Happy Chinese New Year! The year of the snake starts tomorrow. But that's just the beginning of a week with a maximum number of holidays for its load-bearing capabilities. Besides Chinese New Year, we have Lincoln's Birthday on Tuesday, which used to be a holiday to make paper hats in school before they folded it into Washington's Birthday. Also, Tuesday is Mardi Gras (also called Shrovetide or Pancake Day), which of course means that Ash Wednesday follows. Then Thursday is Valentines Day. Are you ready for all this? Maybe not, but hardly anyone celebrates all these dates. The big event in my household will be the return of The Walking Dead -at least for the adults. Anyway, before we look forward, let's take a look back and make sure you didn't miss out on anything important that happened this week at Neatorama.
Our feature articles of the week started out with Cold War Tales: Operation Paul Bunyan, from our friends at Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. The massacre in Korea happened as I was preparing to go to college, which is probably why I didn't remember it.
The Annals of Improbable Research gave us The Gentle Art of Political Taxidermy: Charles Waterton, Squire of Walton Hall. It had to be be quite embarrassing to recognize your own face on an artwork made of dead animals.
Over at our wide-format Spotlight Blog, Alex posted Gorgeous Moleskine Illustrations by Mattias Adolfsson.
Yoga on Trial came from mental_floss magazine.
We had a couple of shorties from the Bathroom Reader series: Jay Newman's Brainteasers and Warning Labels.
In this week's What Is It? game, these are are tusk covers for Indian battle elephants. They look pretty dangerous, too. Paul D got it right with the first comment, so he wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! Among many funny answers, the prize for the funniest gives to Samantha Simons, who said, "It's Captain Hooks tooth pick! All he has to do is have Shmee take off the hook and put on the tooth pick. Even pirates can have good dental hygiene!" That wins her a t-shirt, too! Thanks to everyone who played, and thanks to the What Is It blog, too!
The most comments came in to the post Should We Carry 3XL to 6XL Shirts in the NeatoShop? A lot of people think that's a good idea! That was followed by Jay Newman's Brainteasers. The most popular post of the week was Cold War Tales: Operation Paul Bunyan, followed by Jay Newman's Brainteasers. I guess we should print bigger shirts and post more quizzes.
Over at the NeatoShop, Tiffany is always keen to show you what's new, but I like to remind folks of old favorites that shouldn't be forgotten. There are special collections for fans, like gifts relating to Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Wizard of Oz. And in addition to the hot new t-shirt designs, don't overlook the classic Neatorama t-shirts.
Usability tip of the week: If you aren't a registered user, you should be. I became logged out for a brief time and was surprised at how much advertising a non-registered user sees. You can log in with Facebook and Twitter if you like, but if you register with Twitter, please add an email address to your Neatorama account. We won't share it with anyone, but if you win a prize, we'll need it to contact you.
And if that isn't enough Neatorama for you, we have extra content and fun at our Facebook page, Twitter feed, Instagram, and Pinterest. And mobile users: Flipboard makes it easy to keep up with Neatorama.
So have a happy bunch of holidays, but don't neglect to check in with us every day!