Calculate your date with
the Grim Reaper

Call it the Great Beyond, the Big Sleep, the Compost Heap, the Daisy Patch, the Point of No Return or Motel Eternity. Each is an assuaging euphemism for the inevitable final act in this grand drama we call "life." We don't wish to confront it, nor do we enjoy dwelling on it. Our day-to-day existence, it seems, is but a passing diversion as we tread down the path to our impending doom. Death is coming, and we can't do anything to stop it.

We can, however, with a few clicks of a mouse, determine with some accuracy our date and time of death. At least, that's the claim made by deathclock.com, which bills itself as "The Internet's friendly reminder that life is slipping away." Nice. Now you will not only know the day you're supposed to die, but with deathclock.com's personalized countdown ticker, you will see precisely how many seconds are left before you bite the big one.

Simply enter a few bits of personal information (birth date, height, weight, etc.), and in the blink of an eye, deathclock.com will calculate your estimated date of expiration. Based on my stats (male, nonsmoker with an optimistic outlook), I should meet my maker on Nov. 26, 2052. To be quite honest, this comes as a relief to me, as I'd figured that with my seven-day work week, weekend carousing and late-night sojourns to the Jack in the Box drive-through window, I'd merited an earlier demise.

Still, it's eight years and nine months sooner than the predicted death date of Britney Spears, who happens to be on deathclock.com's celebrity death watch this month.

The Web site allows visitors to set up their own personal death clock on their computers for bookmarking purposes and download a deathclock.com screen saver as further reminder of their ineludible death. If you'd like others to share in your morbid and depressing outlook, a deathclock.com T-shirt might be just the thing to sport around town, in school or at the office.

Just don't wear it around me. As Woody Allen once said, "It's not that I'm afraid to die; I just don't want to be there when it happens."

Note: Web sites mentioned in this column were active at time of publication. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin neither endorses nor is responsible for their contents.