It hardly needs stating that I fully expect to be done in by the avian flu. In the back of my mind I've always felt odd intimations that my demise would somehow involve diseased poultry. When the pandemic hits this country nobody will want to leave their homes or risk even brief contact with strangers, and in every thudding heart fear of illness will teeter on the brink of hysteria. In other words, everyone's behavior will suddenly begin to resemble mine. Forget West Nile virus, forget necrotizing fasciitis, those were just passing fancies. I've decided that avian flu is my true ticket to oblivion. I don't want to die, I want to live, to live so that I may be privileged to continue to be psychologically crippled by the fear of dying. No one should be afraid of death, it's true. It's nonsensical to be afraid of one's death. Death is not a state of existence, after all. There's literally nothing to be afraid of. From the individual's point of view there's only one state of existence, and that's being alive, and if you're feeling waves of immobilizing terror at the idea of being dead then you're being stupid but you're very much alive. To be terror-stricken and thinking stupid thoughts is to live. To oppose the state of being alive with the "state" of being dead is false. There's no such thing as being dead. If I die, who's dead? Can't be me. There is no me.