Not-Megan’s Week in Geek – THE THANKSGIVIN-ING!

Since I just left Megan and Charles’s place stuffed full of food, wine and the guilt that comes from playing Cards Against Humanity, I offered to once again take over the Week in Geek to give them some time to clean up the dishes, leftovers and puddles of tears. On that note, Happy post-Thanksgiving to our USA readers and happy Day The Americans Sell Shit for Cheap to our international readers!

Black Friday, Cyber Monday

I don’t know about everyone else, but my wallet runs lean from just after PAX Prime until TODAY. I spend a ton of money during Black Friday/Cyber Monday and am always on the look out for awesome deals (and oh god even the Steam Autumn Sale is this week!). Personally I spend a ton of time browsing NewEgg and Amazon like any other nerd who knows anything about buying shit, but this year Ask Reddit had a great and helpful thread for great deals during the season. Now the awesome thing about the internet is that we can safely shop for anything we might need right from our computers, so do your poor overworked retail workers a favor and take advantage of the internet for something other than porn and googling creative uses for leftover turkey. Also consider checking out Our Walmart and helping make Black Friday (and every other day) suck way less for Walmart employees.

YOU’RE A KITTY

I guess I sent a precedent for talking about new animal discoveries, so this week instead of somethin’ WEIRD AS HELL…I present a kitty. Results from Current Biology were just published as scientists trying to learn more about the leopardus genus of cats actually found a whole new species of cat in northeastern Brazil. The tigrina was thought to be just one species but it’s now looking like two. Which is pretty cool – it’s certainly a little humbling to think we know so much of the natural world but even in 2013 we’re finding new stuff that’s still out there – and needs protected. My favorite part about this is that the tigrina looks like a ‘house cat sized leopard.’ OH MY GOD CONSERVATION IS GREAT BUT I REALLY WANT ONE OF THESE IN MY LAP RIGHT NOW.

Alan Moore, The Official Get Off My Lawn Old Guy of Comics

In some news of, uhhh, ‘creative differences,’ very notable comicbook scribe Brian Michael Bendis responded to Alan Moore’s recent grumpy man critisms of modern capes-and-cowls comics. The legendary writer of Watchmen recently said,  “I hate superheroes. I think they’re abominations. They don’t mean what they used to mean.”

Bendis shot back a reply via his blog which is absolutely worth reading if you want to giggle at people talking smack about Moore – who, while his work remains fantastic, has always been a little crazy and is now more than a little bitter. Bendis’s response includes, ” I know he thinks he sounds cool but to me he sounds like an old crabby man and it’s all the more upsetting because he is clearly capable of higher thought. His work is the work of a man working on a higher level so it’s sad that he has closed his mind to the possibility that other people can write well…”

Side note, my favorite Alan Moore story of all time is his quote talking about meeting John Constantine (Hellblazer) in real life: 

“One day, I was in Westminster in London — this was after we had introduced the character — and I was sitting in a sandwich bar. All of a sudden, up the stairs came John Constantine. He was wearing the trenchcoat, a short cut — he looked — no, he didn’t even look exactly like Sting. He looked exactly like John Constantine. He looked at me, stared me straight in the eyes, smiled, nodded almost conspiratorially, and then just walked off around the corner to the other part of the snack bar.I sat there and thought, should I go around that corner and see if he is really there, or should I just eat my sandwich and leave? I opted for the latter; I thought it was the safest. I’m not making any claims to anything. I’m just saying that it happened. Strange little story.

Years later, in another place, he steps out of the dark and speaks to me. He whispers: ‘I’ll tell you the ultimate secret of magic. Any cunt could do it.‘”

And since Megan had the terrible idea of letting me do this again, I’m bringing back Hannah’s Gif of the Week! This one wins because it has turkey and a fez (and somebody told me something about fezs being cool now because of some trendsetting doctor guy).