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 Method & Deadline:
   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 "2003 Contest Entry". The message must have been received by your own E-mail server prior to 06:59:59 EST December 31, 2001 (20021231 11:59:59 UTC), and must be received by our server prior to 24:00:00 EST January 3rd, 2003 (20030104 05:00:00 UTC).

   2. The designated Caskets On Parade E-mail address is: 2003contest@casketsonparade.org

   3. No Snail-Mail or hand-delivered entries will be accepted for the 2003 contest.

   4. Within days of receipt of an entry we will acknowledge receipt of that entry. The E-mail address found in the "Reply To" field of the message header will be the official E-mail address of the entrant. 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.

   5. Unless entrant explicitly releases C.O.P., all E-mail addresses will be embargoed; the usage of the E-mail address will not go beyond contest administration for the 2003 contest & announcement of the 2004 contest. Freemail E-mail accounts set up for the purpose of shielding entrant's personal E-mail accounts from spam are acceptable.

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, 2003 to 24:00:00 local time December 31, 2003 (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 up to 75 potential victims of the Grim Reaper that the entrant expects / hopes will die in the year 2003, as well as information identifying the entrant(s).

   Your starting point is the Terran planetary population (6 billion and counting) --- 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.

6. The names on the list of victims must 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.	Chicago Sun-Times Los Angeles Times New York Times USA Today Wall Street Journal Washington Post	ABC CBS CNN ESPN NBC NPR PBS	Entertainment Tonight Inside Edition MTV The National Enquirer People 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 Who's Alive and Who's Dead website
   «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.

   The 2003 Contest scoring closes at 05:00 a.m. (UTC) on February 15, 2004. In addition to the "three in six" requirement, for any death to be scored in the 2003 Contest the first qualifying category obituary notice must have been published/broadcast no later than midnight (EST) January 25, 2004 (20040126 05:00 UTC) and the third qualifying category obituary notice must have been published/broadcast no later than midnight (EST) February 14, 2004 (20040215 05:00 UTC). Grim Reaper victims that died in 2003 but whose obituary notices missed these deadlines are not scoreable in the 2004 Contest 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 one of the few remaining Titanic survivors 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: Alan Smithee Pandora Peaks Dan Rather Larry King Saddam Hussein Usama bin Laden

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

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 incorrect, the biographical information is an absolute necessity. Listed victims which are insufficiently identified will be excluded from your list of scoreable victims.

10. All victims must be homo sapiens; no dogs, cats, cartoon/comic characters 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. 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

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. Ground Zero may be specified in three ways: the Latitude & Longitude coordinates (the preferred method); 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; for "tall" objects (mountains, towers, etc.) the highest point on the object is Ground Zero. 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 can describe 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 entrants to previous contest entrants and a limited number of new participating entrants. For the 2003 Contest the anticipated limit will be fifty (50) total entrants.

17. Participation in the contest is free. Contributions to our ongoing server disc space acquisition fund are appreciated. You are encouraged to nominate us to receive a MacArthur Foundation grant (yes, we recognize the irony in a bunch of morbid morons asking for a "genius" grant).

• The NAME of the team.

• The 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 2003 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, 2002 through February 28, 2004). "Freemail" accounts are acceptable provided they meet these criteria.

• The entrant's explicit release of embargo on the usage of the E-mail address in posted entrant identity information. The contest group mailings are done as "Blind Carbon Copies" so that E-mail addresses are not visible, even to other contest participants.

• 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. 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.

  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!

Starting with the 2003 Contest you may submit an image of your team'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 2003 Audit Committe nominate yourself in an E-mail message separate from your entry «and» have another 2003 Contest Entrant second your nomination. Audit Committee membership will be based primarily upon maximum coverage of the media list for notability.