Mermaids in Manhattan

In this week's Thursday News of the Absurd Will Someone Please Write Me This Book Inspirational Moment (TNoftheAWSPWTBIM), I ask you to channel your inner merfolk.

I found this at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel Wild, Wacky and Weird Picture Gallery* (yup, digging deep for you loyal Thursday readers this week):

Yup. Those are mermaids. Kissing. On the subway. Apparently they were on their way home from the 2009 Mermaid parade on Coney Island. First, you gotta love New York because the other woman in the picture is utterly unphased by commuting with sea creatures.

Secondly, I want a picture book. I want the merpeople getting lost and ending up in the Hudson River, being charmed by the lights on the buildings at night, and walking up out of the water onto Riverside Drive. I don't want ditzy Splash mermaids; I want fun-loving, don't care if we're stared at, willing to take the subway but baffled by the turnstiles merfolk. And I want them to stink like fish.

Part of me wants the book wordless, in the vein of Quentin Blake's Clown, with multi-frame pages showing the mermaids in Central Park, shopping Fifth Avenue, gasping at Fulton Fish Market. But I might like it even more if you wrote it with very few words, very matter-of-fact, the simple telling of where they went and what they saw standing in contrast to wild and crazy detail in the pictures. So it says, "They visited the Plaza," but the pictures show them entering to fascinated stares, dripping seaweed at someone's wedding, and being ushered out by snotty guards leaving a trail of nose-holding guests behind them.

And never you worry, our team of esteemed judges (Thor and Monkey Girl and I) are hard at work reviewing the entries to last week's contest and will make our announcements soon.

In the meantime, who will write me this book?

* Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images