So I laughed harder today than I have in many years. Yes, years. The kind of laughing where you can hardly breathe and your side aches.

What made me laugh?  Well, lately the website buzzfeed.com has been doing a bunch of surveys to determine all kinds of things like ‘Which Jane Austen Heroine are you Like?’ or ‘What superhero are you?’ etc.  They’ve become popular with my friends so I mozied on over to take a few as a lark.

The first one I got was quite the ominous survey ‘How will I die’.  I mean who doesn’t want to know that?  Would certainly help when purchasing life insurance.  So I filled out the survey and the results pop up. I am not altering this in any way.  This is what it told me:

“You will be suffocated by existential dread. An unbearable sense of the sheer pointlessness of it all, once tamped down by booze, drugs, and the occasional, ultimately meaningless sexual release, eventually becomes too much for you”

That’s rough…Who knew I was both so thoughtful and such a rebel. So existential dread is defined by our friends over at wikipedia as “It is used in English to describe an intense feeling of apprehension, anxiety, or inner turmoil. In other languages…. it is used regularly to express fear.

Also existential philosophy is the brainchild of Soren Kierkegaard. The idea is you use your brain to perfect yourself and separate from the empty, meaningless world. (Catcher in the Rye with all the ‘phonies’ is an example).  Anyway, who knew that it had such a hold on me enough so that it would suffocate me and lead to my death’.  No more deep thinking for me! 😉

‘After sitting alone thinking about the earth and all the shallowness and emptiness I thought ‘why not take another survey? I mean it won’t mean anything but I might as well’…

So I found one that seemed pretty innocuous ‘What sandwich are you?’  Perhaps I was eating lunch and needed some guidance but you won’t believe what I got as my sandwich.  Again, I am not making this up.  It said:

‘You got the Sad bologna sandwich. Look at your life. Look at your choices” Now I’m really experiencing some existential dread.  Look at my choices?  Look at my life?  I never knew I was so off track.  And it’s not just a bologna sandwich but a sad bologna sandwich.  Even my bologna is sad. Now that is existential…

What’s a girl to do?  Existential dread, a sad sandwich.  Look at my life choices…I’m a mess.  A bit of an academic mess that likes cheap mystery meat but a mess!

But then I found some comfort in an article in the Huffington Post and again I am not making this up.  It said:

“New research shows Tylenol may have the unseen psychological side-effect of easing existential dread….We think that Tylenol is blocking existential unease in the same way it prevents pain because a similar neurological process is responsible for both types of distress,”

Phew!  What a relief.  I’ve got to stock up on tylenol.

But what do I do about my sad sandwich?  And my life choices? When I see bologna in the stores it’s going to have a  whole new tragic appeal to me.  How can a sandwich be sad?  Evidently if it is my sandwich it brings on all kinds of anxiety, distress and sadness.  Perhaps the poor life choices have something to do with the tylenol too!  Maybe that will help me get a happy sandwich?

Anyway, I thought it was hilarious, but I implore all of you to watch out for any existential dread posts or if you see bologna in my fridge give me a hug and ask me how those life choices are going.  You may be my only hope!