Saturday, September 12, 2009

The Genie of the Lamp

I failed to mention this previously, but shortly before Christmas last year, I was poking around in an antique shop down in Richmond and I found an old brass oil lamp. It was kind of a cornball knockoff of Aladdin's lamp, but a fairly interesting gew-gaw that I figured might be worth a few laughs, so I bought it. Imagine my surprise when I started rubbing it down with some brass polish, and an oriental gentleman, decked out in turban, M.C. Hammer pants and curly-toed slippers appeared in a puff of smoke. He offered to grant me three wishes.

"Dude! You don't expect me to believe this, do you? I mean, this is strictly fairy-tale stuff."

He shrugged, and said, "It is not for me to presume to instruct the master of the lamp in what he should believe or not believe. My only duty - and I'll be more than happy to show you the official job description - is to grant you three wishes."

I decided to humor the old boy, so I mentioned, in an off-hand sort of way, how nice it would be to have a million-taxpayer march on Washington. The genie stroked his beard thoughtfully, and begged for a little time to fulfill this unprecedented wish. And, today, it looks like he came through.

I had also expressed an ardent desire for the return to private life of race-huckster and would-be revolutionary, Van Jones. The genie carried out that wish in fairly short order.

My question to my readers is this: what should my third and final wish be?
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17 comments:

  1. kcSeptember 12, 2009 at 9:44 PM

    Linked...with a suggestion.

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  2. JeffSSeptember 12, 2009 at 10:16 PM

    I like your suggest, KC. I can't think of a better alternative, save those involving banishment to desolate planets circling far away stars.

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  3. AnonymousSeptember 12, 2009 at 10:32 PM

    Ronald Reagan re-elected in 2012 and serves 8 more years.

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  4. smitty1eSeptember 12, 2009 at 10:40 PM

    A Congressman who'll yell truth in a crowded fiction.

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  5. MehaulSeptember 13, 2009 at 1:39 AM

    A world wide patent banning all parties for evermore from owning anything that has the acronym PACO.

    Except for my own new venture, a nursery birdfarm: Peaches and Corellas organic.

    Hoping you'll cut me some slack on this one.

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  6. bingbingSeptember 13, 2009 at 5:09 AM

    That's easy. Unlimited wishes... starting with Obama being taken out of office.

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  7. RebeccaHSeptember 13, 2009 at 3:15 PM

    Only one left? Hmm, let me think.

    I have it! For Obama and Congress to continue their donkey-headed crusade so that they are sure to be voted out of office as soon as legally possible.

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  8. cacSeptember 13, 2009 at 8:34 PM

    Always thinking of the greater good eh Paco? For once, put yourself first. In that case, it's obvious - the missing Flashman novel on his civil war experiences to be discovered in the late George Macdonald Fraser's garden shed.

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  9. PacoSeptember 13, 2009 at 8:45 PM

    That's extremely tempting, cac.

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  10. cacSeptember 13, 2009 at 9:47 PM

    I haven't given up hope that it may one day appear - I recall an interview with him a few years ago when he claimed that the civil war novel was essentially finished and in his desk drawer awaiting publication. But if so, where is it?

    I suspect that, like Conan Doyle, his most popular literary creation was not regarded by him as his finest work, so Fraser kept trying to distract the punters by coming out with non Flashman stuff. Perhaps he never sent it up for publication as he knew it would eclipse everything else he wrote in his later years. It may be though that "Flashman and the Battle Hymn of the Republic" will remain in the longed for literary netherworld along with such untold stories as "The Giant Rat of Sumatra".

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  11. PacoSeptember 13, 2009 at 10:29 PM

    cac: Or Boswell's diaries of his stay in Holland, which he gave to a friend to take back to England, and which were lost in route (although we at least have his memoranda, which made a book all by themselves).

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  12. FormerlySeptember 14, 2009 at 2:02 AM

    I'm with Cac - though of course G McD F didn't write novels, he just edited the papers found in the attic of a descendant of the late Harry Paget Flashman!

    Other than that, a third wish. I guess running PACO enterprises is an expensive business but rather than wishing for unimagined wealth, perhaps a more modest wish would be simply to only have just enough money in your pocket to pay for anything you want to buy.

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  13. Old Sailor ManSeptember 14, 2009 at 3:23 AM

    Re "Flashman, the Blue and the Grey". Oh yes please let it be so, Mr Genie.

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  14. PacoSeptember 14, 2009 at 6:39 AM

    Formally said: "but rather than wishing for unimagined wealth, perhaps a more modest wish would be simply to only have just enough money in your pocket to pay for anything you want to buy."

    Sorry, that's not nearly enough.

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  15. richard mcenroeSeptember 14, 2009 at 11:22 AM

    "Behold the genie of the lamp!"

    Obama: Is that SMOKE?! What the hell is your carbon footprint?! And where are you getting all this wealth you're passing out?! Offshore banking is unpatriotic! Charity is too important to be left to the private sector! And that BETTER be a union car I see sticking up out of

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  16. richard mcenroeSeptember 14, 2009 at 11:24 AM

    ...that fez. Sticking up of that fez. Sorry, phone rang.

    twL redramir: The Tolkien charcter they didn't get right on the first draft.

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  17. richard mcenroeSeptember 14, 2009 at 3:05 PM

    I suspect my caller had the Porlock Author Confounding Option in their cellphone package...

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