And like magic, it somehow got worse.

Welp, the end of another year is upon us and it's time to take stock, evaluate our lives and most importantly tally up our dead and see where we stand in this futile contest with the inevitability of death.

"Ok...lets see, that's fifty million six hundred twenty four thousand to zero.
So...uh...best hundred and one million two hundred, forty eight thousand out
of one hundred fifty one million, eight hundred seventy two thousand?"

-Humans

See these randos in the background
of a movie? That's all of us. Enjoy.

And by 'our dead' I am of course referring to people of note. The rest of us are the nameless, faces masses whose sole purpose is to lift up the exceptional among us. To provide a contrast of anonymity for the famous. We are, essentially, background. Extras in the crowd scene of the movie that is the saga of the human race. Sure, we tell ourselves that our lives have meaning, but have you starred in a reality show, leaked a sex tape or come up with a dumb phone app? No? Me neither. Welcome to the background.

Above: sportsman playing hockey,
which is known internationally as
fútbol American. (source: me).

So, on to a by no means comprehensive list of dead famous people. Let's start with music. Obviously tons of famous musicians die every year, but I'm incredibly out of touch when it comes to music. Not like sports out of touch, but when I searched for lists of musicians who died this year I recognized like three names. So sorry this is kind of perfunctory, guess you'll just have to look up one of the other thousand or so lists of "2018: Those we lost..." Anyway, music lost Delores O'Riordan from The Cranberries, Scott Hutchinson of Frightened Rabbit, and Aretha Franklin of Aretha Franklin.

TV, movies and books are a little more my jam, so let's move on to some of the people who died in the non-music part of arts and entertainment. You know, the arts you don't have to get up to enjoy.

Let's hear it for sedentary pursuits!

Oh, and I looked it up: a schlemiel is
 incompetent, a schlimazel is unlucky.

Just a couple weeks ago the world lost actor/director and 50% shareholder in Hasenpfeffer Incorporated, Penny Marshall. The entertainment industry also lost John Mahony, the dad from Frasier, playwright Neil Simon, noted writer and white suit enthusiast Tom Wolfe, noted actor and mustache enthusiast Burt Reynolds as well as actors Tab Hunter, Charlotte Rae, Verne Troyer, and Harry Anderson. Spongebob Squarepants creator Stephen Hillenburg and writer, food critic and professional curmudgeon Andrew Bourdain.

Just the other day British actor Dame June Whitfield, whom you might remember as Gran from Absolutely Fabulous and Doctor Who and pretty much anything British from the last sixty years died peacefully in her sleep. And yeah, Dame means that she was a knight. In Britain you can get knighted for acting. How about that?

Yes, of course she was on Doctor Who. She's
British. They only have like twenty actors. 

No, really.

On the topic of nerd things, we lost sci-fi writer Ursula K. Le Guin whose works included A Wizard of Earthsea, The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness. Also gone is the less literary, more litigious Harlan Ellison whose contribution to the nerd cannon included tons of sci-fi short stories, novels and screen plays, numerous lawsuits, assaults and oh, and one time he groped a fellow writer on stage while she was presenting him with a Hugo award. Class act. Oh, and he also wrote a Star Trek episode where Kirk saves the future by shoving Joan Collins into traffic.

Comic book fans lost writers Steve Ditko and Stan 'Frequently Confused for Hugh Hefner' Lee. Louis Lane actor Margot Kidder. And most shocking of course, half of the Marvel universe who were wished to death by Thanos in what was no way a cheap cliffhanger soon to be reversed by next year's Avengers sequel.

Pictured: The tragic death of Peter Parker...whose totally dead now you guys.
Yup, not coming back. Ever. Yeah, I'm like a dog with a bone with this.

Don't worry Wilson Cruz fans, a
combination of time travel and fan
backlash means he'll be in season 2.

Speaking of fictional losses, and yes, spoilers. Like, don't read this if you don't want me to ruin things for you. Still there? Great, we suffered the off-camera death of Rosanne from who passed away from a tragic combination of opiates and the real life Rosanne saying horrible, racist shit. Aunt May died in-wait for it-Spider Man the video game. Which, while not cannon, for a video game actually has a pretty solid story. And finally Doctor Culber from Star Trek: Discovery. And I mean, who on that writing staff thought killing off half of Star Trek's first gay couple was a good idea?

Yeah, the party of Dave Lincoln of Macon,
Georgia...who'd you think they meant?

It was a particularly difficult year for conservatives loosing former President George H.W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush, columnist Charles Krauthammer, Senator John McCain and, of course, whatever semblance of decency the GOP had left. Gerrymandering, voter irregularities and and tantrum-prone man-child who's under investigation for pretty much everything he's ever touched and who's recently shut the government down over a preposterous and racist border wall. But still, party of Lincoln, right guys?

Of course, by 'future historians' I'm
referring to evolved apes that will sift
 though the remains of our civilizations. 

Welp, here's to another year over and another step down the long, dark path towards societal collapse. But we should probably take a moment to let future historians know that 2018 wasn't all bad. I mean, sure, we're mired in nationalism, there's massive wealth inequity, half a million Americans are homeless, and we're probably past the point of reversing climate change but...what were we talking about? Oh right, the things about 2018 that we're horrible and depressing...um, let's see...is it telling that I really have to think about this?

Well, ok, I guess HD TV's are fairly affordable, and streaming television means we never have to leave our homes or contemplate the world around us and...uh, oh! You can rent bikes and scooters with your phone. So I guess there's that.

And then we abandon them in ridiculous places, which,
goddamnit, this is why we can't have anything nice.