Ooh! A contest!

First, some background. There's a page out there called "Rapture Ready," which is essentially The Weather Channel for Armageddon. The author is pretty sure that the end of the world is right around the corner, and that he'll be sitting at the right hand of Christ while the rest of us are getting "666" tattoos. Nonetheless, he's being a pal and hipping us to the impending Judgment by keeping rigorous track of all the signs of the Lord's return.

By now you're probably thinking "Hmm. How can I use this for personal gain?" Well, let me tell you. One of the centerpieces of the site is "The Rapture Index," in which the author assigns a numerical value to such trends as "Earthquakes," "Interest Rates" and "Satanism." The idea here is that you can check this pup and see how close we are to the third reel by how high the numbers are, but we'd like to take it one further, and give you a chance to invest in your future or lack thereof.

We're giving you 100 shares of "stock" to "invest" in the trends and sins being tracked on the Rapture Index. On January 1, 1998, we'll stop accepting entries, and calculate the value of everyone's portfolio by multiplying number of shares in each item by the value of that item in the Rapture Index. The value will be calculated again on Good Friday (April 10) 1998, and the four investors whose total portfolios have gone up by the highest percentage will win.

First prize is an official Brunching Shuttlecocks T-shirt and a piece of original artwork. Three runners-up will receive T-shirts.

The contest is no longer accepting new entries, but the results as of January 30 and March 6 are in.

Additional Rules:

• If any category goes away during the period covered by the contest, the stock in that category will be worthless.
• If we are unable to adjudicate the contest for any reason, prizes will be awarded by random draw.
• Ties will be decided by random draw.
• One entry per person.
• Contest prohibited to employees of God or Satan.