I’d be able to persue my lifelong dream…of building weird but scary looking Luftwaffe designs that were never built in real life. Like this one.
Or maybe a semi-rigid airship “luxury liner” the size of an aircraft carrier…and designed to exceed Mach .80 while cruising.
A lightweight apparatus that creates a good oxygen mix from virtual particles so that I can visit my secret military base on the moon without that cumbersome suit.
Failing that, flying robot monkey butlers, of course.
Teleportation. So I could make an order from Amazon and have it here within the hour. Maybe that’s not frivolous enough. Then what about telekinesis? I want to research a way to move things with my mind. Cause I’m lazy.
Two words: Shitless cats.
I’d want to test my hypothesis about political parties and reality show viewing. My suspicion is - of people who are actually voters and viewers both - Dems make up the overwhelming majority of viewers, and the minority of viewers are Republicans. Libertarians don’t watch any reality shows at all.
While there maybe be no benefits to this study at all, it would make me happy 
Jurassic Park style bringing back extinct animals like dinosaurs. And they grow up really fast and then I can fight them, in an old western stylee in a bar with tables & chairs etc.
or neverending tins of lager.
I changed my mind. Let us all get obese. I want what Otto’s creating!
Investigate an important question from GQ: Does Mountain Dew cause boobs to shrink?
I would like to geneticaly engineer wasps to build human-sized housing out of mud.
I want to be able to google stuff instantly whenever I want. In my head.
I have a stuffed animal moose. It is about the size of a toaster. I would like to genetically engineer a species of moose to grow no larger than that.
Oh, and solid clouds that one can climb up to and bounce around on.
I want to do a complex, multi-year study to determinw why bored, upper-class teenagers (with money) tend to use illegal drugs.
I’ll be willing to bet that this would yield lots of usefulinfo!
Here’s your answer, ralph:
Because taking drugs is fun.
Specially train a band of Chimps or Gorillas in how to make and use stone tools and fire. Then, secretly release the apes back into the wild, right before a National Geographic expedition is due to show up.
Then, sit back and watch the heads explode. 
Forget the diet pill, just give me fat-free fat!