Ahoy-hoy Death Pool Players. Mike has made us a kick ass new tracking system for the 2008 Death Pool. You can view it here: 2008 Death Pool Stats. Nice huh? Thanks Mike!

The tracking system is quite timely as well. As you can see, your Angel of Death 2007 is already on her way to retaining her title for 2008. Former Indonesian President Suharto has died. I’m good, what else can I say?

Be afraid.

Hey beachcombers – your beloved Innkeeper has received a few requests to extend the deadline for the Death Pool submissions. This is no problem at all, and in fact, better for me.

The new deadline to submit your picks is Monday January 14, 2008, 10pm eastern. That should be enough time for all of you.

The last books I read of 2007 were G.K. Chesterton’s The Napoleon of Notting Hill and Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here. For the end of the year, my reading took me on dystopian bent.

I liked Can’t Happen far better than Napoleon. In fact, it’s hardly fair to compare the two. Can’t Happen is one of the best books I read in 2007. Sinclair Lewis was painfully insightful at many points in this story. Sometimes I’m left wondering why I hadn’t read a particular author sooner. Such is the case with Lewis. How did I miss him? More to come certainly.

I really don’t feel like getting into a big review of either of these two books right now. I will leave you beachcombers with this quaintly naive and lovely sentiment from Chesterton in Napoleon:

Freedom of speech means practically in our modern civilization that we must only talk about unimportant things. We must not talk about religion, for that is illiberal; we must not talk about bread and cheese, for that is talking shop; we must not talk about death, for that is depressing; we must not talk about birth, for that is indelicate. It cannot last. Something must break this strange indifference, this strange dreamy egoism, this strange loneliness of millions in a crowd. Something must break it. Why should it not be you and I?

Greetings beachcombers. Greetings 2008. So long stinkyear!

Your amicable Innkeeper is host to the 2008 Death Pool here at the Gull Reef Club. You’re invited to play. Sorry I’m a bit late to start, but I am a southerner-by-choice and claim the right to take my time.

The rules are simple. Submit to me, either as a comment to this post or by email to thegullreefclubATgmail.com, 10 names of celebrities/well-known people that you think will die in 2008. The people on your list cannot currently be hospitalized, nor can they be on death row. If the person on your list can’t easily be found by a wikipedia, google, or encarta search, then that person is not famous enough to be valid.

The deadline to submit your list to me is Thursday January 10th, 2008, 9pm eastern Monday, January 14, 2008, 10pm eastern. Once I have all the entries, I will put them together in one post for everyone to read. I will post updates throughout the year as they become necessary.

The winner gets the adoration of me, the official title of Angel of Death for 2008, and maybe something else to be determined. Full disclosure: I am also playing. It’s sort of hard to rig this sort of thing.

Merry morbidity!

Addendum to rules: You can’t pick someone has already died in 2008.