Getting Ernest the parrot to talk was the easy part. Good luck getting him to SHUT HIS BEAK ALREADY! Seriously, he’s like “Earnest hates crackers, awwwk!” 24-7. You haven’t slept for weeks, and have forgotten proper hygiene. Little kids run away from you and the parrot.
Bonus wish granted, because I’ve been there:
Congratulations, you are joining me on my next expidition to G-Spot, off of French Cay in the Turks and Caicos Islands. It’s great warm-water wall diving. The plan is a 40 minute dive, at 90 feet along the wall for 15 minutes then back at 60 feet.
What – you don’t know HOW to dive? Then I guess you’re going to do a “controlled drowning.”
I wish for amphibian gills so that I can breathe normal air and sea water with equal ease, just as I breathe normal air now.
As you take your little swims with your newfound gills, people from the Cryptozoological Society catch wind of the rumors of the “merman” from local fishermen, and manage to snap some pictures of you. They quickly capture you and, after they are done with their wonderfully intrusive and comprehensive physical, you eventually end up in Seaworld doing silly merman tricks, receiving raw herring as a reward.
I wish I could get incontrovertible proof of some weird creature, like Bigfoot, and make a fortune selling the photos and whatnot to the tabloids.
While hiking through a patch of woods, you spot Bigfoot, his wife, and their 3 Littlefoots. You decide to photograph them paparazzi style, and earn 8 figures selling the pics to various news outlets. However, the Bigfoot clan are now pissed and vow revenge. They venture into civilization to find you at an autograph signing of your now famous Enquirer cover, and proceed to disembowel you.
I wish to be at a warm, sunny beach, relaxing on the sand and enjoying the aroma of the ocean.
You get teleported, as you are, with only the clothes on your back, and the contents of your pockets to Henderson Island.
I hope your wilderness survival skills are up to par.
I wish I could spend a few weeks on an all-expense paid trip to Japan, with no other obligations being imposed upon me.
Hmmmm. Depends on how you define “obligations,” I guess…
On your first day in Japan, you try the sushi and pick up some kind of weird gastrointestinal bug that keeps you confined to the bathroom for the entire duration of the trip. You start to feel a little better on the plane ride home.
I wish I knew how to pilot all of the coolest U.S. Air Force jets and helicopters, and did so capably and safely in all respects for as long as I cared to.
No problem. You and your fellow Dopers will hold the Dopefest in your favorite diner. As the jukebox plays “Don’t Stop Believing” you all snack on onion rings while waiting for Cecil, who’s running late. Finally, Cecil enters through the front door and…
I wish I get the job I’m going after.
Certainly.
You also get the relocation to Outer Mongolia they neglected to mention as part of a cost cutting exercise.
I wish that this chair didn’t squeak so much.
You do, and it’s very cute! However, they used cat DNA to make it, it’s decided it likes you and has put all the lovely dead trophies in your bed. Tomorrow it’s going next door!
I wish Dubya and all his cronies would get dosed with Permanent Truth Serum right before a major town hall Q&A session stacked with DKos bloggers.
(Lame) Right after the meeting, the DKos’ers rush out to spread the news on their website and linked blogs about the complete and damning confessions – stuff we suspected and deep, dark shit we hadn’t even dreamed of.
Unfortunately, right before the meeting “Dubya 'n 'nem” bribed Al Gore (who invented the internet, dontcha know) to shut down the internet so the news can’t get out and be spread around the world. They also replaced all the note-taking iimplements with fading ink and self-destructing recording media. Al brings the internet back up right after the ink fads and the chips dissolve and nobody will believe the facts that have been discovered. Since there’s no recorded proof, Dana Perino is able to deny, deny, deny it all.
I wish I could invent something that adds a positive to the world and yet still make billions from the patent that remains mine and my family’s forever.
.
Granted. You’ve just been turned into the Disney Corporation, and your impact on patent, trademark and copyright law will be remembered long after Mickey Mouse and Fantasia have faded from memory. You’ve also ensured continued prosperity for future generations of intellectual property litigators.
I wish popular culture weren’t so crass and vulgur.
Granted! Hope you’re okay with an eternity of Disney films (pre-Pixar,) Doris Day movies and Pat Boone albums… Also, razor blades are outlawed, bwahahahaha!
I wish my cars each got 200 miles per gallon of regular gasoline with zero emissions and no deleterious environmental effects, without any visual or performance change in either vehicle.
The battery, a la the Matrix, is you. Eventually the parasitic relationship between you and the laptop results in it completely assimilating you (a la the Borg), and you and it eventually end up assimilating the entire human race, then the galaxy, and finally the known universe.
If this is just a simulation, I want to jump out of the current level and into the next one, higher up, so I can have a long talk with the puppet masters who so shamelessly manipulate my life.
McDonalds and MorningStar Farms have just announced a partnership to allow McD’s to market a veggie burger using MorningStar’s famous veggie burger. But McD’s plans to improve the basic by selling it only as a veggie cheeseburger. Sure you can order it without cheese… with the usual order accuracy that McD’s has on special orders.
I wish I had a secret basement lab. And not one that I had to share, in any way, with any other mad scientist, or mad scientist wannabe.
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