How to...

In almost any given situation, I will find a way to predict and then panic about the worst possible outcome.  Sometimes, this quality benefits me.  I'm constantly foreseeing dreadful traffic accidents; maybe that's why I never have one.  I also seldom run out of anything, ever.  When you wake up every morning bracing for a siege, then you're not likely to run low on canned goods, or bottled water, or toilet paper.

I subscribe to several daily-deal electronic book services, and every day, I receive emails listing the day's book deals.  Novels, biographies, history (and for some reason, Amish romance novels. Who knew?), and niche, fad-of-the-day books from two years ago are all offered for a dollar or two.  It occurred to me, but only for a moment, that a person with my tendency to borrow trouble at high rates of interest might want to think twice before buying a copy of The Worst-Case Scenario Handbook, but then I decided that it was high time that I learned how to fend off a shark attack, or how to survive a hang-glider emergency (My advice: Stay away from hang-gliders altogether.  That's for damn fools.)

Maybe I should start to read The New York Review of Books or something, because I didn't realize that The Worst-Case Scenario Handbook was a humor book.  It does offer actual advice on how to survive actual life-threatening situations, but at least half of the entries are ironic instructions on how to survive first-world emergencies like blind dates and job interviews.

So this is what I think.  Unless you're a genius, you should stick to one thing or another. A book that represents itself as a survival handbook should be nothing but a survival handbook.  A book that identifies itself as humorous must actually be funny.  Maybe the next edition (apparently, it's a series) should include a chapter on how to survive a coordinated terrorist attack on a major city.  Sadly, hashtags won't stop bullets or bomb blasts, and profile photos superimposed with semitransparent tricolores won't prevent the next one.   Vive la France.