Today we might call it "The Big Click."

     Because whatever you name the concept — The Grim Reaper, the Chill, the Black Camel — Death is hot on the Internet.

     Not the morbid, dry-as-bone-dust brand of croaking. Here we're talking fun. We're talking giggles. We're talking The Lighter Side of Death.

     Want to die laughing? The Yahoo search tool lists at least a dozen sites loosely categorized as Death Humor and there are plenty of others, including The Death Clock, the Calendar of Death and The Tombstone Tourist.

     Some of the most popular of these graveyard giggles are interactive. Pages such as the Celebrity Death Pool (www.melodyr.com/celebritydeathpool), logging 1,200 visitor "hits" a day) and the Lee Atwater Invitational Dead Pool (www.stiffs.com) let frolicking Web-browsers race with death to predict just what big name will kick off next.

     Tip for would-be players: Sinatra is taken.

     Who are the Webmasters that tend such gravesites in the Internet Marble Orchard? Not the hooded cyberghouls you might think. Melody Rutherford is a senior product manager for a California computer firm when she's not "dealing with Death" as tender of the Celebrity Death Pool. Zachariah Love books concerts at a Hollywood venue when not running The Lee Atwater Invitational.

     "The death pools have been around since the '20s," said Love. "I had been bugging my friends to do this. We put in our names and $5 each and that's how it started. I simply have a healthy sense of humor and an equally healthy irreverent view of death," said Love.

     The people who visit these sites aren't necessarily the ones who make out coroner's reports, either. Visitors to the Invitational are generally "bright and well-educated," said Love, and Rutherford reports that she once had e-mail from a senator's office entering Bob Hope in her Death Pool.

     Webmasters say the sites do draw complaints, including from celebrities who awaken on fine Hollywood mornings to see their stars planted in death pool lineups. "We get tons of hate mail," says Love. "We're hopeful somebody really pompous like Charlton Heston would take umbrage at this, but so far no luck."

     But there is plenty of positive reaction, too. Jim Tipton, creator of "Find-A-Grave," (www.findagrave.com) says he has received hundreds of positive comments about his site and has been getting "more and more serious letters from teachers, librarians, historians, etc. who suggest that I am providing a valuable service."

     Just what are we to make of all these Webmasters thumbing their modems at the Grim Reaper? Is it symptomatic of a new sick trend in American society? Or is it a healthy New Media take on a topic that Americans are often accused of shunning?

     Robert Marrone, a psychology professor at California State University and author of the recent book "Death, Mourning and Caring," has looked at the Web's silly death sites. And he fears them not.

     "It would be nice to think that this is something odd and unique, because when you go back to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross with her book on death and dying, she cast the U.S. as a death-rejecting society not wanting to deal with our emotions. But in the 25 years since the book, views have changed to thinking the U.S. has an approach/avoidance conflict with death," said Marrone.

     Americans have long boogied to the Danse Macabre in rock music, movies, TV and video games such as "Doom," said Marrone.

     "There's a tremendous fascination with death and loss but always in a frivolous way. The Web versions of this frivolous, fascinating side of death is alway kind of detached, always anonymous. If it gets too heavy you can switch to another Web site." Marrone sees the phenom as "more of a reflection of people's fascination and fear of it at the same time" rather than an unhealthy practice.

     The Web's Death-masters agree. "The most morbid thing we do in life we do without thinking — we buy life insurance. That's betting on your own death. You're betting you'll die before the premium is paid, and at the Death Pool you're betting on someone else's death. It isn't unhealthy," said Rutherford.

     So calibrate the Death Clock and get your entries ready for the next round of the Celebrity Death Pool. The Internet Deathline is there for you. For just as long as you're around for it.