Having come up with a few new rules, and thinking that we had all the bases covered, we were smug-verging-on-cocky until an e-mail message from a guy named D. Cook stopped us cold, turned on the lights and shut off the music. Cook (rhymes with “crook”) said he had a list comprised entirely of inhabitants of Texas and Florida’s death row communities, and asked when our next game would be starting. Somewhere, an ominous chord sounded. Trouble. Big trouble. The kind of trouble that might doom lesser men running lesser Dead Pools. But not us, by jingo. We retaliated with The D.L.C.E., but quick.

It was brilliant. “No executed prisoners,” it said, although as usual, we took a bunch more words than that to say it. Yeah, we thought, there’s a couple of real stars that’ll get left out, like Timmy McVeigh and the other guy, but so what? We figured we’d just dodged a really big, ugly bullet. Then, a short time later, Andrew Rypien died, and everything changed. The Daniel Lee had served its purpose, and was needed no more. We tossed it aside like an empty syringe. What fools. We didn’t know it then, but we’d started to slide down a slippery slope of rules changes and modifications that darn near did us in. Thank goodness we’re alright now. It might be a little late, but we’d just like to say thanks, Daniel. We owe you one.