If a jinni (or genie) grants you three wishes, what would you wish? 🧞
I might guess something like generic infinite richness, or your specific wishes, maybe even world peace...
Or perhaps exploiting the technicality (loophole). Like please grant me another x wishes, or better, another battalion of you, "you" being the jinni.
How am I supposed to clone myself?, said the jinni.
Unless the jinni stated the terms and conditions, we can surely find a cheeky way to get to the backdoor.
And as for me, I might...
... ignore the jinni politely.
😂
As in, I thank thee for the generous offer, kind sir. Might I offer thee for a sugared roundel, nigh consumed, its orb defiled? 🤔 A half-eaten donut?
First of all...
It came from a metallic lamp. It is unwise to ask anything from vapor emanated from an antique.
We could be passed out and delirious from the poisonous gas, and dreaming up whatever it shows us. The grants would act as "Continue to Faint, Thank You" usher, the unconscious hospitality.
To ignore it, or to question it, or even to dismantle 🪛🔧 it is quite amusing actually.
Second,
Anything sentient coming out from any inanimate object generally needs to be further studied 🔬🔎
Cautiously and peacefully interacting with it is a highly recommended first step. Like my response earlier.
Fraudometer is detecting high value...
Let's dive about this bit in entertainment, shall we?
⌚ Timeline
~700–900 — 1001 Nights
Kitāb Alf Layla wa-Layla (كتاب ألف ليلة وليلة) ➡️ Book of One Thousand Nights and a Night. It is then called "Arabian Nights" by European.
Scheherazade recited stories to King Shahryar, the ruler of the Persian empire. One (original) tale involving jinni is "the fisherman and the jinni". Later on, in French translated version, there's "Aladdin".
Shahryar had been betrayed by his first wife. In response, he "developed" a grim routine: marry a new woman each day, then execute her the next morning to prevent further betrayal. What kind of "development" was that? 😱 Well, it sounds insane by today's standard, and even in that period. But that is the setup or background story.
Scheherazade, the vizier's daughter, volunteered to marry him, with a plan to stop the killings.
Each night, she told the king a story — but cleverly stopped at a cliffhanger before dawn, so the king would spare her another day to hear the ending.
✅ This is the foundation of "natural" thug jinni — fisherman story.
1697 — Charles Perrault (France)
He published The Ridiculous Wishes (Les Souhaits ridicules) in 1697.
There was no jinni in the story, but more to the "three wishes" written trope.
1704-1717 — Antoine Galland (France)
Antoine Galland was a French orientalist and a translator.
He learned the stories from a Syrian storyteller named Hanna Diyab (yes, a male, but Galland's notes do reference female tellers in oral culture).
He published the first European version of One Thousand and One Nights (Les Mille et Une Nuits, contes arabes traduits en français).
1704 ➡️ Galland published the first volume.
1717 ➡️ He finished publishing the final volume (posthumously for some, as he died in 1715).
The stories were released in multiple volumes over those 13 years (1704-1717).
This was when the label "Arabian Nights" started to emerge.
Through Hanna Diyab, Galland added "Aladdin" (jinni, rubbing lamp, wishes) and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" (open sesame). There was an excerpt for rubbing the oil lamp in the "Aladdin" tale. Now why would any sane person "rub a lamp"? It is permitted to smile charmingly.
In Aladdin, the "lamp rub" legend starts from his mother tried to clean (polish) the lamp, so it would be presentable in the market as they needed the money badly. But alas, bam! Dodgy compliant jinni appeared from the lamp. Henceforth, Aladdin does the lamp rubbing every time he needs a magical backup.
✅ This is the foundation of "unnatural" jinni granting wishes — Aladdin story.
1800s — "Three Wishes" tales circulate in Europe
The "3 wishes" setup, usually a magical being granting wishes, often wasted foolishly — was part of common peasant storytelling, especially in rural Germany, France, Scandinavia, and Britain.
It was passed down orally through generations, often with humorous or moral twists.
1902 — William Wymark Jacobs
He published The Monkey's Paw, British Gothic version — dark twist on wish fulfillment.
No jinni, no fairy, just doom.
But the story has the "wish-granting" aspect.
1940s-now — Films, TV series, and cartoons
Genie-in-a-lamp enters Hollywood and animation: Aladdin and His Lamp (1952), I Dream of Jeannie, Looney Tunes, Disney's Aladdin (1992), etc.
Earliest British production would be The Thief of Bagdad (1940).
That's the timeline of how the granting-three-wishes jinni butler entered our collective imagination.
Simplified
Jinni Granting Wishes
Jinni or genie, singular. Jinn or genies would be the plural form.
In Aladdin, Aladdin (depicted by Galland as a lackadaisical hollow place in the center of the buttocks 📜) never offered the jinni anything, yet he commanded the jinni left and right to do his bidding. I believe that's "because" Aladdin's life was already in the jinni's palm. Thus when Aladdin passed away, his spirit would become the jinni's robota for eternity. Aladdin didn't bother to review the fine print, carelessly assuming everything worked in his favor — lackadaisical 101.
In afterlife, jinni would say something like, You thought you were the master, but I was simply onboarding you (smiling like a horse 🐴).
And Aladdin would respond, But our friendship!
Jinni: Yes, the friendship, part of onboarding.
💡 In spectral-being and human business deal, the living will always be the "minion" in the beyond. That's strictly business. They don't take our currency or minerals. Human soul is the accepted specie.
Is There Any Lesson in This?
Well, we can always not rub a dusty Aladdin's lamp I suppose. That looks odd without the cleaning context.
Picture yourself doing it on a car bumper. Or muffler.
(Looking around 👀) (rubbing a certain part of car with hands)
Oh sweet jinni, come out, come out, give me three. More cars. With free gasoline or undead batteries.
If the jinni were there, it would... laugh. What's undead battery?, the jinni would ask.
But I did not say stop. It is an unorthodox ritual to appreciate our automobile 🚗 in a way. Please make sure the looking around 👀 part goes well before doing it. As stated in Vehicular Worship™ just now.
How about a shiny brand new Aladdin's lamp?
What about that?
Can I rub that?
Yes 🤷
The Fisherman Family
Before the poor fisherman found the thug jinni, everyone in the family talked in theatrical-rhetorical sense.
| Mum | : |
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| Child #1 | : |
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| Child #2 | : |
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| Child #3 | : |
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| Dad | : |
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| Child #1 | : |
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| Dad | : |
|
They were the people of artful narration.
Then he (the fisherman) found the jinni, outwitted it to oblivion, and proclaimed his victory...
Long live me, the jinni breaker. I shall dine with silver, when I caught magical fish later... and made people give me money paper.
Then I shall buy silverware. For my latest costume of silverware. She sells seashell with a bell.
Assuming people would buy mystical fish.
Actually, in the (bridge) story, the fish were sold in the market. The rumors about awkward fish in the market reached the palace. The sultan was suspicious and began his investigation 👳🎺
In that — Scheherazade's charm — the fish had magical colors and could talk... Glowing festive colored talking fish 🐠🎤📢
Now just one of talking fish would be... 😲
Aside from the off the charts looking fish, people in the story bought them and presumably consumed them, and maybe paid the fisherman. This bit alone can be one trilogy, starts with Saga of Nemo Ancestors.
In my opinion, this selling part simply makes no sense like Treasure Hunting in Movies vs. Real Life.
I mean... Selling fish is not just placing a bouquet of fish on a table and people will swarm like flies... on fish. That's regular fish. Apart from the bouquet 💐 arrangement layout, this fellow is selling enigmatic magical fish — for public consumption 😲 It needs an immense talent for selling fishy looking fish 🤔 We, as the consumers, won't buy any speaking and dubious looking raw meal... No matter how symmetrical they are laid out...
I think I'll buy those poet potatoes...
🫢
To recapitulate this amusing fisherman story:
Whole new tale begins (eventually): The Tale of the Young King of the Black Isles... And the talking fish with festive colors.
Though we will not get to that "easily"...
Indeed each story is captivating. When we further analyze each story, scope it, which is forming a mystifying maze within a maze in a perplexing tale, it will have moral lesson, of sort.
Scheherazade depended on her wit and charm — not to gain, but to live. And she succeeded gloriously.
So you see how clever Scheherazade was by using narrative recursion as bait.
Let me counteroffer you with a tale... within a tale... that opens a door... to another tale... with another cursed person...™
The psychopathic broken-hearted king had no chance to observe the details of each tale — unlike me with thousands of seconds spare time to read unrelated product labels.
And how foolish to believe a jinni would do public service work without payment.
🙂
Modern Lamp
Rubbing a lightbulb or a neon lamp to conjure a rebuttal-agent beast perhaps is an amusing new concept. There's no outlet on that.
Rebuttal-Agent Beast™ (RAB)
Features:
- Immediate objections to everything you say.
-
Counter-wishes: User: "I want a palace." RAB: "Have you considered how that would destabilize the housing market?" - Corrects your own pronunciation of your own name.
- Refers to your soul as a "developing thesis it disagrees with".
Example
Me
I wish for peace 💗
RAB
See, Hollywood, make it as a thriller fantasy of sort — not comedy, ymedoc — culturally inclined yet sounds like a Klingon would say. Bwargh! Ymedoc! You cheat!
For instance Ryan Reynolds being the Alacarte (as opposed to Aladdin) and the stuck-yet-oddly-sensical jinni, played by Jimmy Fallon, called Jimmy Fallon, precisely two words.
The example above is how we regular people would wish. Alacarte, being the master of sarcasm and reverse-psychology turret 🚀 fit, will say something like...
Alacarte
Jimmy Fallon
RAB.exe stops respondingPerfect match, don't you think?
I'm talking like "Hollywood" is one living entity, all knowing, all listening 🤔
Oh! Ah, of course, let's put this written-on-napkin idea specifically on Michael Bay's desk. Imagine how many napkins on his desk already 🤣
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