Top Ten Stupidest Things To Do With A Time Machine

10. Go back in time to attend the premier of all six Star Wars movies in order.
    
    
9. Go forward in time just to see if Tom Cruise and Katie Holms really get married.
   
   
8. Go back in time to high school to give yourself advice on how to score with Gina Pollekowski.
   
   
7. Go back in time again to give yourself advice NOT to score with Gina Pollekowski, which leads to your and her eventual marriage.
   
   
6. Go forward in time so you can decide on whether to buy an Xbox-360 or wait for the Playstation-3
   
   
5. Go back in time to meet H.G. Wells in person… and convince him to write romance novels.
   
   
4. Go forward in time to attend your own funeral, with plans for leaving any missing or unsuitably grieved enough relatives out of your will.
   
   
3. Go 5, 10, and 15 minutes into the future just so you can sing Barbershop Quartet with yourself.
   
   
2. Go back 60 million years to the late Paleocene Epoch hunting for Lemurs (or any other prosimian species leading to apes).
   
   
1. Go back in time and prevent yourself from writing a “Top Ten Stupidest Things To Do With A Time Machine”
   
   

Today’s Top Ten is an all original (not from a David Letterman Top Ten Contest Category).
ALSO DON'T MISS -- "Alternate Top Ten Stupidest Things To Do With A Time Machine" below


One coworker I showed this to complained about scheduling problems with Number 3, the actual scheduling would be to go 15 minutes into the future, sing your assigned part, return to your own time, reset the machine (assuming this takes on the order of 5 minutes to do), go 10 minutes into the future, sing a new part, return to your own time ten minutes past, go forward 5 minutes and do the same again. Some versions of (fictional) time-travel assume you must return as much later in the past from where you started as you spent in the future, so assuming you can reset your time controls quickly enough, this method would allow for singing a song of approximately four minutes in length, leaving time to return and jump forward again.

One coworker complained Number 10 would not be a stupid thing to do with a time machine (he obsesses about Star Wars a little).

One coworker suggested Number 2 should be modified so that a Creationist goes back 60 million years to wipe out all prosimian (ape precursor) species to prove that Man will still exist without evolution – disproving evolution utterly. The fact that the world should only be 5,000 years old according to Creationism should be a tip off to the Creationist however that it would be a REALLY bad idea to execute this plan. Both the original and the suggested modified version are of course a much more extreme version of the time paradox of going back and shooting your farther before you are born (“conceived” for you nitpickers) – I have a friend who claims to have done just exactly this (though he won’t show me his time-machine) and the only change to history he claims was that the milkman moved in with his mom shortly after the shooting.

One coworker (initials A.C. [not: anonymous coward]) felt motivated enough to create his own: alternate list, presented here unabridged (and possibly better than my own… *sniff*).

Alternate Top Ten Stupidest Things To Do With A Time Machine

10. Go forward in time to your next three high school reunions just so everyone can comment on how young you look.
    
    
9. Go back to your own kitchen last night around 1 AM and check the counter. Then do the same for the night before, and the night before that, and so on back to infancy. If nothing else in your life is perfect, at least you can say you've never ever left a carton of milk out to spoil.
   
   
8. Too lazy to do a timecard correction, easier to just go back and work last Friday like you said you did.
   
   
7. Keep going forward in time until you discover a new "Dark Ages" for humanity. Spend rest of life there just to feel justified complaining about how much better things were back in your day.
   
   
6. Since mirrors lie, go back five minutes and meet yourself to see if you really do have a fat butt.
   
   
5. Go back to the fifth grade and sabotage Timmy Burbank's volcano. That science fair prize should have been yours!
   
   
4. Go into the future and get a sports almanac, use it to make sure you only watch the games where your team actually wins.
   
   
3. Remember that place with the terrific pizza that burned down last year? I just went back in time, snuck in the back, and snagged a bunch of their pizzas! Hmm, must have accidentally dropped my cigarette while I was leaving. Oh well.
   
   
2. It's a lot of work, but you can become the golden child of the Psychic Friends Network.
   
   And the number 1 stupid thing to do with a time machine...
   
   
1. Fulfill your Christmas wish from when you were six by going back and giving yourself a ray-gun for Christmas (fully functional, military grade, circa 2070)