1. The contest is open to any individual, or group of individuals. Groups must identify all of their members, and these individuals may not participate in other groups or submit a solo entry.

   Individuals may request that their names may be munged to protect their privacy. When submitting the entry, after listing an entrant individual's real name, follow it with the parenthetical notation (munge to: «bogus name»), where "«bogus name»" is the phony identity to be displayed in the website & distributed via E-mailings. The phony name may not be the real name of another contest individual or well-known or notable personality.

   For example:

   Team Name: At Death's Door
   Participants: Arbuckle F. Brunswick III (munge to: Susie Twit), Refram Refrignuq (munge to: Dirk Diggler), Zyklot Blxtv (munge to: Artie Fatbuckle).

   When multiple individuals request the same phony name the first requester gets it; the Audit Committee will querie (by E-mail) the losing requester(s) for an alternative identity that may be used. As with the assignment of Entrant Mnemonic Identifiers, up to three possible phony identities may be supplied at the time of Entry submission. The format would be as follows:

   Participants: «real name» (munge to: «first choice»;  «second choice»;  «third choice»)

   Past individual entrants who place a current munge request will have all prior contest identity references munged as well, and the phony identity will continue to be used as their display identity in future contests until the individual requests to be un-munged. Limit one munge request per individual per year.

2. Entry Methods & Deadlines:
   1. Electronic entry submission may be made by anyone with a "stable" Internet POP/SMTP-compliant Electronic Mail (E-mail) account. Entries must be made as uncompressed ASCII text messages (no attachments) to the designated Caskets On Parade E-mail address. The subject line of the message must be
      
      2008 Contest Entry

      The Entry Message may not be submitted prior to noon EST on December 16, 2007.

      The Entry Message must have been received by your own E-mail server prior to 06:59:59 AM EST December 31, 2007 (20071231 11:59:59 UTC), and must be received by our server prior to 24:00:00 EST January 3rd, 2008 (20080104 05:00:00 UTC).

      Remember, your entry is held in abeyance for one week (168 hours) for every hour (or part thereof) that it is late, measured from the time of reception. Email Entries submitted after midnight EST December 31st will not be tabulated.

   2. The designated Caskets On Parade E-mail address is:

      auditt.committee---at---casketsonparade.org

      (Collapse the spaces out of the above and do the appropriate character replacements). Some teams are reporting problems with this address — if your submission bounces back (server sez its spam or "postmaster rejection") try this address:
      james.daggy ât gmail.com
      We're getting sick of the false-positive ninny-ware installed on most mail servers - craplets that we're not allowed to disable by the more sophisticated minds of the ISP (low-grade dullards).

      The addresses will become active around noontime (U.S.Eastern time zone; GMT -5:00) on December 16, 2007.

   3. Snail-Mail & hand-delivered entries will be accepted for the 2008 contest.

      Our Snail Mail (Postal) Address is:

      2008 Caskets on Parade
      P.O. Box 1854
      East Lansing, MI 48826-1854

      Mailed entries must be postmarked NO LATER THAN December 30, 2007 & received NO LATER THAN January 5, 2008. Entries mailed on the 31st will be late-penalized based upon the postmark stamp if that postmark is later then the electronic delivery deadline.

      Hand-delivered entries will be received right up to the Email deadline at 6:59:59 am EST December 31, 2007 ... the trick will be tracking down where we are (hint: we'll be sitting at a computer console answering Emails & acknowledging entries). Hand delivered entries arriving later in the day on the 31st will be disqualified).

      

   4. We will acknowledge receipt of all entries no later than the 5th of January, 2008. From approximately 11:45 pm EST on December 30th until the entry submission deadline at 6:59:69 am EST on the 31st we will be online (dialup servers willing) to answer questions and acknowledge receipt of entries transmitted during that period.
      
      
   5. The E-mail address found in the "Reply To" field of the message header will be the official E-mail address of the entrant. The reply address must be unadulterated — no editing will be performed to remove such phrases as "nospam". Acknowledgements that are bounced as "unknown" addressee or "no such server" will cause cancellation of the entry.

      Postal or hand-delivered entries that do not list an Email address will not receive updates during the course of the year. No snail-mail paper updates will be produced or mailed.

   6. All E-mail addresses are permanently embargoed; the usage of the E-mail address will not go beyond contest administration for the 2008 contest. Freemail E-mail accounts set up for the purpose of shielding entrant's personal E-mail accounts from spam are acceptable.

      All contest-related mailings will be sent without a "regular" addressee as a BCC: (blind carbon copy) to prevent anyone else from seeing your address. We don't sell or "share" them with anyone else for any reason.

3. No ADDITIONS, DELETIONS, CORRECTIONS, ELABORATIONS or CLARIFICATIONS to an entry will be allowed after it has been transmitted (see rules 7 through 11).

4. The scoring period of the contest is from 00:00:00.001 local time January 1, 2008 to 24:00:00 local time December 31, 2008 (local time being defined as the time-of-day at the location where a victim meets the Grim Reaper).

5. All entries shall contain a list of no more than 75 potential victims of the Grim Reaper that the entrant expects / hopes will die in the year 2008, as well as information identifying the entrant(s).

   Your starting point is the Terran planetary population (6½ billion plus) — we won't know if any single individual meets the scoring notability criteria until after they shuffle off to the hereafter. Our policy is to exclude nobody from scoring contention (Yes, that means that death row inmates, super-geezers, sick kids, the terminally stupid, fetuses, etc. are still eligible for consideration & selection).
   
   

6. The names on the list of victims should be of people sufficiently notable to have their passing mentioned^* by AT LEAST one reference in 3 of the following 6 categories:

   Wire Services	Major National Newspapers	Network/ Satellite Radio or TV News/ Sports Services	"Popular" Media	News Magazines	Internet Resources
   Associated Press Reuter's United Press Int. Xinhua	Chicago Sun-Times Los Angeles Times New Orleans Times-Picayune New York Times Times of London USA Today Wall Street Journal Washington Post International Herald Tribune	ABC BBC CBS CBC CNN ESPN NBC NPR PBS	Access Hollywood Entertainment Tonight Inside Edition MTV The National Enquirer People Magazine Rolling Stone Magazine TV Guide	Newsweek Paris MATCH Sports Illustrated Stern (Germany) Time US News & World Report	the alt.obituaries newsgroup the Official Darwin Awards website the Dead People Server website the Dead or Alive website the Obit Magazine website the Who's Alive and Who's Dead website the uk.people.dead newsgroup
   «or»
   by Unanimous Nomination of the Audit Committee Owing to the abysmal educational state of the public media, re: social, cultural, historical awareness, we've decided that we needed another mechanism to qualify individual victims that would have easily received three qualifying obituaries in decades past. Please don't lobby for a favored victim ... it only pisses-off the Audit Committee members.

   Successfully predicted deaths will only be scored if they meet the "one or more obits in each of three categories" test. «or» by Audit Committee recognition.

   2008 Contest scoring closes at 05:00 a.m. (UTC) on February 15, 2009. In addition to the "three in six" requirement, for any death to be scored in the 2008 Contest the first qualifying category obituary notice must have been published/broadcast/datelined no later than midnight (EST) January 25, 2009 (20090126 05:00 UTC) and the third qualifying category obituary notice must have been published/broadcast/datelined no later than midnight (EST) February 14, 2009 (20090215 05:00 UTC). Grim Reaper victims that die in 2008 but whose obituary notices miss these deadlines are not scoreable in future contests either.
   
   

   Hint:

   If the people on your list don't die, you can't score. Don't pick people that you wish would die. And, don't pick the little old lady down the street unless she is the last remaining Titanic survivor or equally likely to spark a media frenzy upon death. When building your database of potential Grim Reaper victims rate them on a zero-to-five satellite truck scale (representing how many network uplink trucks are likely to pull up in front of their trailer / house / workplace / hospital / bunker/ cave and go live). Some examples: Sandra Bernhard Pandora Peaks either Barbi Twin Lindsay Lohan Britney Spears Angelina Jolie

   ^*"No Feathering One's Nest" exclusions: Any obituary article or notice written or co-written, produced or co-produced, voiced or otherwise broadcast/distributed/posted by an entrant is automatically excluded as a qualifying mention in a category.

   It goes without saying that you may not, in any way, hasten the demise of anyone on your list; to that end, individuals that have had any medical service contact with a person on their list may not score points on that individual. A corollary likewise restricts anyone with a financial interest in a selectee from scoring on them (you heard us ...stop taking out life insurance policies on Lusitania survivors).

7. Only the first 75 victim names on any list will be considered for use; additional names will be discarded.

8. Names of victims already deceased, duplicated listings of a single victim, or insufficiently specified victims (see rule 9) will count toward the 75 name limit, but will not be listed as scoreable for the entrant.

9. All names must be sufficiently specific to identify only ONE person. Use "Jr.", "Sr." or other designations when appropriate. When in doubt the Date of Birth, Place of Birth, title, job description, nickname or other biographical information will help establish the unique identity of your intended victim.

   The correct spelling of the name is not critical as long as other information supplied can be used to distinguish between several similarly-named potential victims (for example "Roger Smith").

   When a name (especially the last name) is incorrectly spelled the biographical information is an absolute necessity. Do not assume that the Audit Committee knows who you mean ... more information than is needed is welcomed. Insufficient information for a listed Grim Reaper Victim will result in them being excluded from your list of scoreable Grim Reaper Victims.

   We STRONGLY URGE potential entrants to view the Entrant Pages for the 2004, 2005 2006 & 2007 Contests to see what kinds of things caused us to disqualify a name on an entrant's list, especially the NSE (Not Specific Enough) names.

10. All listed Grim Reaper victims must be homo sapien; no dogs, cats, cartoon/comic characters, concepts or other entities will be allowed for scoring purposes (their listing will, however, count toward the 75 name limit).

11. Accidentally aborted or stillborn fetuses will count as age zero for computing points to be awarded for the death. Intentionally aborted fetuses can not score in any judging category.

12. An entrant scores when one of their listed victims dies & receives the required obituary category citations. Points for victims are based upon the age at death of the victim and the uniqueness of their selection. The maximum number of points that may be scored for any victim is 15.0, based upon the following formula:

    125 - Age 2.5 ----------- + --------- 10 (n-1) 2

    where "n" is the number of selectors for that victim

    
    Uniqueness points (the "2.5 divided by ..." stuff) will be rounded to the nearest ten-thousandth of a point.

13. Decisions of the Audit Committee are final.

14. The winners of the contest will be determined by the entrants' performance in the four areas of scoring:
    1. total Points Scored
    2. total Number of Kills
    3. total Number of Solo Kills
    4. Quality of Kills

    

15. The BIG DISASTER. You may specify a Disaster that will claim at least 200 lives within 24 hours of the initial occurence of the Disaster.

    In addition to the nature of the Disaster (bombing, flood, plane crash, volcano eruption, whatever) the entrant must specify a location (Ground Zero) for the Disaster. All deaths from the Disaster must occur within a 50 mile radius of the specified Ground Zero (a single point, NOT along a line/border).

    Ground Zero may be specified in three ways:

    • the Latitude & Longitude coordinates;
    • a City or Place name (the city-center location is used for a large metropolitan area); or
    • a Country name (the City Center of the Administrative Capitol is used as Ground Zero).

    For "deep" objects (bodies of water, valleys, depressions, canyons, etc. — eg: the "Pacific Ocean") the deepest point is designated as Ground Zero unless exactly specified.

    For "tall" objects (mountains, towers, etc.) the highest point on the object is Ground Zero unless exactly specified.

    Moveable objects (such as airplanes), enveloping entites (such as "the ionosphere") or "outer space" are excluded as Disaster locations unless they have a unique name (eg:. the "International Space Station", the "Popemobile" or "Princess Cruise Liner Poseidon") that describes a unique bounded space/volume.

    Each occurrence of an entrant's Big Disaster will score 5 points. Multiple occurrences of a specified Disaster may be scored by the entrant provided that they occur no more frequently than once in any 168 hour time period.

16. Although any team worldwide may submit an entry, the Audit Committee reserves the right to limit the number of contest entries to previous contest entrant teams and a limited number of new participating entrant teams. For the 2008 Contest the anticipated limit will be two hundred & fifty (250) total entries.

17. Participation in the contest is free. We've given up ever being nominated to receive a MacArthur Foundation grant; our hopes of more hard drive space are now riding on a Mega Millions / Powerball lottery jackpot payoff.

• The NAME of the team.

• The real names of all participants in the entry. Individuals may enter under a team name even though there is only a single member of the team. Be sure to include the "(munge to: )" information here.

• The entrant's POP/SMTP-compliant Electronic Mail Address. For the 2008 contest year no attachments are anticipated but the account should be capable of receiving them without rejecting the attachment itself or the message that it is attached to. The E-mail account must remain active for the entire contest administrative period (December 1, 2007 through February 28, 2009). "Freemail" accounts are acceptable provided they meet these criteria.

  During previous contests messages sent to entrants would "bounce" (undeliverable); we didn't chase anybody down. It is up to Contest entrants to inform us of new addresses.

• A preferred Mnemonic Identifier - in the listing of Victims & Their Selectors and Contest Standings each team is identified by a 2-to-4 character code.

  Please list a primary and several secondary preferred Mnemonic Identifiers. Identifiers must be formed according to specific rules. Also note the rules that determine who gets a disputed Identifier.

• The entrant's predicted Big Disaster (nature of event & Ground Zero).

• The entrant's list of potential victims of the Grim Reaper, in alphabetic order, ordered on the victim's last name (surname). Victim Names should be on a separate line; biographical information should be on the line following the victim name. Separate the listing of each victim from the others by two blank lines (we print out your entries and scribble all over the printout during processing --- give us some work room on the page, ok?)

  Failure to alphabetize your list will hamper compilation. The Audit Committee reserves the right to reject entries that are chaotically organized or unreadable (turn off HTML if you are using Web-TV or recent Microsoft mail clients).

  Victim lists submitted as attachments to the main body of the E-mail message are DOA ... Deleted On Arrival!

Your team may submit an image of it's members to be posted on the team's consolidated data page (the ones that have names like mnem__rr.htm). It may be submitted as a .BMP, .GIF, .JPG, .PNG or .TIF image file, preferably shot in landscape format (wider than tall); try to keep it under 250Kb. We will edit it down to something more manageable for posting on the website. DO NOT attach it to your entry! Once you have received our message acknowledging receipt of your entry you can send the image to us as an attachment — be sure that the message has as a SUBJECT line "Team Photo" with the team name in the body of the message.

If you don't have a digital image of your team but would like to have one posted you may send us a printed photo & we'll scan it for you. Mail the photograph to our snail mail drop (P.O. Box 1854, East Lansing, MI, 48826-1854).

Be sure that any photo sent to us (electronic or hardcopy) is accompanied by information identifying the individuals in the picture (if you give us their real names we'll convert it to their munge names where appropriate); something like "from left to right - Larry, Moe, Curly."

An Audit Committee consisting of the website owner & two contest entrants formulate and interpret contest rules. If you would like to serve on the 2008 Audit Committe nominate yourself in an E-mail message separate from your entry «and» have another 2008 Contest Entrant second your nomination. Audit Committee membership will be based primarily upon maximum coverage of the media list for notability.