The Fortunate Cookie

I bought my favorite Chinese take-out on the way home from my Sunday job as an art pimp.  This has been my ritual for months.  I love my Sunday ritual..  Kung Pao shrimp, extra spicy with a side of brown  [NOT steamed] rice,a good book, and a glass of wine [to cancel out my meds.]   I am still trying to get over seeing cars hit an animal  Friday morning on my way to work.  I hate cars.  And usually I'm not fond of people when it comes to the kind that kill animals,drive fast,  cause genocide, beat women, throw kittens out of cars, starve children, go to titty bars, love guns, Sara Palin, and Rick Scott, hate gay people, etc.etc.etc.   I've even been criticised for caring about animals when thousands of people died in earthquakes and tsunamis.  Is sorrow rationed?  Are we not allowed to have any left for the other creatures of the earth?  Do I have to be a closet cryer if I'm crying for an animal?      Anyway.   I settled down to Chinese food, for which I'm grateful, at a table that I'm grateful for, in a house that I'm fortunate to be in, with teeth in my mouth to eat the food that I'm grateful for, to nourish a body that is pretty healthy so I'm grateful for that, with a book that I have a job to pay for and the ability to READ for which I am also tremendously grateful, in a country that is not being bombed, in a neighborhood where people are not being massacred and where everything I own has not been destroyed by fire, floods, or war.     I am supposed to feel BLESSED because  people have suffered horribly and died terrible deaths.  That is somehow supposed to make me feel BETTER.   No,  the armadillo that flailed and suffered, the little turtles that were mortally crushed in the parking garage... but not quite dead, the raccoon at the side of the road that tried to lift it's arm from its broken back, are not to be wept for.  I am only to weep for the people, if I must be so rude as to weep at all.   Negative energy is such a nuisance.   So I'm eating my Chinese food, the one thing I look forward to each week and that I am IMMENSLY grateful for. When I finished  I cracked open my fortune cookie.   Do you know what the fucking fortune says?   Fortune Not Found:  Abort, Retry, Ignore?         Word for word.   But I am thankful for it.   I'm not sure why.  I'll get back to you.