A few years ago I came up with an idea for a web site called "DeathIsNotAnOption.com." It was based on an old game we used to play in college. The idea is, you take turns asking, "Would you rather.... or..... ?" where the options are two almost equally horrific things -- death, of couse, not being an option. The best question I ever came up with is so obscene that I can't write it here, lest my parents be reading.

The web site would have been a simple database-generated game which spits the questions out at you. It would solicit new "would-you-rather" options from viewers, and then rank the relative attractiveness of each option based on people's answers. When the site generates the questions, options of equal or near-equal attractiveness would compete against one another. Ideally, there would be enough options that each question would be a genuine stumper.

Unfortunately, someone else seemed to have come up with this idea at the same time, because shortly after I starting mulling it over, the domain was registered. They still haven't done anything with it, though.

Anyway, I thought of this because Aaron "I'd-rather-cut-my-arm-off-with-a-pocket-knife" Ralston gives new meaning to the idea that death is not truly not an option.

Ralston told his parents he knew he had four choices: Someone could find him, he could move the boulder with his climbing gear, he could chip away at the rock, or he could cut off his right forearm with a pocketknife. Dying wasn't an alternative, his father said.