There's a dry cleaners that I pass with some frequency when I'm out and about, a dry cleaners that has a sign on its big outside wall reading "Alterations While You Wait."  It's a simple sign, yet it has inspired in me a delightful little fantasy.
     "How may I help you, sir?" the clerk asks as I enter the cleaners and reach the counter.
     "I'd like a different ending to The Wizard of Oz," I'd say.  Oh, I'd like lots of other alterations done, too, but most would require a very long wait, I'm afraid.  Changing the ending of The Wizard of Oz would be a comparatively quick, simple thing to do.  If they did a good job, I'd be back with other works, people, and facts of life.  I wouldn't even mind if they told me that I'd have to leave the manuscript overnight to get an uplifting version of Of Mice and Men.  What's that?  To get all the war out of this badly stained history I've inherited, you'll have to send it out?  Four to six weeks?  Fine, fine - just fine.  Sure, I'll be happy to pay $5.95 shipping and handling....
     How do I want the ending of The Wizard of Oz changed?  I want Dorothy to live happily ever after in Oz.  I mean, come on - let's get real.  Who in their right mind would really want to go back to the grainy, black and white world of Kansas during the Dust Bowl days of the Great Depression when they could be living in an Emerald City dancing with scarecrows and little people even a small girl could smack with impunity if they got out of line?  And it's not just any grainy, black and white world of Kansas during the Dust Bowl days of the Great Depression we're talking about, either, but one in which the aunt and uncle serving as your guardians have no time for you and run to save their own hides when tornadoes show up.  And with World War II right around the corner, to boot.  You'd have to be a real idiot to abandon all the poppies you care to sniff and auto-buffing machines for that!
     But I'm sure I've mentioned this before.  Sorry.  I know how irritating it is when writers repeat themselves.  It's an irritation I know all too well.  I'll start reading someone, and he or she will use a phrase like "tincture of lucidity" in a story and I'll think, wow - that's the neatest thing I've ever heard!  Only to find it repeated in the next story - and the next.  The writer plunges in my mind from being a wordsmith for the ages to someone who can't even write ten pages without self-plagiarizing.  Instead of standing in awe of the person's mind, I'll sit and wonder for days how it ever managed to come up with even this little gem. 
     So instead of further developing the idea of how I'd like to see the ending of The Wizard of Oz altered to better fit my common sense, I'll move on.
     "How may I help you, sir?" the clerk asks as I enter the cleaners and reach the counter.
     "I'd like a few alterations in the main story of The Wizard of Oz," I'd say.
     Yes, it's true.  As great a movie as it is, it could be better even disregarding the problems I have with its ending. 
     For example, just once I'd like to see Dorothy dump a bucket of Jack Daniels on the Wicked Witch of the West instead of water.  The Witch wouldn't melt (a pretty harsh punishment, after all), just vomit once or twice then start acting real embarrassingly.
     "Want to play with...  fire?" she'd saunter over and say to the Scarecrow, hand on her hip and fluttering her eyelashes.  A good social shunning would follow.
     Just a thought.  I have lots and lots of others.  Really.  And some of them have nothing to do with The Wizard of Oz.
     For example....
     Back in April I noted this one down: False Positive Jokes.   You know - that's when we're hearing someone speak, we decide that they're in the process of telling a joke, all the elements for a really terrific joke are falling into place, then suddenly - no joke.  Or it's an utterly flat joke.  Or even a joke so bad, our increasingly sick little smile of anticipation turns involuntarily into a full-blown grimace.  Whatever lab our brain sent a sample of the conversation to really blew it when it reported "Congratulations! You're going to be the happy listener of a super punch line!  Just wait!"  What our brain needs to do is hire an intermediary to act between it and the lab.  Some small group of neurons whose sole job in life would be to remind us, "Now hold on - don't get your hopes up - no one has ever batted a thousand in human history - this person is no exception!"  Then maybe the pain and disappointment wouldn't be so bad....
     And once those intermediary neurons are in place, we can start lobbying for a law limiting the number of times anyone can attempt to retell a joke they've mistold.  Say, three.  Then it becomes permissible to smack them with impunity.
     Of course it may be, anyway, if you're at least as strong as a young girl and the joke teller is no bigger than a Munchkin. 
     Consult your local dry cleaners for details.