Wish meme

[nolawitch58]

In fiction and jokes, magically granted wishes notoriously go awry. What are your three iron-clad wishes that have no downside at all?

I personally would wish for enough money to live a comfortable life, enough energy to pursue my goals and enough time to accomplish my goals. I am not a lawyer, but I think these wishes would pass muster. They are sufficiently specific in the what department (money, energy and time), but quantitatively amorphous to include changing needs.

Comments

Evil lawyer mode [ON]

[blackbyrd2.livejournal.com]

Money is always a dangerous wish. You need to specify where the money comes from, otherwise you get a 'Monkey's Paw' tragedy opening. Someone close to you dies in a horrific accident and the insurance makes you rich.

Energy and time without capability could have you whittling away at goals in miniscule increments for a few hundred years, with all kinds of detrimental effects dogging your steps. Imagine all the energy and time in the world, but each moment causes you great pain. And loverly! You can't die until you accomplish said goals.

I think more specific, smaller scope wishes, or perhaps wishes for the benefit of others may be safer, but any sufficiently capricious and malevolent Djinn will find a way to make you pay. (Isn't that the whole idea behind evil Genies? - not to be confused with Evil Geniuses. Heh.)

Re: Evil lawyer mode [ON]

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

This is exactly why wishes are dangerous. How about "enough money through honest work"? I like to think my capability is good. I'd hate to think my writing is absolute crap. That's the problem with delusion though. One sees one's own work as good when it's demonstrably not.

Aren't genies and geniuses close enough to be easily confused?

Re: Evil lawyer mode [ON]

[blackbyrd2.livejournal.com]

'Enough' is nebulous, but it sounds like a good start.

I like the concpt of always having good luck. You could make your money by betting, playing the stock market, or simply by picking it up off the ground as needed. It could apply towards health too.

I was orignally thinking 'to be spared the deleterious effects of aging, both physical and mental', but that's not specific enough, because being dead would certainly do that. ;)

[ms-issicran.livejournal.com]

1. Health - with no maladies that plague the aging body
2. A Million dollars
3. The death of all Lawyers



~snerk

[blackbyrd2.livejournal.com]

I don't have a million dollar life insurance policy. If the lawyers are all dead, that means you can't sue for wrongful death or injury on my behalf.
Yeah, I'm ok with that part. ;)

[saminz.livejournal.com]

Okay, how about the gift of teleportation, with inbuilt healing capacity ;-)?

Number two: A gift of winning every lottery I choose, in my name and also in the name of worthy others.

Three: A painless death in my sleep, at a time and place chosen by myself.

:-).

[real-skeptic.livejournal.com]

Ooh, you're good... though for the sake of Satan's lawyers I'd add "winning every lottery without the win raising any suspicion or causing investigation". After all, if the same person won the lottery 4 times, authorities would normally start to suspect.

[saminz.livejournal.com]

There's where the other worthy folks come in - you'd probably share gladly, wouldn't you ;-)?

Remember, I can do this all over the world, too...

[real-skeptic.livejournal.com]

Sure, but add "and the worthy person would know that I'm the source of his riches", otherwise the worthy person would probably see no reason to share. ;-)

[saminz.livejournal.com]

No, see - I'd come to visit, of course :-D.

And explain, and pay for my stay and your time with half of the national lottery, or maybe a smaller, local one - your choice.
It's not in your interest to rat on me, and even if it were, my ability is here to stay and I'll teleport myself right out of any prison you'd get me into anyway :-p.

Ah, my perfect life....

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

so you want to be the Lottery Fairy?

(teleporting in with a wand and a ticket... Bwahahaha)

[saminz.livejournal.com]

"giggle"

You've seen me - not much likeness, I'm afraid :-D.

But in principle, that more or less does it, yeah.
Here one moment, gone the next, and everyone a bit happier, hopefully.

[real-skeptic.livejournal.com]

Ah, you certainly are no lawyer... Grant yourself at least the ability to accomplish your goals. Otherwise, you know, you might find yourself incapacitated in some form - with lots of energy and lots of time, but, say, a brain problem that prevents you from stringing words together properly.

Personally, I'd grant myself the ability to make any wishes I want and have them be fulfilled the way that I intended them, with the ability to preview the consequences before committing the wish to action. But I'm sure there are loopholes there, too, because I'm not a lawyer, either.

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

My three wishes (and I'm tired now, so I fully expect to wind up like Dudley Moore in "Bedazzled"):

1. To have the time, funds, facility and ability to start and complete all my projects.

2. Excellent mental and physical health for me and my family of the heart (which includes members of my blood family and others).

2. I wish that everyone becomes telepathic, and through understanding each other stops hating each other ("Forever Peace", Joe Haldeman).

[saminz.livejournal.com]

Your second 2 seems a bit tricky ;-).
If we assume that there are evil minds, fantasies of killing or hurting - and I assume that there are plenty of those - you have the "bully" situation all over again. Never mind how the "evil" got there, it is in many minds, behind a smiling facade.

To understand is to forgive, it is said. But: Can the peaceful, naive mind really stand being exposed to all this random cruelty without any buffer of convention and distance? Won't the more gentle among us just give up, horrified?

I confess, I would probably move to the top of a mountain and never come down again...

[real-skeptic.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, I once saw an anime series called "Kino's journey". One of its episodes had a situation like in your second "2". The general theme of the series is a young traveler on a talking motorcycle, who goes from place to fictional place around the world. The traveler spends exactly three days in each place and then moves on, attempting not to form emotional attachment to any place, just observe it. In this place, people created an elixir that allows them to feel each other's emotions. Eventually, even lovers saw each other's hurt feelings and couldn't stand it, so they started living alone in isolated houses and everybody died out. If I recall correctly, even the one who relates the story to Kino turns out to be a ghost.