We here at The Joy of Death decided to hold a contest to determine a victor in the age old struggle of men and women against Death. And nothing is fairer than a cold, numerical study. Do establish this contest we first needed a fixed point that could be used as the "average" life expectancy. This over/under for human life was established at eighty years of age. We based this decision on fourteen centuries of study conducted by a team of hermetic monks. The difference between a person's actual death and the over/under is then counted and either added to or subtracted from the overall tally. The objective is to have as high a number as possible (thus indicating strong human longevity).
Don LaFontaine (-18 / -18)
Bill Meléndez (+11 / -7)
David Foster Wallace (-34 / -41)
Paul Newman (+3 / -38)
Michael Crichton (-16 / -54)
Harold Pinter (-2 / -56)
John Updike (-3 / -59)
TALLY TOTAL: -59
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The Religion Tally
As everyone knows, a person's religious affiliation determines what happens to them after death. The amount of faith one has in that affiliation as well as how well that person's deeds correspond to their religious creeds are also factors in the overall niceness of your post-life habitat. And while it's impossible to judge a person's amount of faith by any physical measure with real accuracy, we're not at all beyond counting the total number of human live stock accrued by each of the major religions. After our selected subjects graduate to a higher spiritual education, we make sure to document their religious affiliation to keep in a until-the-end-of-time tally, ultimately aiming to ask which religion is the greatest based entirely on admission. In the case of multiple affiliations (quasi-heathens), we determine whether to count one or both. Atheists are also tallied. When no affiliation is known, it's crudely guessed at based on attributes like facial hair and surname. Also, Catholics and Protestants were lumped together because, well, to guys like me it's basically the same thing.
The Religious Tally Chart
| Religion | Total Souls Consumed |
| Christainity | 3 |
| Judaism | 2 |
| Maya | 1 |
| Unknown | 1 |
| Atheism | 0 |
| Hinduism | 0 |
| LDS | 0 |
| Islam | 0 |
| Quakerism | 0 |
| Scientology | 0 |
Christanity
Don LaFontaine
Michael Crichton
John Updike
Judaism
Paul Newman
Harold Pinter
Maya
Bill Meléndez
Unknown
David Foster Wallace
