As you surf the Web, read the press, watch the tube, you are inundated with tales of disaster. Syria is in flames! Egypt is collapsing! Mali is filled with jihadists and Frenchmen! Children are being molested, kidnapped, probably eaten! The study du jour informs you that your favorite foods will kill you deader’n a doornail, or at least cause you to grow long, green, cancerous tentacles! Your favorite politician, zipper agape, is tripping over his feet of clay! The dollar is not worth the paper it’s written on! The cities are filled with the oppressed! Drugs (prescription and recreational, although it’s increasingly hard to tell the difference) are being wolfed down by our adolescents! Guns are leaping out of closets and pursuing us down the streets! Civilization (Western Civilization, Eastern Civilization, Northern Civilization, Southern Civilization) is circling the drain!  And it’s all true! WE’RE DOOMED!!!  So what?  All of us, Dear Reader, must keep one saving thought in mind:  LIVING IN A COLLAPSING CIVILIZATION IS FUN!!!        FUN, FUN, FUN!!!  You doubt me? Shame on you! Think about it: who does a collapsing civilization reward?  GLADIATORS (think NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB)  ACTRESSES (think Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan)  PROSTITUTES (see above)  Are these fun people or what?  Stick with me, Dear Reader, and as time staggers on, I will regale you with tales of the upside of civilizational collapse.  © The Happy Pessimist