You find yourself treading water a hundred miles off the coast of Australia. Say hello to Gordo the Great White Shark!
I wish I had definitive proof of what happened to Amelia Earhart, and shared it with the entire world.
Granted, you discover Amelia Earhart was murdered by the Government, and as soon as you come out with it, you mysteriously vanish from your home in the dead of night, never to be heard from again.
I wish I knew the true origin and demise of the cosmos.
The cosmos already had demised. You only kept yourself in existence through a bizarre placebo effect. But no longer.
I wish for world peas.
I think you corrupted that one yourself, chum. 
See post 28.
I wish people would read this thread all the way through before posting in it. 
Granted. As this thread grows in length, it takes more and more time to read it all the way through. People have less and less time to devote to other activities. Eventually, society breaks down completely in it’s doomed attempt to feed the wish thread, leading to the end of humanity.
I wish people would think though all the consequences of their wishes.
Every Doper who has posted to this thread so far, and every Doper who might be tempted in the future, is left in a stupor as they consider every possible consequence of their wishes. The Dope, deprived of its best and brightest, collapses, and with it, civilization, and with it, life as we know it. Billions of years from now, the Sun expands and the Earth, unmourned and unremembered, is burned to a crisp. And it’s all your fault.
I wish I weren’t so pessimistic.
Granted. You are 0.00000000000000000000003% less pessimistic than you were before. Feels Gooooooooood, don’it?
I wish I brought sexy back.
While we are grateful for any gifts, in the future please refrain from bringing in the spines and shoulderblades of supermodels. It’s a hygine thing, you see.
I wish I could speak all dialects of Mandarin fluently.
You now know all dialects of Mandarin, past, present, and future. Through analysis of future idioms and proverbs, you are able to piece together some future events. In your attempts to capitalize upon them, you cause a future idiom source to not happen, creating a causality crisis, unraveling the fabric of spacetime and destroying the universe.
I wish I were a genre-savvy evil villain.
You sensibly shoot Bond the moment you catch a glimpse of him. Unfortunately, it turns out to be a Bond-dummy filled with explosives.
I wish I didn’t accidently keep hitting the insert key when aiming for backspace (not a good habit when you’re not a touch-typist).
You contract a particularly virulent form of leprosy and all of your fingers fall off. Maybe it’s time to look into some of that cool new voice-recognition software?
I wish to crush my enemies, to see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
You and your enemies are crushed by a nearby bulldozer, driven to the emergency room by ambulance, and die. Sobbing wifes, daughters, and friends crowd the ER waiting room. Unfortunately you were the first one to die.
I wish I could read a book with all its details and subtleties by simply placing my hand upon it.
Granted! You develop a powerful crush on your long-time enemy, Bobby Brown, (who you have never forgiven for his part in establishing boy bands as a staple of American music culture) and seeing him on old MTV videos gives you a funny warm, tingly, feeling in your pants.
Last night, on the way home from work you spot Brown leaving the Best Western Hotel along with his bandmembers Heads of State, and various security members.
You couldn’t help but slam on the breaks and veer into his small entourage in order to get a closer look at the BIG B himself.
Security reacts quickly and ushers Bobby into one of the limos and speeds him away before your car slices through Ralph Tresvant and some innocent bystanders. Regaining control, you follow in close pursuit of Bobby, involuntary pelvic motions causing your steering to be slightly erratic. You must have him close to you - yes you must. You hit the stereo button as you swerve around a switchbacked semi-trailer, following the tire tracks of Bobbys limo, and on pops Whitney Houston’s classic - ‘I have nothing’.
I don’t wanna hurt anymore
Stay in my arms if you dare
Or must I imagine you there
Don’t walk away from me…
I have nothing, nothing, nothing
If I don’t have you, you, you, you, you, you…
The night will end either very badly or very well. Either way it will be interesting.
I wish it was beach season around here already.
Granted. With your newfound powers, you boldly stride into the Library of Congress and proceed to scan every book ever made. The sudden inrush of knowledge squeezes out all prior knowledge (your brain is only finite in capacity after all), and you walk out not knowing who you are, who your family and friends are, what your favorite hobbies were, how to do your job like you did before, etc. After digesting “1001 Ways to Kill Yourself and Be Happy Doing It”, you off yourself by biting down on a cyanide capsule while simultaneously blowing your brains out and jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.
I wish I could completely prevent people from skipping wishes (ahem: previous poster) in this thread.
You institute a mechanism which prevents people from hitting submit without first checking via the preview button as to whether there has been a simulpost. Wanting to lead by example, you always hit Preview Post before Submit Reply…
But wait! In the time it took to move the cursor between the two buttons, someone may have posted before you. Better hit Preview Post again…
It takes 10 seconds to realise that no one may post on the board thanks to your rule. This makes you vaguely sad, and a little sleepy.
I wish I only needed four hours sleep per night.
Granted. You now have dissociative identity disorder. There’s you and your other personality, a raging right wing conservative named Ted. You sleep the first four hours, Ted the rest.
I wish for an all expenses paid trip to Disney land.
You’re correctly diagnosed with inoperable, terminal, painful cancer. The Make-a-Wish Foundation fully pays for your Disneyland trip. Have fun!
I agree with Isamu: I wish it was beach season around here already.
**I wish it was beach season around here already. **
Granted! The beach of the Atlantic Ocean has been extended into the wilds of deepest Ohio, annihilating the entire east coast population of the United States. Morbid with responsibility, you lay nude upon the beach for the next nine hours, burning yourself to a crisp and develop numerous and oozing blisters.
I wish for an unlimited shopping spree in New York.
Granted. The queue of muggers following you around stretches for two blocks.
I wish a grain of sand in Australia would move half a millimetre.