Cash for Cadavers (Oh, how I wish I’d known about them last week, I coulda made a fortune!) is a uniquely morbid, cynical, and celebrity-obssessed betting system.

So it’s got ME written all over it!

This is the way it works, and yes, it is real.

Each team chips in twenty dollars and picks twenty celebrities they believe will die in the upcoming year. Each celebrity is assigned a point value based solely on how many teams picked that specific person. For instance, everyone seems to feel that The Pope‘s number is up, so his point value is very low. People die, points are accumulated, and the lucky schmo with the most points at the end of the year wins the jackpot.

Points are only awarded to bona fide celebrities. For the sake of this game, celebrity status is determined by North American, non-categorically-specific media source. The Associated Press, for instance, runs a national obituary page every day. USA Today, New York Times, CNN, etc.

We emphasize that it must be a general news source; if your celebrity’s death appears in Field & Stream but nowhere else, he or she is not a celebrity.

Short, nasty and brutish. I love it! The team names are marvelous: My Death in a Box, Please Sir I Want Some Muerte, Tuesday is Rib Nite At Pete’s Crematorium, Croakin’ 2: Electric Deathaloo, Christopher’s Reeve’s Dancecard, and the delightfully obscure Waiting for Bengt Ekerot. Note that their definition of “Celebrity” is quite strict, and is, in fact, the most detailed part of the website. Well, it’s such a competitive field!

BART THE BEAR CLAWS: (Claws? Clause? Har har.) Animals can be played on Cash4Cadavers assuming that they meet the criteria for “celebrity.” Specific, named animals (like Morris the Cat or Bart the Bear) only; none of that “world’s oldest tortoise” crap. If you want to play the world’s oldest tortoise you’ll tell us its name, Poindexter. 

No word on whether stage names are enough to specify a celebustiff, nor any specifics about cases where the soul may have left the body but for whatever cruel and sadistic reason, the Devil hasn’t taken out the trash yet: I would call this the Kissinger Caveat.

Want to see how your picks are doing? Check the Deaths page: I only recognize Art Buschwald, Anna Nicole (the floater is hilarious! See also Paddy Mitchell, eh) and Barbaro. Hey, what’s Arianna Huffington doing in there twice?

I note with interest that it does not actually seem to be against the rules to kill the celebrities yourself.

What? WHAT? I’m just making note of the fine print is all…

del.icio.us: cash for cadavers, the dead celebrity lottery
blinklist: cash for cadavers, the dead celebrity lottery
furl: cash for cadavers, the dead celebrity lottery
Digg it: cash for cadavers, the dead celebrity lottery
ma.gnolia: cash for cadavers, the dead celebrity lottery
Stumble it: cash for cadavers, the dead celebrity lottery
simpy: cash for cadavers, the dead celebrity lottery
newsvine: cash for cadavers, the dead celebrity lottery
reddit: cash for cadavers, the dead celebrity lottery
fark: cash for cadavers, the dead celebrity lottery
Technorati Favorite me!