The average frequency, in 2018, of mass shootings and specifically school shootings, respectively.

This is a depressing fact about which I have been sitting and thinking today. Some years ago I wrote and performed a poem about the frequency of mass shootings called Gunmerica, and I am always disappointed that it remains so relevant.

It’s hard sometimes for me not to be a hypocrite, since I’ve often complained to others that comparing two issues is not helpful, and each issue should be evaluated on its own merits. And yet, faced with such disparate responses from our government on the issues of guns (cause many deaths on a daily basis, yet still sacrosanct and can’t be regulated) and immigrants (who cause very few deaths and are the basis of our country, yet so many resources are devoted to keeping them out or removing them), it is hard not to draw comparisons. Likewise the spending priorities for trillion-dollar tax cuts for the wealthy (deficit funded, no problem!) and survival-level benefits for those in need (Medicare cuts, SNAP cuts, etc.).

But I know you don’t read this for politics.* So on the game front, I will say that we started Pandemic Legacy: Season 2, and it is quite difficult indeed. It may be more difficult on every axis — character powers are weaker, not all cities take four draws to outbreak, cities have multiple copies of their card in the infection deck, etc., etc. Plus with so many different rules from Pandemic, the lack of familiarity is a difficulty as well.  Videogame-wise I’ve been playing Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, which has some entertaining deaths, but is annoyingly on rails**.

Yesterday was my least-favorite holiday, but at least it gave me occasion to write some entertaining Valentine’s Day poems.

*you read it for the footnotes.***

***not that one, obviously, but the potential for other footnotes, which you have not yet read, but you hope may one day appear like a beam of light from heaven, only in a less potentially-apocalyptic fashion, and make you feel that reading the footnotes has finally been worth it, as if they were carefully crafted with awe and purpose, and not just typed up as a bucket of blather because the author once read Infinite Jest over a summer and ever since has made the mistake of associating preposterously long footnotes with some sort of intelligence and/or humor, two qualities the author wishes to appear to possess, although if he was so smart, he wouldn’t talk about himself in the third person.