As I was posting the last thread, sitting in the dark in bed letting the wireless networking doing it's thing, a bug flew and landed on the screen.

I hate bugs. They scare me. I get dry mouth and cold skin and tingly in the base of my neck when I see a cockroach. This was a little one so I wasn't really fearful of it, per se, but it made me wonder if its larger kin were somewhere in the darkened room waiting to come out and play as soon as I fell asleep. That begins to worry me.

If I had 7 wishes (there used to be a TV show about a kindly black fairy godmother that would visit children through their TV's and give them each seven wishes - does anyone else remember this show?) One of them would definitely be that wherever I went, all bugs within a 2 mile radius would drop dead and disappear. I like this more than wishing all bugs dead simply because I'm also somewhat of an environmentalist and understand the important role that bugs and insects play in our ecosystem and don't want my fear to harm the earth. Of course, I also understand that were I to walk by an insect research center that used bugs to study something important to the human race, this would be a source of not insignificant consternation to those scientists or lab techs or whoever. But this is one of those situations where they would have to take it on the chin for the greater good - my fear of things with more than four legs.

Of course, the bug wish would only be for if I had seven wishes. If I only had one, it'd be to win the megamillions lottery when it was over $360 million. I don't want to come off as venal, but hey, walking away with around $160 mil NPV post tax isn't bad. And after giving away to family, causes etc. I'd 'only' be left with less than 70 mil which is still enough to live somewhere without bugs.

Wish two would be to be able to read, write and speak the twenty most spoken languages on the planet (and their dialects) as an educated native (with academic registers). That'd just be cool.

Wish three - ability to impart good health on whomever I want.

Wish four - ability to stop time. I got this idea from another TV show from when I was a kid whose title I don't remember. This girl could stop time and walk around while everyone else was frozen. She could also unfreeze people by touching them and they could so stuff together in the frozen world. Pretty cool. Don't know what happens, though, if you're driving when time stops. In the show, the lights stayed on while time was stopped which implies machines still continued to operate. This could be very dangerous. Anyways, the main reason I want this wish is so I can sleep. How often are you falling asleep in some really boring meeting or class and you just wish you could sleep, but know you can't miss what's being said? Well, for me, it's all the time. This would effectively combat that. I could stop time, nap to my heart's content, then restart it and nobody would ever know.

Wish 5 - the bug wish.

The others I'm still working on. World peace isn't one of them. Not because I wish conflict on people, but because I actually think it's impossible. Call me a cynic, but I think conflict is key to how humanity evolves and improves itself. No competition, no evolution. I'm hoping for a better tomorrow.