Halloween is getting scarier. It's starting to rival Christmas in toxicity without so much as a "boo." It's the costumes, mostly. And somehow, along with going less green, they've also become more boring.

Look, I don't want environmentalism to spoil the party -- I'm hoping it can save it, in fact. But it's hard to keep up enthusiasm for the big fright night once you've been to supply stores.

While people used to rummage around in their basements, thrift stores and fabric stores for costumes that were sometimes lame and sometimes surprisingly creative (and many people still do), if you go to local haunts like Vancouver's Dressew (cheap fabric) and Value Village (cheap used clothes), you'll see that most people are in fact lining up to buy tacky, pre-packaged, disposable costumes.

You can buy an entire (generic) pirate costume (complete with striped T-shirt, plastic sword, plastic eye patch, black make-up crayon, and plastic bandana) for under ten bucks, for example. Or one of the dozen or so "shatteringly mundane" Slutoween options, now the most popular choice among women (slutty nurse, Playboy bunny, naughty cat), that are made out of plastic or cheap material that get worn once, then are banished to the landfill. I'm sad to say I went to one party last year where three people were wearing the same costume.