TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER The Bookworm Sez Advertisement

Kick the bucket.

Buy the farm.

Push up daisies. Meet your maker. Bite the dust, pick out a harp, take a dirt nap.

Croak.

No matter how you say it, you can't escape it.

You know how Elvis died (if, indeed, Elvis is really dead), and you've heard rumors about Cass Elliot, Rasputin and Janis Joplin.

But what about the guy who invented pencils, the inventor of self-adhesive bandages, or the man who envisioned credit cards? How did they cash in their chips? Find out about them and others in "The Portable Obituary" by Michael Largo.

Although more people are reaching the century mark and beyond, there's one thing nobody escapes: We're all going to die. Officially, technically, we die because our heart stops. The end.

But the truth is, there are lots of ways people have met the Grim Reaper. Cleopatra is said to have died from the bite of an asp. Bobby Leach, who survived a trip over Niagara Falls, slipped on a fruit peel and died of gangrene 16 years later. According to Largo, Babe Ruth's big, differently-developed brain was what ultimately killed the famous baseball player.

There have been overdoses (Judy Garland), diabetes (Ella Fitzgerald), pneumonia (many in the casts of Green Acres and Petticoat Junction) and infection (guitarist John Persh). Suicide (Adolph Hitler), poisonings (Plato), and drowning (Homer). Car accidents (Billy Martin) and suspicious circumstances (Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain).

And then there was Glenn Miller, who had four different "official" causes of death.

Cancer has claimed an amazing number of notables. Alcoholism and drug abuse kill lots of people. So, apparently, does winning the lottery, riding a horse, barbecuing in a tent, changing a light bulb, not seeing your dentist, and -- as some believe -- using up your "allotted" number of lifetime breaths.

I was tickled to death when I got this book, but now that I've come to the end, I have mixed feelings.

On one hand, despite the subject "The Portable Obituary" is fun and lighthearted. Largo writes with humor and so much irony and wit that you almost feel compelled to read the next obit and the one after that, kind of like a literary bowl of peanuts.

The problem is, this book is littered with so many erroneous facts that the enjoyment is tainted with a sense of hey-that's-not-true disbelief. These weren't esoteric things; many were facts that could have been easily checked.

Archimedes' entry contains iffy info. The inventor of the Smiley Face is contrary to what I found elsewhere. There's a glaring error in Helen Keller's profile, a completely wrong notation about the first African American to win an Oscar, and a major goof that will have Gunsmoke fans ready for a showdown on Main Street.

If you approach "The Portable Obituary" as a lighthearted book and you don't particularly care that it's not 100 percent factual, then you'll be happy to bury your nose in it. If you want something that you can trust to be right, though, this book will irritate you to death.