All I had to do was mention that many fanboys at the Comic Con were disgustingly sweaty from the extreme heat and that a lot of people showed up in steampunk costumes. That was all I had to do to induce dozens of people to send me emails with a link to Goths in Hot Weather. GothsInHotWeather is one of those ironic sites where they obsess about something while claiming not to really like it or care about it. Sort of like Perez Hilton. In case this was not painfully apparently already, the site addresses the issue of some gothic attire being a poor fit for overly warm weather. Humorous concept and domain, but it sort of states the obvious.

I am back from the 40th anniversary Comic Con. It feels like every year the show sells out earlier, the best panels get harder to gain entry to, the temperatures get hotter, certain fanboys smell stronger (you know who you are), and I make more deals for more money. This year saw the addition of some fans protesting that Twilight ruined Comic Con. Because, before Twilight, there were no over-sized movie studio booths taking over the place and no script writers like me going to the show just to get work. /sarcasm. A really nice aspect to this year’s show was the emphasis on the history of the show. The special 40th Anniversary Guests page on the site for the convention has really nice bios of a lot of the Secret Masters of Fandom who made the Comic Con possible. For bonus sexiness, my favorite bio on the page is the one for the most famous scream queen ever, who apparently was knocking them dead at the Comic Con as a teen: “Brinke Stevens (aka Charlene Brinkman) wowed audiences at the Masquerade in the 1970s with her choreographed dances. She served as Masquerade coordinator in 1976–1978. She is best known as a scream queen and has appeared in more than 100 films. “

An object purported to be somewhere between a mermaid and a sea monster just sold on eBay for $1,550. The seller calls the find a golden mermaid and refers to it as female. He explains his assumption that the mermaid is a she by pointing out the lack of a protruding sex organ. Really, though, what self-respecting heterosexual fanboy would bid on a male sea creature? That would be totally gay. So it just makes sense to describe the mermaid as her. I feel I can paraphrase the Q&A portion, but you really have to read the auction description verbatim to do it justice:

“While exploring desolate areas of Fort Desoto Beach at the southern end of St. Petersburg, here in Florida, I came upon a rather startling discovery. Before me lay what at first appeared to be a very large strange fish. Shocked and amazed, I realized I had found another mermaid or sea monster. I went back to my car to get my camera. My hands were shaking as I tried to calm down to take these photos. This Mermaid or Sea monster, you be the judge, is a few inches shy of being 5 feet long. Laying on a fresh natural bed of seaweed, this creature of the sea looks out as if still alive. What killed this mystery from the depths? Recently in the news there was talk of another outbreak of Red Tide. Had this mermaid fallen ill from this mysterious dreaded disease from the sea? Looking over her gracefull body, I realized what a special creature she must had been in life. Was she the missing link between primates and fish? In time, what would evolution had shaped this creature to be? I sat there thinking for awhile and realized I must get this mermaid back home. I could always ponder later. The winner to this auction will recieve the sea creature shown in the photos below. The photos have not been altered or retouched nor are they result of photo shop. The entire body has been determined to be covered in once living fish skin with scales. I have drilled a small hole in the back of the head so that it can be hung up on a wall for display.”

The seller was quite adamant about the fish scales being real, although he later changed his story on having drilled a hole in her head for display. As the description uses the word “another” to describe the discovery on this lonely Florida beach, presumably the seller has experience in customer service to buyers of curios.