I really believe that the crux of this project is simply finding somewhere where fortunes aren't expected, somewhere that someone wouldn't expect to open something and discover a plan for their day. Because I study music, most of my life revolves around the daily happenings of opening cases, putting together instruments, and working hard to refine performances. So when I remembered that all of the school clarinets are in a locker that is less than secure, I decided that I would brighten the days of a few performers who trudge diligently to the more difficult clarinets (Eb, Alto, and Bass). I would put a fortune in each instrument's case.

Like most projects, I decided to start with the numbers. I did some recon on the clarinet locker and found that there were six clarinets in there, and then I verified that number with a clarinet performance major. Then, I decided to print a few more. I have access to the school bassoons as well, so I thought, "Why not spread the love?" After that, I did a few measurements. I really love fortunes and I'd been toying around with the idea of making something out of fortunes, so when I saw this task I knew it was for me. I pulled out a few of my fortunes from fortune cookies past and measured them.

First, I measured in inches, and then discovered that no sense was made. Then, I used the metric system and everything seemed so much clearer. 59 mm x 12 mm. Then I measured my printer paper. 279 mm x 216 mm. I could either do 4.729 fts x 18 fts (resulting in 72 fortunes, rounding 4.729 down to 4) or 23.4 fts x 3.661 fts (resulting in 69 fortunes, rounding down to 23 and 3). I mean, I could cut it shy by three fortunes and decide to stick with 69. But where's the fun in that? Go for broke! Set the bar higher! Go for gold! Pass on 69! Do 72 instead! Have a great time!

Measuring was the easy part. The hart part would be aligning the word document correctly so that I could properly make the fortunes without too much trouble. In short, what ended up happening was me completely breaking down, punching my monitor until I needed a new screen, and then crying some more.

What really happened was me trying to do something really intricate with tabs, and then deciding that perhaps the column feature would work best. And then I implemented the column feature and everything went a whole hell of a lot faster. Yay technology?

In the end, I didn't even do that either. I went with the old standby of using tables to put in both text and buffer space. Yay tables!

In the end, I wound up with 60 fortunes through margins and whatnot. Good enough. After I typed out all the actual fortunes, I decided to print them off and cut them out, then apply six random numbers to the back with a red pen. It felt a lot more...personal to apply each fortune with its random numbers by hand. More genuine, like I was sealing the fate of sixty people with my red pen of justice.

And then I realized that I had no scissors. But not to worry! I used cardboard and my trusty pocket knife to cut out the fortunes, and then I used my graphing calculator to generate sets of six random numbers between 1 and 49. The stage was set for the dispersal. This was it.

So I went around campus, looking for innocuous places for a fortune to be. I found a parking meter.


A microwave.


All sorts of things. Every photo documents where fortunes were hidden. If the fortune is in plain sight in the photo, that is merely to demonstrate where they were. All the fortunes were hidden in some way that required the object to be "opened" in some matter. Take a look below! Some highlights include: three pianos, eight bassoons, six clarinets, a toilet, a door, and a "wet floor" sign.