We have people writing to us declaring our pure evil nature is an affront to God. We have people writing to us to declare that they participate in many deadpool contests but that they would never participate in our Contest because we permit              to be selected.

     So, what were we thinking when we permitted various categories of humanoids to be selected? Here, by category, is our reasoning.

The Terminally Ill

Many contests will not permit their entrants to select those individuals known to be publically diagnosed as having a terminal disease. Presumably, that restriction is based upon the assumption that those individuals would be "too easy" a pick. In contests where entrants may only submit a small list of picks a list of only the terminally ill might be seen as being an unfair list — all 5 or 10 or 25 people are gonna die ... the game is no longer "fun" for most participants.

Well, our submission list size is 75 names ... it would be pretty hard to come up with that many notable terminally ill individuals that will also garner the necessary obituary references needed for scoring. And, those terminally ill picks have a remarkable ability to stay one step ahead of the Reaper for numbers of years (just ask the entrants in our Contest who keep picking the allegely at-death's-door Eleanor Mondale).

The Extreme Elderly

Same issue as above — a boring list of old biddies, each one as old as dirt, that are sure to die any day now. Except, they don't.

Jeanne Calment sold her Paris apartment to a guy with the proviso that she continued living there until her death. She was about 100 ... what a deal, so the guy thought. She kept going and going and going ... eventually, the purchaser died and Jeanne got to sell it again to another hopeful guy. Well, she didn't outlive him but she did make it into the Guinness Book as the oldest (documented) person, ever. Trolling the Gerontology Research Group's master list of oldsters won't produce a winning list in our Contest or any other.

So, super-geezers are IN!

Death Row Inmates (DRIs)

Even in the state of Texas, having a signed death warrant and a set execution date is no guarantee that someone is going toes-up in the near future. In other states it is even a more remote possibility.

The argument that it is "unseemly" or "too easy" or (somehow) "unfair" to the DRI that is being picked ignores the reality of the situation.

Even if the DRI was innocent and was wrongly executed, that doesn't change the fact that after the execution they are dead.

Not all DRIs earn sufficient obituary notices to be scoreable — it's just a reality that the death row inmates in some states get much better media coverage than those in other states.

DRIs are not a slam-dunk guaranteed Kill; courts stay executions while appeals drag on and on; DRIs are exhonerated; DRIs get resentenced after appeals to non-life terms. Being on death row does not equate to certainty of death.

So, we permit their selection.

Children

Children die like everyone else. The difference is that a lot of people equate a short life span with the universe somehow having been unfair to them. And, by us permitting their selection, we are compounding that unfairness.

Well, guess what, life is unfair.

The "Send Postcards to Craig Shergold to cheer him up" campaign raised Craig's public profile enough that, if he had died, every newspaper & tv network would have had a front page prime time weep-fest for him. If our Contest is going to permit the selection of the naer-do-wells of the world we'd better also be prepared to permit the selection of those saintly public figures who command so much media attention prior to kicking-off.

When mommy & daddy trot our their poor, dying offspring with a plea to "give money to cure           " (fill in the blank with your favorite malady) nobody brings them up on child abuse charges although this is just a couple of rungs down the "creepy" ladder from the old National Lampoon cover with a picture of a dog with a gun to it's head and a caption reading something along the line of "Buy This Magazine or Fido Dies". Or, the public pleas to give boatloads of cash so that little 2-year-old Misty Lou can have the full thorax transplant that she needs to live another three weeks (until the usual post-surgical infection does her in).

Going public raises the kid's profile; the kid is dying; we're a contest that has people publically predicting the deaths of "notable" individuals. It's not as if any of us are killing the kid ourselves ... we are only taking note of what is already obvious to almost anyone that doesn't have an overwhelming emotional attachment to the kid — it's time to purchase the casket, arrange for a funeral, start the stonemason to cutting the headstone and start the process of moving on.

Fetuses

This is the ultimate bottom-end of the slippery slope that starts with kids. Who could possibly be so depraved that they would pick a fetus to die?

Well, someone who has noted the mother's propensity to mis-carry; someone that has noted the mother's suicidal tendencies; someone that has noted that the celebrity tabloids have learned that the fetus is potentially "distressed".

In a land that staunchly asserts a woman's right to an abortion, using among other things the logic that the fetus is not human, the notion that that collection of protoplasm in the womb is too special to select is ludicris. Life has slowly become just one more commodity — something to be sold, experimented-upon, analyzed and disposed of ... one more thing to be subject to game theory and games themself.

Bimbos, Playmates, Strippers & Sluts

What's with all of the Tiger Woods mistresses, Playboy Playmates, silicone-enhanzed floozies & tabloid trailer trash?

Well, they all have one thing in common — at some point in their lives they are gonna die. And, the likelyhood of that happening sooner, rather than later, is significantly higher than it is for the general population.

Throw in the media frenzy that'll happen when they pop off at a relatively early age ... a very tempting selection, what with the higher point value and uniqueness of selection points. Sure, they're long shots, but for some entry teams (XXX, TWOS, to name a couple) they are the bread and butter of their selection list. Those teams are rarely shut out in a year's contest; sometimes they come up with some bizarrly unique selections (Bimbos-Я-Us soloing on the Crocodile Hunter and Slobodan Milosevic in the same year comes to mind).

Public perceptions change over time. Bettie Page received numerous high-profile obituaries after her death — nobody in the 1950s would have predicted that almost 50 years later she would receive the kind of warm, respectful sendoff that we usually reserve for individuals that have lead a life of virtue.

Rachel Uchitel has undergone a metamorphosis from grieving fiancé following 9/11 to tabloid-grade home-wrecking front-page strumpet ... who's to say that she will not again be recast in a different role at some time in the future. The only thing that we can say with certainty is that someday she will pull her last breath. It may be tomorrow, or it may thousands of tomorrows from now. Her brief notariety in 2009 will resurface decades from now when her obituary is written (assuming that Gloria Allred doesn't outlive Rachel and sue to protect her former client's "good name" in the year 2098).

Of course, we're biased — we think she's still "hot" & will probably stay "hot" for years to come. We're looking forward to her further adventures doing «whatever». On the other hand, Eliot Spitzer's hooker ... we wish that her 15 minutes had been over and done with in 2008 and that she was on the fast track for oblivion. No such luck; she stripped for the May 2010 Playboy ... she'll keep turning up every few years, just enough to guarantee a notice from the obit writers when she passes on.

So, you just can't avoid them ... the bimbos (and himbos), the strippers, the lounge lizards, the Playboy Playmates, Penthouse Pet's and Hustler Honies (not to mention the covergirl "stars" of Gent, Juggs and their ilk) will likely turn up on the obituary columns sooner than you realize (and when they do, they'll make you feel old and a little embarrased that you know who they were and what their claim to "fame" had been).

Forgotten World Figures that Nobody Cares About

In 2009 the Refr's Madness team scored a solo Kill on Abdurrahman Wahid. Who the fuck was he and why should anybody in North America give a rat's ass? If nobody around here gives a shit, why did the Audit Committee let RR have 8.5 solo points for the stiff? And, what about all those obscure Tyrolian silent film actors that WEP keeps putting on his list? Sheesh .... BORING!!!

The whole point of the Contest is to do the research necessary to win it. North America is not the only inhabited continent on this planet. Since the contest is open to any entrant world-wide and we will credit any stiff that meets the notability criteria, we expect entrants to broaden their horizons and look beyond their nearby oceans.

We would be perfectly happy to have every single Kill be a solo Kill, with those Kills happening all over the planet. If you, as a potential Contest entrant, wish to compete in a contest that will only consider potential stiffs from your immediate environs, well then Caskets on Parade is not the game for you. There are games that do restrict you to selecting "local" celebrities. There are games that restrict you to selecting from a fixed pool of purportedly-certified "celebrities." Go play them.

     Chill out. Don't take yourself so seriously. Over one million people are going to die this week. You can not stop it from happening. (they're old, or sick, or foolish, or just unlucky).

     If you have taken out a life insurance policy you are already participating in a death pool ... and for some serious money (not the piddling amounts you see being handed out at the commercial deadpool contests that are found on the 'net). Are you a seriously sick puppy for having life insurance? Or, are you just being a prudent, rational human being that recognizes that some situations are beyond your control? Have health insurance — betting that you're gonna get sick and need help in paying the doctor & hospital & prescription bills? Well, duh ... if you're alive you're very likely to get sick at some point. And those last few weeks of life — wowzer, are you gonna burn cash trying to stay alive ... that is, if you've got access to the cash that you'll need to make the attempt.

     Observing that you will get sick and die at some point in time doesn't make you morbid ... it just makes you a realist. Observing that others will get sick and die doesn't make you morbid ... it just means that you are a realist. Observing that some others may be stupid and kill themselves before they otherwise would have to die ... just more realism. Hey, the Darwin Awards were founded on the principle that a small percentage of the planetary population is too stupid to live. Most of us have shaken our heads and muttered "what a moron" under our breath. You've just made a Darwinian assessment of that person's life expectancy. Us deadpoolers are doing the same, but just for a much broader spectrum of humanity.

     So, why does Caskets on Parade permit the selection of anyone and everyone from the planetary population? Well, lets just say that we're Equal Opportunity Mortality Assessors ... neither race, nor creed, nor economic status, nor educational achievement, nor criminality, nor prissy notions of "propriety," shall sway our judgement of one's remaining life expectancy. The cold, hard analytics of the micro-actuary are our credo. As long as any group has the possibility of death, then we shall not exclude them from the consideration of our Contest entrants.

     As there are no exemptions from the possibility of a given person's death, so too there shall be no exemptions from the possibility of having that death predicted. Caskets on Parade has been and shall remain an Equal Opportunity deathpool.