In the past, this publication has been known to use the anti-Christian "holiday" of All Hallows' Eve as a platform for a number of inane stunts. For instance, there was the exceedingly tasteful issue wherein the editors chose to dress innocent children up as torture victims and—in a new low, at least at the time—a still-mourning Nancy Reagan, complete with a prop of a flag-draped coffin. But just as that amoral gutter Hollywood continues to pile atrocity upon atrocity in order to garner still more lucre, The Stranger cannot, will not, rest on its offensive laurels. No, this year they have set upon a mission to outdo the offenses of years past—they have devoted an entire issue to mocking tragic deaths.

How else can one describe this week's "Seattle Necropolitan" feature package, which is brimming with pithy write-ups of such knee-slappers as a family killed in a hot air balloon accident and miners suffocating in a collapsed shaft. Worse still, the paper has chosen to dress up this ungodly tripe in the guise of local publication Seattle Metropolitan. Why the faux habiliment? Editor Christopher Frizzelle will no doubt plead satire (or The Stranger's routine botching of it), but I suspect the real reason is far simpler: shame. Evidence for this is provided by the fact that the majority of the package appears sans bylines, and those few with names attached are of the ludicrous fabrication variety (Hank Cogliotti? Really?). All of which spurs a question: If The Stranger writers and editors are so obviously ashamed of their own work, then why publish it at all? (Full disclosure: Yes, A. Birch Steen is my real name, and no, I will not provide birth certificates, polygraphs, urine samples, or any of the other numerous pieces of corroborating evidence that my stalkers have asked for over the years. If by now you still do not believe in the verity of my existence, then I am sorry but the burden is on you, meddlesome skeptics, to explain how such true and heartfelt words can come from a supposedly nonexistent soul.)

Elsewhere in this issue: CHARLES MUDEDE, whose pen forever dips into the pseudointellectual inkwell, squanders some 900 words in an attempt to capture the essence of Japanese filmmaker Shohei Imamura. What he ends up capturing instead is naptime, as his barrage of half-baked insights will surely leave unfortunate readers reaching for any number of uppers—not that Stranger readers need any encouragement in that department. And in music, JONATHAN ZWICKEL (speaking of ludicrous fabrications) explores a supposedly haunted recording studio. Ironically, this little ghost story stands out not just as the most solid contribution to this week's issue, but in many ways—especially when compared to The Stranger's news section—the most believable. Up is down, black is white, fiction is fact—that latter part certainly sums up this paper each and every week.