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INT. A COLLEGE DINING HALL – DAY

SHERMAN

(gesturing at Toozie’s magazine)

Say, that’s not an original, is it?

TOOZIE

No way I could ever afford an original. It’s a reproduction.

SHERMAN

Mind if I look?

TOOZIE

Help yourself.

Sherman picks up the magazine. He looks through it. The cover is clearly visible, showing the magazine title TALES OF SHOCKING HORROR! The cover painting shows a nude girl in a tube being experimented on by a mad scientist.

MIRANDA

What do you see in that icky stuff, Toozie?

TOOZIE

I’m entertained by it. And I’m also thinking of making it the subject of a senior honors thesis.

MIRANDA

Seriously?

TOOZIE

You know the American horror writer Thomas Ligotti? He once famously remarked that “Literature is entertainment or it is nothing.” I want to write a thesis arguing for a an aesthetic re-evaluation of the so-called weird menace fiction of the 1930s.

MIRANDA

But why does anyone find it entertaining?

TOOZIE

Let’s face it, human life itself is a horror story. Everybody dies in the end, and along the way there’s lots of suffering. But it’s a dreary horror story. Everybody dies, but usually when they’re old and feeble and largely forgotten-about in some home somewhere. Or stupidly and for no reason in a traffic accident.

MIRANDA

Whereas in these stories?

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