It will be a cold day in Helensville when we devote a page to tax-related humour, so that leaves us with the morbid but reassuringly egalitarian topic of death.

When will it come? What will it be wearing? And is there an app for that? Lubricate your coffin-screws then, the dear but not departed, and cast a stillopen eye over this, the complete and authoritative guide to death in 2014.

6 feet under What we want done with our earthly remains

34% buried conventionally in a public cemetery

29% cremated, ashes scattered somewhere quite nice

15% propped up in work lunchroom as clear message to colleagues

17% made into sausages; sold at farmer’s market

5% preserved in formaldehyde, suspended in tank, entered in biennale

Now there’s a method to our mortality How we’re dying in 2014

23% on the job (actual)

19% on the job (figurative)

22% trying to impress new girlfriend through adventure sport

14% neglecting to eat, breathe while playing Candy Crush

11% trampled in chocolate milk queue; poisoned by nearly new bottle of chocolate milk bought on Trade Me

9% stress-related heart attack worrying needlessly about Ebola

Bucket list New Zealand business leaders’ top five

1 Appear on cover of weekly business newspaper

2 Never appear at all in weekly business newspaper

3 Be offered loosely defined role by Derek Handley

4 Lead the Labour Party for a bit

5 Get Vincent Heeringa to pay for lunch.

Any last regrets?

That we were never Royals

Planning that vendetta against ACC CEO

Emailing someone about planning that vendetta against ACC CEO

Wasted time in chocolate milk queue

Never joined chocolate milk queue

?

Instant karma What we plan to come back as

Barely reanimated corpse

Labour Party leader

Kim Dotcom’s lawyer

Chocolate milk company owner

Smaug

Celebrity sendoffs How the famous hope to exit

Bob Jones: moot. Actually died in 1972 and has been publishing, smoking, posthumously since

Kim Dotcom: anywhere so long as it doesn’t involve an orange jumpsuit

Gareth Hughes: naturally reabsorbed into the food chain (may involve being eaten by Gerry Brownlee)

Paul Henry: after Mike Hosking

Mike Hosking: after Paul Henry

Making tracks What we want them playing at our sendoffs

1 Don’t care; I’m dead.

2 That song you always told me to turn down

3 Big Red Car (Just Ran Me Over)

4 The theme song for Goodnight Kiwi

5 That new U2 album – whether we want them to or not