched on the laptop, and checked it out. I shouldn’t have.

It turns out fortune cookies aren’t the infallible predictors of future wealth, health and happiness they claim to be. The fortunes contained within are not inscrutable prophecies dictated by a wise old monk sitting on a satin pillow in some cookie factory in Xi’an, as I had always imagined. Fortune cookies, it seems, are not even Chinese in origin! They might be Japanese, they might even be American. Apparently, there’s some contention over the issue. But they’re definitely not Chinese.

And they’re most assuredly not written by a wise old monk.

I was so bummed! For the past 40 years, I’ve been basing all my major life decisions on the advice put forth in fortune cookies! Now I discover the fortunes are simply made up by some surfer dude in a factory in San Francisco?

That fortune cookie company better hope I can’t find a good personal injury attorney online. I predict I’ll be able to retire on the settlement money!

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.