The argument against using an operator for other than its primary
purpose strikes me the same as the old argument that you shouldn't have
sex for other than procreational purposes.  Sometimes side effects
are more enjoyable than the originally intended effect.

: OK.  Still, it'd be nice to get anonymous scalars somehow.

The Huffman encoding of that is do{\my$x}.

Part of what's confusing the issue is that DESTROY is a verb.  It was
done that way by analogy to FETCH and STORE, but the use of a verb is
unfortunate, in retrospect.  I should have named it something like
YOU_ARE_ABOUT_TO_BE_SHOT_DO_YOU_HAVE_ANY_LAST_WORDS.