Fanime Fiction's Fecal Fixation

"The monster's skin began to crumple, the pale gray color turning into a sickening olive green that had a mustard tint to it. It reminded Sailormoon of animal droppings, though she wasn't sure if there even was a kind of animal with droppings as gross as the color of the monster's skin."
-- "John" on SailorMoon

"Slowly levitating above the wave of fur so as not to hurt animals, Goku appeared next to the Ouji with a gopher on his head. "Guess what Vegita?" he said happily, a large grin on his feces covered face. "I made a new friend!" he pointed at the gopher, "His name is Bob! Bob likes french fries! He names them Skippy!"
-- "Mika" on DragonBallZ

Where Do You Find the Horror?

Last weekend, I attended Horrorfind Weekend in Baltimore, sponsored by the genre's great search engine, horrorfind.com. I had a blast. It's a huge gathering of people in the scary business, from George Romero and Jack Ketchum to people who make funny black t-shirts for goths and bondage gear for everyone else. Horrorfind is more "multimedia" oriented than the usual "literary" cons I attend, but that only means the bar is even more crowded. You know a convention is cool if it's got an "Evil Dead Museum" and a dealer's room where you can buy (fake?) flayed human faces under cellophane with those little bar-code stickers on them just like at the supermarket.

I love horrorfind.com and I've even contributed fiction to the site. But I've always found the sponsored name -- "Horrorfind Weekend" -- kind of clumsy for a convention title. It doesn't have the grand ring of something like "World Fantasy Convention" and it doesn't even go for a catchy pun, like "ConNiption" or "ExCon." So to puzzle things out, I decided to play journalist and run around all the late night parties, asking: "When you're not here, where do you find the horror?" Here's what people said:

• "In all children." -- Tanya Twombly
  
• "The bathroom toilet." -- Jack Fisher
  
• "My VISA bill." -- G. Italiano
  
• "Pop culture." -- Jon Hodges
  
• "In the people I watch in the streets of the city." -- Gerard Houarner
  
• "Consciousness...within me." -- John Edward Lawson
  
• "Everywhere." -- Deena Warner
  
• "The German toilets...stuff just sits there." -- Darren Speegle
  
• "The Washington Subway -- the press of bodies -- the fat people with hairy moles -- it's the worst." -- Matt Warner
  
• "The fever depths of my imagination." -- Scott Allen Emerson
  
• "In my fiance's bed." -- Kathleen J. Trimmer
  
• "When I wake up in the morning and see what's beside me." -- Brian T. Rollo
  
• "Where DON'T I find the horror?" -- Mark McLaughlin
  
• "In the newspaper office where I work." -- Jonathan Reitan
  
• "All around us, everywhere." -- Jennifer Barnes
  
• "In my hotel room." -- Sean Wallace
  
• "In my kitchen...with three kids, it's the horror." -- Denise Herman
  
• "I work retail. Think about it." -- James A. Moore
  
• "In the basement in the pit where I keep the cast of CHIPs." -- Kevin Donihe
  
• "In the eyes of religious zealots." -- St. Michael Amorel
  
• "Everyday life." -- Oliver Baer
  
• "In the mirror, baby." -- Nicholas Kaufmann
  
• "The news." -- Dave Friscolanti
  
• "A lot of conventions...Frightvision, Chiller Con, Cinema Wasteland..." -- Dr. Satan
  
• "Every. F**king. Where. I. Look." -- John Skipp
  
• "In The Graham Norton Effect." -- Rob Swartwod
  
• "The Nightmare Mansion." -- Ashe
  
• "I'm also a criminal lawyer, so, in the cases I haven't written about yet." -- Michael Slade
  
• "Where I work." -- Jason Brannon
  
• "In the people who run our planet...the people who think they know what's best for us, the people who think they know what we should think." -- Tim Lebbon
  
• "FOX News channel, fair and balanced." -- Christopher Golden
  
• "The toilet." -- Richard SanFilippo
  
• "You find it here [breast gesture pointing to logo for Horror Web.com]." -- Kelli ["HorrorWench"]
  
• "In our schools today." -- Joe Branson
  
• "In my pants." -- M. Stephen Lukac
  
• "My naked body in the mirror...I've had two children." -- Meghan Fatras
  
• "Everywhere I look." -- Geoff Cooper
  
• "On the L.I.E." -- Adam Pepper
  
• "Have you met my family?" -- Marcy Italiano
  
• "In the unknown...in the afterlife. I mean, what's after this?" -- Shawn Brannon
  
• "In my toilet after Indian food." -- Jenny Orosel
  
• "In the stock market." -- Paul Melniczek
  
• "Politics." -- Chesya Burke
  
• "Anywhere outside my front door." -- GAK
  
• "When I'm shaving and accidentally glance at my own eyes." -- James Futch
  
• "My family's history...ya know, murder, that kinda stuff." -- Brandon Massey