Genie-Meeny-Miny-Mo

It's a converstaion that I would venture to guess that everyone has had at some point: if you found a magic lamp that had a genie in it who would grant you three wishes, what would you wish for? This kind of question is only truly answerable by a child who has no knowledge of the workings of the world. Once you reach the age when you can see the world for what it is, you can't answer this question and expect to get what you want. The best contract lawyer in the world could not wish for something without it backfiring in the most horrible way. Probably my favorite redition of the ironic wish is the short story "The Monkey's Paw" just because it's so dark, yet throws light on the whole genie bullshit.

So, let's break down some of the most popular wishes that people tend to think of:

Super Powers
Nobody is content being a normal schmuck like everyone else. Deep down, we all want to fly, or turn invisible or have super strength or any other manner of superhuman abilities. Sounds cool right? Wrong! Consider the Spiderman priniciple for one. "With great power, comes great responsability." We've all heard that malarchy a million times, probably because it's true. How many federal air laws will you break by flying around a city? The FAA would ground you before you even got to save your first kitten in a tree. If you're going to have the power of invisibility, you can't just sneak around watching people have sex, you have to use it for the betterment of humanity, otherwise you will waste it, and people will demonize you for squandering great talent and you will be alone and miserable and you will try to kill yourself, but you can't because you're impervious to harm! No thanks.

Also consider what superpowers could do to your physiology. Our homeostasis is maintained for certain perameters. If you were to suddenly add an immense new factor into the equasion, who knows what kind of effects it will have on your body. Even if you just, say, wanted to be an expert musician, or something like that, you'd become an unparalleled musical talent, but guess what? You're now too autistic to poo by yourself because you're now a savant.

"Ok then," you say, "I'll just have my powers via some sort of magical amulet or something so that my body is not directly altered." Sure, if you don't mind living in a constant paranoia that someone may try and steal it, so how can you enjoy that? Face it, there's a reason we don't have superpowers.

Wealth
Another popular wish contender is money, scratch, sweet coin, dolla' dolla' bill, y'all. Now I'm not an accountant or an economist, but money doesn't just appear out of thin air. The money you get has effectively been stolen from someone else. Even if it came from a lot of people, one of them could have been a little old lady who has barely enough to afford food, heating, and her antipsychotic medication. If you take that away, she will either starve, freeze, or go completely apeshit and kill seventeen people before turning the gun on herself. All for your material gain. For shame!

So let's assume that the money does just materialize out of nowhere; I assume that you wil then procede to spend it on crap that you've always wanted. Your sudden influx of currency will cause inflation, effectively lessening the value of your newly gotten gains. Shooting yourself in the foot much?

World Peace
Everybody like this one. You wish that everyone in the world would get along and live in harmony. There'd be no more wars, no more violence, complete and utter tranquility right? Humans have certain aggressive tendencies engrained in our DNA, if nothing else as a hangover from when we lived in trees and killed smaller monkeys for food and for funny hand-puppets. All of that pent up aggression, rage, and hatred would just bottle up with no outlet. The death rates from stroke and heart disease would increase exponentially. How long will peace last? Do you establish a time table for peace, and at its expiration, all of that pent up aggression would vent in what could quite possibly be the destruction of humanity? If you don't put a time cap on the peace, what happens if aliens decide to attack, or even better, they sat around and waited for us to achieve world peace before attacking? Good job, your naive pipe-dream ended up killing everyone.

In conclusion, if you find a genie in a magic lamp and he wants to grant you three wishes, tell him to go bugger off. I think that genies and their ilk get off on watching our wishes backfire on us. The concept of genies did start out as minor demons in Islamic mythology. But, if you just can't resist the opportunity to get three wishes, do youself a favor: make them small, make them petty, and make tham selfish, like exact change for the bus, or an extra piece of cheese in your lunchable. The bigger you wish, the worse off you'll be.

Don't say I didn't warn you.