I came across a book today that I think really could have some application for my readers.

As you have most likely deduced, this book is about huge ships and how to avoid them. Or, more specifically, how to avoid being run over by them.

The book is 112 pages full of great information on how to avoid huge ships. You'd think you could summarize it in one sentence: "Don't get in front of a huge ship," but it's not quite that easy, apparently.

Every freaking time I leave my house there's a huge ship in my way. It's so annoying.

I set out to find out what other things people want to avoid by conducting a google search for "how to avoid." Here are some of the results I saw.

• How to avoid getting hung in court
• how to avoid being arrested by the cops
• How to avoid trapped arm whilst cuddling in bed
• How to avoid extinction
• how to avoid sounding like a monkey
• How to avoid infections if you're HIV positive (umm... If you're HIV positive isn't it a little late to be avoiding infections?)
• How to avoid graduation

and the list goes on...

Yes, the Internet is a virtual cornucopia of instructions on how to avoid things. I'll leave you to conduct searches of your own, but first I've come up with some of my own tips so you can begin avoiding things RIGHT NOW.

• Avoid life's miseries and troubles with the generous application of alcohol
• Avoid getting your pants wet in a flash flood by wearing flood pants
• Avoid females by making yourself look like me
• Avoid boredom by starting a cesium 133 atom collection
• Avoid paying taxes by not making any money/being mexican
• Avoid the inevitability of mortality by drinking from the holy grail
• Avoid popularity by avoiding showers
• Avoid future illness and suffering by freezing your body in carbonite
• Avoid unwanted pregnancies by setting the microwave on your lap when you use it
• Avoid cancer by getting some other terminal illness
• Avoiding feelings and vulnerability by bottling up everything inside for years and years until it's been so long that you don't even know if you CAN feel anymore and then you become so depressed because you feel less human then those around you and you start on a masochistic cycle of self destruction until one day you just snap and freak out and start killing hoboes before finally admitting to yourself that you've never felt so alive.
• Avoid being murdered by not driving like an idiot around me

That should get you started.