[next post reserved-currently tackling #140-NO preemptions]
Granted: a large asteroid hits the earth, exterminating the entire population of Earth, much of the sand all over the earth is moved varying distances.
I wish the sky was mauve instead of blue.
Okay.
The grain of sand causes a local sand flea to deviate 1 mm from its path as it dives into and out of the retreating froth.
A local Australian girl comes walking along, and trips over the sand flea (when she otherwise wouldn’t have), falls down, and cries for Mommy.
Mommy comes rushing, and in her haste kicks a seashell into the nearby surf.
The ripples from the impact of the seashell in the ocean, tiny as they are, propagate across the Pacific, until they reach Tahiti. The ripples amplified a roaring Tahitian breaker just enough to start a small landslide 300m off the beach.
Enough of the sand grains filter down into the depths that they impact a slightly unstable underwater canyon.
In a classic avalanche pattern, more grains are impacted by the originals, until they achieve the critical mass sufficient to cause the entire canyon wall to collapse.
This causes a tsunami train to propagate outwards. Said tsunamis travel towards the West Coast of North America at the usual 500 MPH. 10 hours later they reach landfall in LA and points north and south, killing thousands.
You don’t live there (fellow guest)? Sorry, you’re not out of the woods yet…
One of the tsunamis impacts near a dormant volcano cone in the coastal region of Oregon, causing some underlying magma to become displaced.
The resulting earthquakes eventually reach Mt. St. Helens, which in 18 hours undergoes an eruption similar to the one it had in the early 80’s-but worse.
As it blows its top again, one of the rocks reaches near-escape velocity, travels 100 miles through low earth orbit, and ends up crashing into your current location, right on top of your head, killing you.
Oops.
[Edit] I wish Todderbob would learn to read the previous post better.
Done. I’ve replaced the entire atmosphere with a plasma consisting of helium and xenon.
He now has perfect understanding of post #142. Unfortunately, he now no longer can read the word “preemptions”.
I wish everyone could for one second know the mind of every single person in the world.
Granted. The mental overload drives everyone insane. But no one cares, “whoopie we’re all gonna die!”
I wish the troubles I put to rest would stay put and not return.
Granted. The troubles you’ve already put to rest will never return, unfortunately the reason for this is your complete amnesia and inability to dedicate anything to long term memory.
I’d like to ask how, exactly, I should learn to read the post better?
He asked for a grain of sand to move, he didn’t ask for only that grain of sand to move, and he didn’t specify how that grain of sand should move.
I wish for an end to all sunburn.
From now on, nobody gets sunburned. Skin cancer rates soar astronomically since people no longer have this simple reminder to moderate their time in the sun. Millions are dead, and it is all your fault.
I wish I could read Chinese.
I think John DiFool was referring to this:
Apparently he was working on a long answer to the wish about sand and tried to save a place for his answer while he was busy composing it.
No worries, your sand answer was fine.
Congratulations! You can now read Chinese. By “Chinese” I mean Chinese people, and by “read” I mean read their palms. You have an awesome future ahead of you as a street-side fortune teller in China.
I wish help came in a can.
There’s always a person or sometimes close by to help you, in any situation. But before helping you, they will always, without fail, grab some canned good from your home, open it and, well, come in the can.
I wish mind-bleach really existed.
Here you go, and it works absolutely perfectly, erasing all unbearable thoughts from your brain beyond hope of recall and sparing everything else. Unfortunately it is excruciatingly painful, requires you to bore a quarter-inch hole in your skull to apply, and is addictive. You spend the rest of your life chasing the agonising dragon.
I wish I knew what to wish for.
You know exactly what you wish for: you wish for Rush Limbaugh to make a sex tape.
I wish I had longer fingernails.
You now have Wolverine like Adamantium claws. You can slice a car in half with just one swing. You join up with other mutants to form a highly effective and sexy crime fighting force. Although the public at large are unappreciative of your efforts, you can sleep well at night because you, and your ragtag team of misfits (who are very sexy), keep the world from descending into chaos.
Just don’t pick your nose, masturbate or wipe your own butt and you’ll be fine.
P.S. No high fives.
I wish I was Spiderman (Peter Parker).
Granted, but all of your friends will suddenly develop arachnophobia.
I wish I’d one day witness an airport scene like the one in Spinal Tap.
Referring to post #141-to do the wish justice I needed 10 minutes without someone jumping in during the meanwhile-I think in this case it was justified, tho I won’t post such warnings again. Supposed to be a fun thread, right? :smack:
Dude! I’ll get new friends… with blackjack… and hookers… in fact, forget the friends and the blackjack.
It’s all yours to witness. And clean up after.
North Star, star of the sea
I wish for a ship named after me
To sail for a day alone and free
With someone nice for company
(From some kids book that I distantly remember)
Granted!
You have one pefectly lovely day aboard the Scuba Ben with a perfectly lovely companion with whom you share a nice picnic lunch, some wine and good conversation.
Hope it was worth it, because when you wake up the next morning, you realize you are adrift hundreds of miles from the nearest land, your sail is torn, you are out of gas, and the radio doesn’t work. The person you considered quite nice yesterday begins to get on your nerves with all the complaining about your predicament. Having brought along only enough food and water for one day, you are both weak and delerious in less than a week. One of you ends up killing and eating the other. Does it really matter which one?
I wish the Cubs would win the World Series this year.
The Cubs win! This is, of course, one of the signs of the Apocalypse, which follows soon after, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth as the world comes to a terrible, terrible end.
I wish I understood popular music nowadays.
Oh you end up understanding it all right. You come to realize that it is all about payola, and jaded fans who use music as background noise/part of the mating ritual, lazy artists who either slavishly copy the past or all-too-self-consciously avoid anything smacking of it, and how iTunes is leading to the death of the album, and how all of this had completely killed off anything resembling a thriving, creative radio scene. You throw all your music out (and/or delete it off the hard drive), and sit all day in your room in ultimate despair that it will get any better.
Welcome to my world.
I wish a supergroup like the Beatles would come along, shaking everything completely up, dispensing with all the ennui, and, by crossing all genre boundaries, unite us all under a common musical banner once again.