Three Wishes

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
You have three magic genie wishes, what are you asking for?
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This question has one simple answer, that’s likely also wrong. “Infinite wishes” – you actually only need one, and you’re good.

However, if we dig deeper, we don’t want anything to do with the genie. The genie has a way of twisting everything. So meeting that genie means you better run.

“Hello, brave traveler! I will grant you three wishes” – the Genie said
“I wish to live forever.” – the human responded
“Granted.”
“Wow! I’ll never die?”
The genie replies, “You won’t die… but you might wish you could.”

Endless wishes can easily be twisted: the genie might end your life before you even use them, limit you to one wish per century and claim the first wish is already gone. Or they can grant your wishes while corrupting your mind so all you wish for is absurd. To survive a scenario like this, you’d need to wish for something extremely simple, precise, and un-twistable. Even then, it’s far from easy.

Ask for a million bucks, and suddenly you’re buried under a million deer. Try again, specifying dollars, and it’s a million Zimbabwean dollars. Try one more time, insisting on a million USD in cash, and watch the crushing weight of coins flatten you. And whatever you do, don’t wish for world peace. One poof and you’re on Venus, where war has never existed… but life sure hasn’t either. Or Earth is now Venus.

We have in our folklore some stories about the golden fish, granting wishes. The golden fish is a bit nicer than the genie and would sometimes grant them to a very clever asker, although most stories still have unpleasant plot twists. We also have the golden shark, which grants wishes in a bloody and immediate way, but at least the shark is honest and won’t end the world.

Maybe you wish for the genie to implement your other two modest wishes with a good intent and no awful twists.

Dancing in the Rain

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

This is a nice statue from the socialist period. It’s named Victory to be politically correct but we can rename it to Dancing in the Rain – after all, it rains and she looks like dancing.

I’m not sure I encountered much today but I surely soaked wet. Didn’t want to walk with an umbrella. My thinking in the morning was that I will get wet anyway but without the umbrella, I will at least not hold my hand up for 2-3 hours.

Water finds its way in and if you try keeping it out too hard, it starts building up from the inside as well. I think it was okay. The shoes held up.

The Wildlife of Sofia

~ Veselin ~ 10 Comments

I was lucky to have good weather this morning and saw all kinds of nice little things, more than I can squeeze in a single blog post. As long as one has the eyes to look and the curiosity to keep the look for longer than a second, all kinds of findings start coming up. Dogs with jackets, weird graffiti, animals, plants and who knows what. Here’s a selection of photos.

Friends

These birds, a magpie and a rook flew together above me for quite awhile. I had the chance to see 3 of their landing sites and a couple of playfights.

The one in the back was braver and didn’t run as far as the ginger.

Mushrooms

Shaggy Mane (Порцеланова копринка) and some other kind of Coprinaceae (копринка) – two types of fungus that are related but not the same species, found in a place where the grass gets cut, and is sprayed against any undesired form of life. I’d guess this particular lawn has some kind of an issue, maybe water or rot, helping the mushrooms grow. Next to office buildings and a multi-million skyscraper construction site.

Blackberry

It’s red but who notices such things.

An important political message

The sign says: “No, darling, you’re sober as a little fluffy penguin”. I found it amusing.

The Antichrist

The sign says “Petar Danov – Antichrist”. Petar Danov’s philosophy is a christian-esoteric mysticism from the late 19th and early 20th century, one that has zodiac signs and people dressed in white who dance around lakes. What makes him an Antichrist is not clear but perhaps the people dancing around the 7 Rila Lakes in July and August are very dangerous.