Keeping it weird on eBay

Maybe the hookah you bought your freshman year doesn't spark the same interest that it once did, or perhaps the steadily growing pyramid of bottles in your living room has turned from prodigious feat to passable yawn. \nIf spring is the season for throwing out all the junk we've accumulated, winter is the season for buying more gaudy and ostentatious knick-knacks to make the gray days more tolerable. It's a consumer-driven age and we know for certain that things must be bought. But just what should be bought is the question that remains.\nWell, the Internet has your answer.\nEBay's "Weird Stuff" subcategory has been overrun by countless scams, schemes and get rich hoaxes. In addition, many of the authentically strange listings risk being canceled at a moment's notice, seeing as how selling a jar filled with ghosts is rarely up to par with eBay's standards. Nonetheless, some wonderfully odd items remain.\nFor starters, you could decorate your home with a "Feejee Mermaid" crafted by eBay seller Brian Davis. His "hand-sculpted and hand-painted" figures are eerie recreations of the grotesque sideshow attractions popular in the 1800s. Legends of mermaids have existed for centuries.\nRumors of mermaids' desiccated corpses washing ashore in the wake of a natural disaster persist to this day. According to www.Snopes.com, "phony mermaid-like creatures crafted from various body parts and bones of fish and other animals, usually joined to desiccated monkey heads or skulls, were a common feature of 19th-century dime museums, carnivals, traveling circuses and their sideshows."\nMaybe grotesque isn't your style. Perhaps you are simply looking for tools to aid you in your fight against the vampire menace. EBay has your back! All you need is a handy, dandy "Vampire Killing Kit." Though there are many fanciful versions, every so often you might stumble upon a Transylvanian original at a bargain price. \nThe USA Today Web site reports that "such kits were commonly available to travelers in Eastern Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Others think the kits were made in the early 20th century, possibly to cash in on the interest in vampires sparked by the 1897 publication of Bram Stoker's novel, "Dracula." \nThe kits were individually handmade and packed with an assemblage of tools to fight the undead, complete with garlic, a crucifix, stakes and a pistol for the more avant-garde. Such originals have sold at Sotheby's, an auction house, for as much as $20,300, according to www.About.com.\nHungry? How about an "Amazing Natural Baby Bird Shaped Peanut?" After only a single day of bidding, this trail mix oddity raked in 698 hits and leapt in price from one cent to $7.50 after receiving 11 bids. It seems that this lowly legume has outdone the duo of sexually provocative potato chips, competing with it for attention in the "Everything Else" category.\nOddities abound on the Internet, and there are few more convenient ways to track down worthy conversation pieces and singularly unique decorations than through online auctions. If local flair is more your fare, hundreds of curiosities are waiting to be found on the shelves of Bloomington's many antique stores.