How Not to Die

According to this page which references the Nat'l Vital Statistics Report and all that good jazz, one of the leading causes of death is falling. That's right, falling kills more Americans each year than drunk driving, homicide, or drowning. Oh, and home accidents kills even more at a whopping 18,048 per year! When I said, "aw, come on, stop being so afraid, you could die by falling down the stairs" I never knew...I suppose it shows the celestials have a sense of dark irony. "Oh, he survived a mugging and a drowning, let's have a bookshelf fall on his head."

I am here to tell you, THAT is not the way to go! Here is a comprehensive list of ways not to die:

1. Accidental Poisoning
So with 19,457 Americans dead per year, what have we learned today? Apparently, Americans can't cook. Twenty-seven minutes from now, someone else will fall victim to an American's bad cuisine. Maybe Emeril should become required watching.
2. Dying while fainting from filling flasks full of liquid nitrogen
This happened. Now honestly, my heart goes out to whoever dies this way, because I assume you're doing it for science, and dying for science is awesome. I would applaud you except...he died from not opening the windows. Please people, don't die this way. Open the windows so you don't suffocate in evaporating nitrogen, and if you start to feel wheezy, stop what you're doing.
3. Pesticide deaths
In addition to being very painful, this particular death is completely preventable. Read the labels, wash your food, don't spray a whole can on your tomato...Imagine this tragic conversation in heaven: "Yeah, I died trying to kill a bug." Well, as long as the bug dies, I guess.
4. Alcohol poisoning
So six kids die every year from trying too hard. You could almost call these "peer pressure deaths." Chug chug chug could translate to die die die, but I suppose you could say "I died happy." However, in addition to being completely pointless, this death comes with a pricey pain tag, and while alcohol is a good thing, it's not worth dying for.
5. Death by blogging
Yes, I went there. Just read this article, and don't die this way. Two deaths preventable by exercise and eating healthy (honestly) are two deaths too many.
6.Dying of a dead man's bite
In some ways, this death is awesome in its uniqueness and zombie-esque revenge quality. However harmless strapping a dead man's head to your saddle might seem, take precautions to ensure that his teeth aren't scraping against your leg while you ride. The infection his nasty plaque gives you may be his post-death victory over you. By the way, 90,000 Americans die of infections in the hospital each year. So don't go there.
7. Beer flood
Enough said.
8. Death by shameless plug!
Last night, or rather, today, at about 2 or 3 in the morning, impulsive and frustrated Jake Howard found himself convicted of a crime he did commit...accidentally on purpose. Jake claims he stopped his murder victim from assaulting his timid sister, but no one's talking, and his attorney insists that he plead insane. When he begins to see FBI agents in his prison cell and wakes up with apparently self-inflicted cigarette burns on his body, even Jake's family suspects his mind has gone down the drain of the broken dishwasher. Jake finds insanity defined in a lonely mind as he struggles to plead his case against the newspapers and the lawyers fighting over him, but its hard to be the man who accidentally killed the president. Interested in reading this short story? Contact me.

So what if you don't die from any strange random unnatural causes? For you, there is always the death clock. The great Chinese Historian Sima Qian once said, "A man only has one death. It can be as light as a feather or as heavy as Mount Tai." My hope is that my death will have meaning and make a difference, and that it might add to my life rather than take away. How about you? What are you living, and dying for?

"For it is appointed to man once to die, and then the judgement."