Death will claim us all soon enough; it’s both foolish and counterproductive to waste one’s life trying to escape the inescapable, and to suck all the marrow out of its bones in a futile attempt to delay the inevitable. – “Halloween 2013 ”
Halloween -themed “Trick or Treat “, the tangentially-related “Total Perspective Vortex ” and “Book Review: The Science of Fear “, and the strong influences on the harlotography (“Aileen Wuornos “) and fictional interlude (“Monopoly “), several of the titles of otherwise non-horror-oriented columns were horror-inspired (as were their illustrations). It’s not hard to pick them out of the list of Q&A columns (“Your Move “, “It Takes All Kinds “, “All Clean “, “Buried But Not Dead ” and “Horns “) and Cliterati reprints (“Dark Corners “, “Imaginary Evils “, “Sex Rays ” Everything Old is New Again “), and then of course there’s “Torture Chamber “. After the guest column (Sasha Castel on being a mistress), two stats columns (“Frequently Told Lies ” and “Handy Figures Revisited “), and an extra news column (“Hysteria on Parade “), that leaves only two columns on prohibitionist tyranny: a look at Swanee Hunt’s “Vendetta ” against whores, and a critique of the US government’s “Whimsical Notions ” that men can be ordered to be asexual.
