Bathroom Monologue: 10 Fates Worse Than Death

1. Two deaths (if you think death is bad).

2. No death (if you think death is a necessary part of life).

3. Death plus a little more anxiety about it before it happens (only marginally worse, but it qualifies).

4. Immortality plus perpetual childbirth (if you have a vagina).

5. Immortality plus perpetual childbirth (if you don’t have a vagina).

6. Immortality plus spending your entire existence preoccupied with the terror that you will soon die (time squandered and all that).

7. A book by Kurt Vonnegut.

8. Immortality plus spending your entire existence preoccupied with the terror that you will die in the distant future, but the terror is so crippling you never get anything done before then anyway (“The Angst Infinite”).

9. Being painstakingly de-atomized, picked apart speck-by-speck, divided countlessly until you have not died, but have ceased to be anything philosophically identifiable as you (splitting hairs, if you will).

10. Being fired from your coroner’s position which you cherished (you liked your death job, now you don’t have it).