Genies!

Here's one for the kiddies, or the kid in all of us.

General Genie Genius

I am going to go through my wish list. I am operating under the assumption that my genie grants me unlimited wishes, not just three. I've thought about this a bit.

First, I would wish an end to the possibility of the unthinkable. Let me publish a letter I wrote to the President, to illustrate. I'm not actually sure if I ever ended up sending it, though. Anyway, A Letter to the President of the United States of America. Dear George W. Bush,

I would like to be informed as to what progress your administration has made, and plans to make in the rest of your presidency, regarding the reduction of our nuclear (new-klee-er) arsenal. I believe they should be internationally banned in every country, and the policy of mutually assured destruction is outdated and insane. Outdated, because non-state actors could detonate a nuke. Insane, because law-abiding citizens should not pay for the mistakes of their leaders or a few terrorists among them. The world, for the most part, wants to live a peaceful and non-threatened life. A policy of retaliation makes the world nervous and unstable.

Furthermore, America having nuclear weapons is hypocritical. Our avowed reason for going into Iraq was to prevent the threat of nuclear weapons. It’s really this: All countries should be allowed to have nuclear weapons or none. I choose none.

Thankyou for your attention. Sincerely, Jesse L. Teshara p.s. What’s this I hear of research in Berkeley, Ca on the next generation of American nuclear weapons? Shouldn’t they remain unthinkable? Why do we have so many? You might think I’m nuts, but the only reason I can think of is protecting the earth from a space-alien attack. Am I way off base?

Every kid wants security. What madman doesn't? Regarding nukes, the only way to security is to not have them. Everybody. That's my wish #1. When I was an I.R. (International Relations) major, my professor said it became mathematically more probable to have a nuclear detonation or nuclear war, as more nations or groups obtained them. That makes sense. Let's be the first to unilaterally disarm our nukes.

Okay, I'm thinking in terms of the real world. As long as I'm dealing with an omnipotent genie, I might as well wish for continual world peace, and every individual could then have a nuke (they would never use). Of course, peace can be defined as death. You gotta be careful with those genies.

I looked it up: As of 2007, there are 20,348 (more or less) nuclear weapons in the world. 14,000 are in the Russian stockpile. 5,400 are in the U.S. stockpile. Damn.

Wish #2: health, happiness, and long life. I could define long life as immortality, but I think it needs a suicide option, and a caveat that one stays the same age, so one remains vital. What's the point in living long, if you're not happy? So it's all in a bundle of joy. All or nothing. A separate tripartite wish. If you were immortal, you might find yourself floating in space for aeons or something, so you would also have to wish for a teleporter, or effective transportation to other worlds, whether through space travel or time travel, in either direction. Also, you would have to be able to turn off pain, because who wants a life of eternal torment? That would be part of the happiness component. On the flip side of that coin, you could ask to have a partner like you with whom you remain perpetually madly in love.

Healing ability, like Jesus (supposedly) had, but for all diseases, would be cool. Or you could just wish for continuing global health, which basically would mean everyone eating well and remaining active, which smacks of totalitarianism, zombies, or slavery, so no, I guess don't want that, after all. Healing ability is good. If you had instant healing ability with your own body, that would be perfect. You could get beheaded or shot or whatever, and regenerate.

Of course, you would want to avoid losing limbs and such, so you should have some martial skilz. Being like the ultimate Ultimate Fighting Champion or something, with total knowledge and control.

There's a host of superhuman comic-book type powers you could ask a genie for, like flying, invisibility, morphing, teleportation, invulnerability, see-through vision, and spidersense. There are mental powers like perfect memory and telepathy and mindreading and mind control and precognizance. You could be like an incredibly gifted "remote viewer" that the military has been known to use. You could have physical attributes like looks, superstrength, speed, agility, flexibility, and dexterity. Breathing powers like the control of a yogi, or the more superhuman abilities of breathing underwater or not having to breathe (like in space), and whatnot. There's time freeze. I would like that one, paired with immortality, so I could catch up with everything.

There's power, whether behind the scenes or in authority, and wealth, and knowledge, forms of power. Omniscience, or access to omniscience. Using your full brain's capacity... Genie comes from the arabic word, jin, meaning covered. Crazy people are called 'maj-noon' because their minds are covered. Ugh, Hannibal. Should we be skinheads? Not wear hats? A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Like in the Godfather. Ew! Put on your thinking cap! Let me know if you can think of any other good genie requests! -J