Titles hate me today: This is about genies

The working title of this piece was "Genieus", a tenuous pun achieved by lengthening the pronunciation of the word 'genius' into 3 syllables.  I had to scrap it because whenever I looked at it, all I saw was a portmanteau of 'genie' and 'us'.  Not only is this a terrible portmanteau because of the fact that both words appear in their entirety, which would be profoundly lazy, but it also implies that the core argument of the piece is that within each of us exists the potential to actualize the things we wish for.

It's actually a piece that I wouldn't mind reading if someone were to write it, but I had no intention of attempting it, and therefore had to ditch "Genieus" for the far-more-eloquent title above.

Let's take a hypothetical situation.  For the purpose of this, we establish that genies exist.  This isn't common knowledge, and they are incredibly rare; no one within 3 degrees of seperation of you, perhaps even more, is aware that genies exist.  But the fact remains that they do.

Feel free to take a moment to go rub any lamps...   You never know.

So one day, you're walking with your friend, and a genie emerges from a bottle on the side of the road.  The genie grants the two of you three wishes.  You and your friend immediately use the first wish to have the genie appear identical to Genie from Aladdin, because really, how could you not use the first wish for this?

Perfect.

The genie now looks like Genie, but in two dimensions.  Genies tend to twist your words around, with unexpected results.  This is of course very visually jarring, but it's better than having specified a three dimensional alternative, because if you had, the end result would have probably been this:

It bothers me that this photo is easily accessible outside of the context of this hypothetical. 

You and your friend are now left with one wish each.  I pose two questions of this hypothetical situation: What do you wish for? And what should you wish for?

Before we delve into these questions, a sidebar to elaborate on the dickish nature of genies, prefaced by two jokes, found here and here.

A guy goes into a bar, sits down and orders a drink. While waiting, he sees a guy sitting at the bar who has a very big muscular body but a tiny head. So he asks the guy, "How is it that you have such a huge body and a small head?"The guy replied, "I was walking along the beach one day and I came across this bottle buried halfway in the sand. So I picked it up, brushed away the sand, and out popped this fine female genie. She said she would grant me three wishes for releasing her."For my first wish, I asked for ten-million dollars, and POOF right there on the sand was $10,000,00."For my second wish, I asked for a luxury yacht, and POOF right there on the ocean was a 90-foot yacht."Finally for my third wish, I asked to have sex with the genie, but she said that genies were not allowed to indulge in those kind of activities." So, I said, " c'mon, how about a little head?" 

A man and an ostrich walk into a restaurant. The waitress asks, "What will it be?"The man replied "A burger and a coke."  "I'll have the same," the ostrich replies. They finish their meal and pay. "That will be $4.50." The man reaches into his pocket and pulls out the exact amount. They do this every day until Friday."The usual?" she asked. "No, today is Friday. I'll have steak and a coke.""Me too." says the ostrich. They finish and pay. "That will be $10.95"The man reaches in and pulls out that exact amount, just as he had all week.The waitress is dumb-founded. "How is it that you always have the exact amount?""Well," says the man. "I was cleaning my attic and I found a dusty lamp. I rubbed it and a genie appeared." Wow!" said the waitress. "What did you wish for?""I asked that when I needed to pay for something, the exact amount would appear in my pocket." "Amazing! Most people would ask for a million dollars. But what's with the ostrich?" "Well," said the man. "I also asked for a chick with long legs."

Genie lore seems to have sprouted from the Islam faith, which tells of the Jinn, creatures who lives in a parallel world to humans, who have free will, and are generally painted as wanting to tempt humans (to whom they are invisible) with evil.

The crux of both of these jokes (and they are far from the only two) is that the person who found the genie spoke in an ambiguous manner when wishing, and as such, the genie saw fit to mess with them.

With the knowledge that genies will take any opportunity to fuck you over in mind, what would you wish for?  And more importantly, what should you be ethically compelled to wish for?

I'll examine the second question first, and then provide my answer to the first.  This question came up in a discussion I had, and the first thing I thought when asked what I should wish for was 'Probably something that would improve the world'.  The person with whom I was discussing said their wish would be for all the Earth's water to become clean, which is an incredibly admirable, selfless wish.  But it would cause problems.

Firstly, there's always the possibility that we would then re-pollute our water supplies, assuming that it would become clean once more.  I certainly wouldn't put that past human beings.  The larger problem, in my opinion, is how would this phenomenon be explained?  Remember, to the rest of the world, this would appear to have been magical.  We know it was a genie, yes, but the rest of the world doesn't.  And if you were to come forward saying "Oh, it was just my genie wish," you'd never be able to convince the majority.

"Guys... my genie.  I'm telling the truth... Why won't you listen to me?"

Further, something on such a grand scale would discredit a lot of scientific knowledge, because, thanks to science, we know that you can't just un-pollute the world's water supplies.  I feel that, while noble, it would be detrimental to wish for something like that.

So, what should one feel obligated to wish for?  If it's personal gain you're after, I'd suggest phrasing your wish much like the guy in the second joke did.  When I have to pay for something, I wish to have that exact amount in my pocket.  (on a side note, that second joke is made far weaker by the fact that he was smart enough to phrase his wish in such a sophisticated way, but also wished for "a bird with long legs".  Hmm, is there any way this could be misinterpreted?...)

Giggity.

I'm not saying one shouldn't feel obliged to use their wish in a way that benefits the world though, in fact, I would encourage it.  Through the process of writing this, I decided that a wish should be used for something like "I wish that people would open their eyes to the fact that the belief that there isn't enough food to feed the world is a myth".  Something that would profoundly change our collective outlook on the world, but that doesn't violate the laws of how we understand the world.

To address the first question I posed, when I identified my now-circumvented problem of wishing for something large-scale, I settled on I wish to read the Harry Potter series without context again.  I was advised to include a clause that established that Alzheimer's was not a factor in any way.  I am a big fan of this clause.

My mind would orgasm if this were possible.

The thing that interests me is what would one wish for?  And is there a disconnect between that and what one feels they should be obliged to wish for?  For me, it would be awfully hard to turn down getting to read "The Prince's Tale" and having my mind blown a second time.  And besides, we don't need a genie to realize there is enough food on this planet to feed everyone.  Stop being complacent in being told there isn't!

Drinking and bad jokes

Well, I have an answer to a question I didn't realize needed answering.  What ratio of sleep to work, factoring in drinking can I have, and still function?  Until Thursday, I hadn't even been drunk in this calendar year; not as a result of trying not to drink, the situation just didn't come up.

Thursday was one of my friends' birthdays, but as he had a midterm on Friday, he wasn't celebrating until the weekend.  It was also the birthday of one of my former co-worker's sister, and I went out to dinner with them and several other co-workers.  This will be nice, I thought to myself walking up there, I'll have dinner, watch the Canucks game, and catch up with people.  Then people started ordering rounds of tequila...

I have a picture on my phone I meant to use, but I'm too tired to go to the trouble of uploading it from my phone to the computer.  Google Image to the rescue.

That alone wasn't an issue, but our third round of those coincided with the Canucks scoring, to which I jokingly said "Look, when we drink, the Canucks score", which then implied to the rest of our group that we must drink often in the hopes of another goal.  My theory was refuted somewhat by the Canucks losing...  But oh well.

A rather expensive bill later, and the remaining 5 of us were now at a crossroad: to continue or to go home.  The birthday girl wanted to go downtown, so that's what we did, me, birthday girl and her sister, and two co-workers.

For anyone unfamiliar with the notion of dancing, I will say only that it requires some level of motor control.  So the fact that the birthday girl had all but passed out during the cab ride from Broadway to Downtown was somewhat problematic.  Another cab ride later, and we were putting her to bed at one of my co-workers' places.  After several check-ups to make sure she was doing well, her sister decided that going dancing was still the plan.  At this point, it was 1 in the morning, and cold outside, meaning that we were going to the nearest place that was open and would serve us booze, preferably with no cover.  Enter The Junction.

Apparently, I'm quite the catch in gay bars; I was getting hit on  with abandon (although it could have just been that they were drunk).  It makes me feel bad that I'm not gay, like I've inadvertently leading the guys who were trying to hit on me on.  (The end of that sentence looks weird grammatically...)

Anyhow, we slept at my co-worker's apartment, because wow walking home in the cold would suck.  Also, did you guys know that 7 A.M. can be nice?  I didn't.  I had previously thought of 7 A.M. with nothing more than cold contempt, but when the sun is rising, the walk home over the bridge was actually both enjoyable and invigorating, two hours of sleep be damned.

A quick noon 'til 5 shift later, and I was free to relax.  Until later that evening, that is.  The plan for my friend's birthday was to meet at his house, then we would all migrate to a bar on Broadway after a while.  At one point, I turned around in his apartment, and realized there were roughly 25 people squeezed into his basement suite.

Like this, except apartments in Vancouver are smaller than that.

Trying to find a bar that can just seat 25 people is about as problematic as one would assume.  But thankfully, if there's one thing you can count on drunk people to do, it's to get lost.  Most of our group vanished, and we ended up with 10 or so people.  An important discovery was subsequently made: Appletinis and cosmos are de-fucking-licious!  Seriously, like nectar-of-the-gods-good.

Also, I'd like to share with you, one of the birthday boy's self-made jokes.  I warn you, it's bad, but in Alex's own words, "Yo, I've made up literally hundreds of jokes!"

What did the jokemaker's father say to his son?

You're a disappointment.

Alex told this joke multiple times, and I still don't think I get it.  What's the punchline??  Is it that there's no joke, hence why it's a disapointment?  But if that were the case, then shouldn't that be something the jokemaker says, seeing as he's a bad jokemaker, and not his father, who shouldn't be expected to invent jokes in the first place?  And is "jokemaker" a viable career option (I assume this is different than comedian, or else Alex would have just said that), and if so, I feel as if I missed a golden opportunity in high school when we had to do transition plans.  Somebody explain this joke to me, it's apparently too sophisticated for my sense of humour.

A luxurious 5 hours of sleep later, and it was time to work from 10-5.  Yay!  My body finally got fed up with me around 8 P.M., when I had finished watching the recording of the Canucks game (which we won, without even needing to take tequila shots!), leading to naptime.  For some reason, I got a second wind of sorts at 10:30, and needed to do something to justify being awake on 7 hours of sleep in a weekend, so I began this post.

As I said, drinking had been an unknown concept to my body, but I think my liver was in a forgiving mood since I wasn't abusing it.  This is a good agreement my liver and I have, I feel.  Now, my body is beginning to wind down on its energy, so bed time is a blissful future for me.