List: '10 places not to see before you die'

Today’s ‘List Friday’. As a by-product of my more than passing interest in lists, I’ve decided every list can be classified into one of two categories, i.e. helpful lists, and unhelpful ones. And, intuitively, I reckon a list that’s helpful to one person’s not necessarily so to another. Or in other words, not everyone would classify the same lists as helpful or unhelpful. In October 2008 I wrote a post about a bucket list, i.e. a list of things to do before you kick the bucket [1]. Professional listmakers’ve moved into the bucket list market niche – with paper and electronic lists whose titles all end with ‘…before you die’. There are bucket lists of places to see, films to watch, books to read, music to listen to, food to eat. You name it, there’s a bucket list for it. Now a reverse bucket list phenomenon’s started. Inevitably, perhaps. The first reverse bucket list I saw was in Salon.com. It’s titled ‘10 places not to see before you die’, and it’s a 9.9% contraction of the 101 places listed in the book 101 places not to see before you die [2]. The ‘10 places’ blurb is here [3] and a slideshow of them is here [4]. Me? I think bucket lists are unhelpful – because worrying about fulfilling them’s likely to hasten death. So I don’t have a personal bucket list. I find reverse bucket lists equally unhelpful. But of no concern, because they’re easy to fulfil – by doing nothing. Ho hum.