This Week at Neatorama

Happy Hanukkah! Man, we got holidays all over the place, don't we? Thanksgiving weekend traditionally opens the Christmas season -many put that point at the appearance of Santa Claus at the end of the Macy's parade. And many shoppers declared it as they fought their way through the Black Friday sales. Not me -after dinner, I crashed for a full eight hours. That's the longest I've slept in one night in years! Besides, the Black Friday craziness is something I don't want to participate in or contribute to. Shopping online is so much easier.

We kicked off the Christmas shopping season with the 50 Funniest and Geekiest T-Shirts Money Can Buy. And they're all specially priced this weekend at the NeatoShop!

This week, we had two book excerpts from picture books. First was Adam Koford's Down with the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats.

And then we had Matt Hoyle's Comic Genius: Portraits of Funny People.

John Farrier brought us an Exclusive Interview: Beth Evans, Cartoonist.

Jill Harness showed us what it's like during Christmas Time At Disneyland & California Adventure.

Eddie Deezen gave us Famous Names and Nicknames.

Over at the Spotlight blog, we had Candy and Gingerbread Galleries by Henry Hargreaves and Caitlin Levin.

The Annals of Improbable Research gave us Beauty Value Research Review.

Man Meets Cartoon was from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

Mental_floss magazine told us How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football.

Our Great Pics of the Week was the Thanksgiving Edition. We also had another set of images for the occasion in Thanksgiving Silliness.

There's a neat new feature at Neatorama's Pinterest boards. We have lots of pin boards, so you can find what you like. One is called "Places and Spaces," about stories from all over the world. Now it has a map that plots where those stories come from! Click on one of the map locations, and the board will pull up the story that came from that place. Neat!

The Conceptis puzzle this week was Maze-a-Pix.

The weekly riddle from Pzzlr was called Pebbles.

In our Whodunits by Hy Conrad, we have a new sleuth named Jonah Bixby. His first adventure here at Neatorama was After-School Homicide.

In the What Is It? game this week, the tool shown is an ice pick with a retainer for removing cubes that had been formed on a block of ice by a Coolerator ice cube cutter, patent number 2,070,773. The Coolerator ice cube cutter was another of the mystery items explained at the What Is It? blog. Of course, we wanted your wrong but funny answers -and we got them! One winner is Peawatt, who explained, "This appears to be a gentleman's lice removal tool. Properly positioned by placing his organ in the lower chamber with handle pointing away from body, hot coal was placed on the upper pan. A slight tilting of the handle up and toward the body sent the hot coal off the pan, over the spikes, setting the pubic hair aflame. When the lice ran into the clearing, they were quickly dispatched by repeated stabbing from the three prongs." Cool! The other winner is Tapisbis, who said it is the "Ultimate s'mores tool, you place the first graham cracker & a liberal serve of chocolate in the lower tray; roast not one, not two, but three marshmallows on the prongs; whilst the marshmallows cook the chocolate melts; finally slide the final cracker off the top tray and enjoy perfection." Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!

We had a poll in the post Are You Turning Your Nose Up At Me? Well, At Least It's Cute. Your votes show that kitties have the cutest noses in the animal kingdom, with bunny rabbits in second place.

The comment of the week was when BadSpeller used every fake British term in the post The Differences Between British and American English. We honestly did not have any posts with a particularly large number of comments this week. Maybe because it's a holiday, and we didn't feel like gatting everyone riled up. It's certainly not because y'all don't have an opinion -over at the Neatoramanauts Facebook page, there's always a rousing discussion on the "question of the day," like when a person can be justified in complaining about the weather.

This week's most popular post was 2D or Not 2D. That was followed by For All Those People Who Think Helen Mirren Is A Beautiful Older Woman, and The Real Life Walter White.

There was a four-way tie for the most ♥ed post this week between Meet Vinicio Riva, the Disfigured Man Embraced by Pope Francis, The Neuroscientist Who Discovered He Was a Psychopath, Royals A Cappella, and The Boxcar Library: A Bookmobile for a Logging Camp.

The social media posts of the week were Spike Vest Protects Your Personal Space on Commuter Trains, 2D or Not 2D, and Giant Cat Couch, which where all shared a lot on Facebook.

Here's a way to knock off a lot of the names on your Christmas gift list without dealing with the shopping, and you'll save money at the same time: Select a t-shirt from one of the internet's top independent artists, which are on sale right now at the NeatoShop! Those are gifts you won't see anywhere else, and you'll find one that's a perfect fit for someone you love. 

Looking ahead, we've got December starting tomorrow, and next week we will gear back up and bring you more of the neatest stuff on the web and elsewhere, right here at Neatorama!