“Ooh, look at me!” crowed Iago, “I’m Jafar, I have a big hat, I have a big staff, I have opposable thumbs, I’m the new sultan and all-powerful sorcerer, but that’s not good enough — no, I want to be a giant snake! — and it was all downhill from there.”

The lamp smoked and sparked and sputtered but no wrathful genie emerged to smite him. And Iago began looking for a convenient hole (preferably bottomless, or — ooh, were there any volcanos around?) to drop his erstwhile master’s lamp into for a millennia or three.