Every morning he wakes up, takes a shower, brushes his teeth, and does whatever else. Every morning he counts all the money he spent since the week started and makes sure it matches what’s left in his billfold. He has nearly two million dollars saved away in the bank, and his car reflects that wealth. Every morning, he goes into the kitchen to fix himself breakfast, and every morning, he reads a very important little magnet on the refrigerator. He holds its message close: “A man is not measured by his wealth.”
He pours some cereal and drowns it in milk. “A man is not measured by his wealth,” he says. He eats and looks out at ten acres of tree-covered property. “A man is not measured by his wealth,” he repeats to himself. He goes to work and makes even more money to hide away in his fancy Swiss bank account, but all he says about this money is, “A man is not measured by his wealth.”
That afternoon, he received a horrible message. A fortune cookie said, “You will lose your wealth.”
He buys up stocks and bonds. He invests in gold. He spreads his money across fifty banks all over the world. All the while he says, “A man is not measure by his wealth.” A month passes; then two. He has forgotten about that pathetic little magnet. He worries more about losing a lifetime of penny pinching. One day, he remembers, and he looks at the fridge, but a little magnet is missing.
“A man is not measured by his wealth,” was the message it bore.
He stood and stared for seconds that seemed to draw on like hours. Then, he laughs and eats breakfast… again.
This story was inspired when I was reading about the infamous paradox of the self-fulfilling prophecy. This in turn made me think of fortunes and their excellent use of double entendre (pronounced DUH-bull on-TON). It's a French literary term that means "double intentions." Shakespeare and a plethora of the best poets and especially prophecy-ers such as Nostradamus used this technique in which a simple statement can be interpreted an equal number of ways to the number of ppl that read it based soley off the wording and not the context in which it was written.
The audio file will be in .wav format because that is the audio file format that my mp3 player uses to make voice recordings. 
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Comments
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'Everything is us, and we are everything, but what good is this, is everything is nothing?'
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Ohh it's not your fault. It's not your mother's fault. Now...you pay attention to old Rooter. It is nobody's fault. The Great Circle of Life has begun. But you see, not all of us arrive together at the end.
It's one of those random busts of inspiration.
Bursts of inspiration are the best. The stories of mine that I like the most are the ones written in moments of inspiration, so I know how that works.
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Ohh it's not your fault. It's not your mother's fault. Now...you pay attention to old Rooter. It is nobody's fault. The Great Circle of Life has begun. But you see, not all of us arrive together at the end.
So anyway, I have my standards as a result of my writing. I also think a little about how the syntax reads. I hate to use this word, but does it "flow"? Does one sentence confuse the reader, causing him to reread it several times, or does it automatically lead to the next. Then there are typos of course.
I should say that probably one of the most important things involved in analysis is the author's goal. What was he trying to get across, and did he accomplish that?
I'm finding it hard to qualify the way I analyze stuff; I guess you just have to form your own standards and do it yourself. Or you could just read the story and spout whatever you noticed while reading it, since that's one of the key things to begin with.
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Ohh it's not your fault. It's not your mother's fault. Now...you pay attention to old Rooter. It is nobody's fault. The Great Circle of Life has begun. But you see, not all of us arrive together at the end.
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