An estimated 80,000 people came out for the Phoenix ComiCon over the weekend, with many of them dressing as their favorite fantasy characters. Here's a sampling of photos from the con.

As you should already know (because you should have already read the introduction and started your ballot—you only have until June 15 to participate in the first round!), this year's Best of Tucson® theme is Our Ink Stained Heart. 

In case you missed it:

Tucson leaves an impression. It doesn't matter if you grew up picking cholla out of your shins or if you just stopped by for few years at the UA, Tucson pens itself on everyone. And, like the tattoos so many of us desert rats bear, we carry our Tucson with us—through the holes in the road, the sweaty summers and that gentrification our commenters love to complain about.

The fact is, Tucson has an ink stained heart—fragile, strong, in love, in pain, but definitely covered in ink. Our ink. It's true, we newspaper folk have ink-stained everything... but Tucson stains souls. We'll show you in this year's Best of Tucson®—that's the theme of our annual guide to all things good and loved in the Old Pueblo.

Now, we want to see your ink. We need to illustrate our Best Of edition and we thought, hey, maybe our readers have some tattoos that might do the trick. Now, we are specifically looking for heart tattoos (what have you got? Maybe something anatomical? Something a little abstract? Textual?)  that we might be able to use to pair with the ballot but we're also looking for some cool tattoos for the issue as well. (You have a pizza tattoo? We have a pizza category! Literary tattoo? We have several book categories! Tooth/Lisa Frank/color-by-numbers tattoos? We have—well, nothing, but we might still want them in the paper).

Have a good weekend, everybody.

I really love going to comedy shows. Concerts aren't my bag: I don't know much about music, I'm a notably bad dancer and I'm 5 feet tall, making my face pretty much at elbow level—no, thank you. So, l go to comedy nights (and I'm sure some of you tall, dancing, music experts do, too). 

So, while the rest of the comedy nerds and I await next month's Eddie Izzard show, who should we go see? Who should be named 2015's Best of Tucson® Best Local Comedian? 

As always: Make your case for the most amusing local in the comments but head over and cast your vote where it counts so they get some recognition. 

On this year's Earth Day (tomorrow), the Center for Biological Diversity wants you to think about the link between human population growth and wildlife extinction, so they're putting images of some of the planet's endangered species on sustainable condoms.  

The project, a collaboration between the center and Sustain Condoms, is focusing on polar bears, whooping cranes, monarch butterflies, sea otters, hellbender salamanders and horned lizards. 

"Nothing sparks a conversation like handing someone a condom, especially when it comes with a slogan like, 'Before it gets hotter, remember the sea otter,'" said a statement by Stephanie Feldstein, the center's population and sustainability director. "On Earth Day, everyone is looking for how they can save the planet. Talking about population and overconsumption, and understanding how we influence the world around us every day, is one of the most important steps we can all take to help the environment and our communities."

Since 1970, the world's population has nearly doubled from 3.7 billion to 7.2 billion, while wildlife has dramatically declined, according to the center. 

The organization proposes easy access to family planning, contraception and reproductive healthcare, sex education and women empowerment as options that can lead to long-term solutions to the exorbitant population growth. 

Tomorrow, more than 500 volunteers will be giving away 50,000 free Endangered Species Condoms at Earth Day events on college campuses and various venues around the country. 

(If you get one, take a photo and show us before you use it!)

Also, you can get more information on volunteering tomorrow or getting some of these condoms on the site, endangeredspeciescondoms.com.

This blog post comes to you in two parts!

Part 1: Let's make desk jobs less boring
I spend a lot of time at my desk every week—At least 40 hours, many of which involve data entry and mindless copy and pasting. To prevent my brain from turning into chocolate pudding (yum, but not ideal for functionality), I'm always looking for things to stay entertained. And by "I'm always looking," I mean I'm officially tired of listening to the Amy Schumer station on Pandora. She's hilarious, but I think it's time we see other people. 

It's time to get up and get out of your house because the Coming Out Queer Dance Party is going down again at La Cocina this Friday and this time its benefitting Camp Born This Way. 

For the do-gooders out there, Camp Born This Way will get donations from the event which will help to keep the program, which provides a safe space for children who are transgender or gender non-conforming, running. If you're just in it for the dancing, the event is free and runs from 10 p.m. until 2 a.m. so you'll get plenty of that in. However, you really should bring at least a few bucks for Camp Born This Way.

The nearly four year old event happens on the last Friday of every month, which means it's all going down on Friday, Feb. 27 this month at La Cocina, located at 201 N. Court Ave.

She seems reasonable.

As someone who lived in El Presidio Neighborhood for most of the ’90s, I got used to the blare of the train horns (and enjoyed them for the most part, except when they drowned out the dialogue in my pre-TiVo days). But it never occurred to me to find out exactly what the horns meant, other than "get the hell off the tracks."

But Mike Powell, who is more curious than I, did some investigation for Deadspin:

My wife and I recently moved to a house in the Dunbar/Spring neighborhood of Tucson, Ariz. Because we had never visited the house in the middle of the night, we didn't realize quite how loud the freight-train horns were. We have adjusted, in part with the help of earplugs. (To spoil another potential list, let me recommend Hearos Xtreme Protection, which at 33NRR not only offer the highest protection recognized by OSHA, but also come in a very handsome blue color.)

As a child, I loved the sound of trains. They seemed spectral and romantic. I also liked the reminder that work was still being done at a time when most people were sleeping. It connoted progress—like night was just preparation for day, and day for night. But like many things that were romantic to me as a child, the reality of the train horn has set in like a rude and bitter light.

This might be entirely self-indulgent, but let me have a moment. I wrote a lot this week about Valentine's dinners and such, but, thanks in large part to "Parks and Recreation," the day before V-Day is a day for ladies to celebrate the other ladies in their lives. It's Galentine's Day, friends.

This year, I want to take some time to celebrate all of the fantastic, radical, creative and driven women who have made the past two and a half months in this town a complete inspiration.

There's my editor, Mari Herreras, who sticks up for us when the haters hate and lets me have the freedom to pursue whatever weird idea comes to my head.

There's my co-worker, Maria Taracena, who has an unbelievable knack for telling other people's stories and isn't afraid to travel to far away and sometimes dangerous places to get those stories. A fortune cookie told her she'd win a Pulitzer and I'm not one to tell cookies that they're wrong. 

There's Liane Hernandez who runs YWCA's cafe, but is also just a badass on her own accord and is interested in everything from local food sourcing to mass imprisonment issues in the U.S. Someone told me this afternoon that one of the reasons she stays in Tucson is because of people like Liane.

There's Barbara Eiswerth who takes hundreds of thousands of pounds of food that would be thrown away and redistributes it to refugees in need. She's also committed to educating pretty much anyone who crosses her path with enthusiasm and passion. 

There's Linda Ray who has made a name for herself in music criticism—one of the most male-dominated industries I can think of. Despite the field often dismissing female voices, she has a strong one that manages still to be gracious. Her piece on Vox Urbana is a must-read this week.

There's Rebecca Safford who runs Tap & Bottle with her husband while taking care of a newborn and makes sure women's voices in the beer industry are heard, especially through events like her Women in Craft Beer panel next week.

There's the girl that saw me waiting for a table at Miss Saigon alone and offered to have dinner with me. Her name is Jessy and we're friends now thanks to her offer.

I haven't even scratched the surface on every great lady I've met in this town and I can't wait to meet more.

Disclaimer: If you're reading this and feel a surge of men's rights anger bubbling in your gut, know that I've also met a fair amount of cool dudes in this town. You're being validated now and you're also more than welcome to create Manintine's Day where you and all your bros can celebrate each other. That's great. Communities should be supportive of each other. The best way I've heard the difference between the two put is from another of my personal heroes, Allison Karow:

"Think of society as a big ladder with the people who control the resources, labor, money, politics, etc. (people with power) at the top and people with no power at the bottom. People with some power are in the middle. Men are higher up on this ladder than women (see government and income as examples in first world societies, women's health issues in third world societies). When a group that is higher on the ladder tells a group that is lower on the ladder to go away, that is called segregation. When a group that is lower on the ladder tells a group that is above them to go away, that is called 'organizing.' When and ONLY when a group has the initiative to organize can they gain power by helping each other."