I'm not dressing up as anything this Halloween. I'm not going to be someone other than myself. I'm not going to give candy away. I'm just not scared of these witches, ghouls, goblins and Right-wingers.

Halloween has been a pretty good holiday for me. Great parties, weird make-up jobs and, when I was much younger, tons of candy. Candy lasting to Thanksgiving.

But this year I'm gonna let it all pass me by.

I have no problem with glorifying witches and vampires and Frankensteins. I have a connection to people outside the norm. I am, in many ways, outside the norm.

I was one of the less than ten percent of Americans who didn't want to go to war with Iraq. This can be scary, being so much in the minority that you might be the only person in the room who feels such a thing. But I wasn't scared then, I was just disappointed in the lock step of the nation.

Now more than half of the nation says the war in Iraq is wrong. I don't feel like more of an insider now. I wonder what moves people. Did we really have to kill a hundred thousand Iraqis? Did we really have to have more than 2000 US servicemen and women killed? Did we really have to slog through the sand, spending billions every month for two and a half years before a majority thought it was wrong?

Why was it right before and wrong now? Why has my view not changed, but a majority of the nation's has?

This scares me because it speaks of the same lock step mentality. When it's in fashion, we're against the war. When it's in fashion, we are fascists. Pass the Bill of Rights, it's time for dessert.

I see fewer of those magnetic ribbons on cars these days. I don't see them for sale in convenience stores anymore. The ones I do see are faded to an almost white. You can't read them, but you know what they used to say. Do they say the same thing now?

I'm around vampires and ghouls and goblins in my rock star alter ego. The rock band is supported by these people, so I can't be scared. These are my people. My constituency, so to speak. And while I know most of them reveled in this holiday of darkness, I had to stay away.

It's the zombies who are the majority of the country.

I love zombie movies. When the dead rise from their graves, they will be the majority. They will feed on those who are truly alive. And the fight will not be pretty.

I have zombie dreams on a semi-regular basis. I'm one of the survivors, of course. One of the few who have to watch out for the dead, blowing their head off with a shotgun or chopping it off with an axe.

I don't have to kill the zombies in my regular life, but I do have to sidestep them. I have to let them pass on their appointed rounds, because zombies are tenacious. They have their rituals and well-worn paths. It's when you rouse them from this routine that things go bad. So I let them go. I shake my head as they pass. Once, they were alive, I think. But it's been so long, there is no sense in trying to wake them.

None of this scares me to the bone. I lived through Reagan and the first Bush. And even though I voted against the second Bush twice, the second time there was a twinge of hope in my head that he get voted in. Because the chickens, as I've said, come home to roost. Because all of his actions I didn't like in the first four years should have consequences. And it's always better if the evil doer has to answer for his own actions. Isn't this the lesson of every horror movie? Of every thriller? The killer rarely gets away with it, even if he's destined to return from the grave for the sequel.

Just so he can get knocked around some more. Just so we can emphasize the point. The Karma deal. You do bad, bad things will happen to you. You do good, well, hopefully someone will notice.

But this Halloween thing--this year--I can't get into it. My life isn't a horror show, but I see the evil everywhere. And I don't feel like giving it any more candy.

Matt Worley has been a dead man, a vampire, an 80s rock poser and Elliot to his brother's E.T. in Halloweens past.