We don't usually give Reader of the Month awards, only stars to top commenters who actually post useful or funny stuff. But this reader doesn't comment in Gizmodo, even while he confessed he's addicted to it. He doesn't send us stories or suggestions to tips@gizmodo.com either. Or corrections. Nothing. In fact, I met him today for the first time, after my dog Jones bit me on the mouth this morning, cutting a very deep and nasty 1-inch-long injury in the shape of a seven—just below my inferior lip. His name is Dr. Francisco Gómez Bravo, and he's one of the top plastic surgeons here, in the Old Continent.

Until that fatal moment, it was business as usual. My morning started like it normally does lately: dead in bed after a hangover from a night out, as opposed to my usual half-dead state. Addy and myself are moving to London next month, so we are enjoying Madrid and our friends here as much as we can, which means going out for tapas, great dinners, good wine, old rum, and dancing 'til late.

But I digress. The European Team—Addy, Kit, and myself—woke up today around 3AM New York time. That's 9AM for the Cool Geek of the Week and her husband, and 8AM in Portugal, where Kit lives. Brian appeared briefly in Campfire an hour later, bragging about his Wii Fit skills, and weeping about his long-lost super-hero figure from his boxing days—when he really looked like Captain America instead of a blogging version Cartman in spandex—like we all do in Giz except Buchanan, who looks like Kenny. We all talked for a bit, and then he left to pack for Brazil, where he's flying to now.

After he left, I started to scan the feeds, and work in the Mac OS X multitouch story, interviewing the author of the software over iChat. Addy popped in another window and told me that Jones was sleeping in a funny position, curled over one of his toys, next to her feet on the sofa. Jones is our border terrier, and happens to be one of the smartest, cutest, and most lovable dogs I've met—unfortunately, border terriers are also killing machines, as you can see here:

Yes. Killing machines that look like teddy bears, but killing machines anyway.

Wanting to see the Xmas-in-May carol scene, I sneaked into the living room. See, I play with Jones like I'm a real dog. And with the facial hair, the scruffy look, and the games over the rugs, he totally buys it. I'm his pal and his enemy. I give him food, get him out sometimes, play with him... and fight for his toys. So I slowly came closer to him, and his favorite chewing thing. He felt I was coming and—half-opening one eye—he growled.

I got closer. He growled back.

A little bit nearer. The primal guttural sound kept increasing. I could hear the always-bemused Addy softly saying 'Jooones...'

Now I really was getting near to his toy.

He snarled.

I forced half an inch more. And then it happened.

In a millisecond, I had a small hair ball hanging from my lower lip, some kind of Son of Cujo chewing my flesh, making warm crimson spray all over my t-shirt. I felt it wet on my arms and chest while Addy screamed, Jones screeched, and myself—eyes wide open and completely silent—tried to make sense out of the blur of hair and fangs.

Two seconds later I was in the bathroom.

All I could see was the cold water instantly turning into red thanks to the massive bleeding from the highly vascularized—and extremely tender, as I discovered—face tissue. I looked up in the mirror and I saw it. A big seven dripping blood all over my neck, painting the white basin with blood. Luckily for us, we have a big hospital two blocks down from our home, and a few minutes later we rushed through the emergency doors.

Being the vain sucker that I am, the only thing I could think about was a huge scar just below my lips. Terrified, I kept asking everybody as they got me into a small operation room: 'Do you think it's going to look OK?' All I got was smiles, a few vague 'sure you are,' and one 'the other day a girl came in with a dog bite and half a lip gone, so consider yourself lucky.' All until a young doctor—can't remember her name, but she looked like she was doing her practice years—came into the room to see me.

She was honest and told me that, most likely, the injury was going to get infected. Dog bites come with a load of nasty bacterium, so they are difficult to heal. She also pointed out that she would only use two stitches to hold it together, so in case it got infected, the goo could escape the injury easily. I didn't ask that, so I insisted, and she conceded: 'yes, you may get a nasty scar. But don't worry, you can hide it with your beard. And it can be quite attractive.'

Needless to say, I was less than fascinated by the perspective of looking like Captain Steve Zissou for the rest of my life, as much as I like my red hats.

Thirty minutes and two anti-tetanus shots later I was at home, back in business, thinking about the possibility of turning into Indiana Jones (fame and girls pouring all over me) or Harvey Dent (I would have to kill Jason, who thinks he's Batman.) And then, my friend Fernando Santiago popped in iChat. I told him first what happened, and then my fears. 'Man, I have a friend who is one of the top plastic surgeons in Spain,' he said, 'let me call him.' Five minutes later, another reply: 'OK, meet me at the Ruber in half an hour. He's going to see you.'

The Ruber is a very posh and super-expensive private hospital here in Madrid, so I went there with my credit card ready to be melted, obliterated, and disintegrated into oblivion. The words 'Harvey Dent. Harvey Dent. Harvey Dent' kept hitting my brain, however, so I didn't care. As we came into Dr. Gómez Bravo's office, the first thing that surprised me was how young and sharp he was. Then I saw his completely clean desk, with an Apple Cinema Display, keyboard, and a wireless Wacom Graphire tablet top, with a Mac mini on a side table, mixed with books and folders.

All smile, perfect shirt, and elegant tie under his white coat, Dr. Francisco was really cool. He explained to me that—while it was true that dog bites usually get infected—the highly vascularized tissue in my face would make infections difficult, as the thousand of blood vessels—which made me look like Daredevil a couple of hours before that—would bring plenty of white cells and antibiotics to kill the bacterium.

He put this weird glasses on and start looking closely, cleaning the blood from the just-stitched seven. 'Hrmmm...' he said—in my mind that immediately sounded like he would have to cut. The whole head. Then change it for a new one, and give the old one back to me in a jar. 'There's a mismatch in how the injured tissue meets the chin,' he continued, 'You need a couple more stitches to align it perfectly. Otherwise, the scar would start growing big, red, and nasty. Hypertrophic scar.' Or something like that.

All I really heard was: 'Harvey Dent.'

He then ordered some six zero thread ('the hospital will charge you for that later',) and proceeded to—very gently—sew the injury exactly how he wanted it. 'There,' he finally said, 'we are done,' after five minutes. I was happy. Relieved. I'm going to survive. Bye Harvey. He-llo Harrison! The three of us then started to talk about more mundane things, like the web page he wanted to do. He asked what did I do for a living. 'Tech journo,' I said. 'He writes for an american site called Gizmodo,' added my friend Fernando.

'Are you kidding me?' his eyes wide open. Fernando and myself looked to each other and said 'no' at the same time. 'Wait, do you mean you are 'Jesús'? The guy who writes in Gizmodo US? What the... I read Gizmodo constantly, every day! I was reading one of your articles when you came through the door!' And pointing at this Apple screen, he opened Safari, clicked in the History menu.

The last twenty lines were all Gizmodo entries.

I was absolutely astonished. Here I was, a mere mortal, a jibba-jabber writer for a tech blog, a rambler for rent (see above) in front of a guy who is one of the top plastic surgeons in the country, charging a zillion-kajillion dollars per hour. And not any plastic surgeon: Dr. Gómez Bravo mainly does extreme reconstructions after big, very traumatic accidents. Not stupid boob jobs. He actually fixes lives—basically, this is a guy who must be considered a demi-god amongst his patients.

And there he was, talking non-stop, and telling me he was a huge fan of my work and Gizmodo; that he always reloaded the page many times a day, and just loved it. And he talked about it not just once, several times, naming specific articles, and just chatting about it until we left.

Then, as he was saying good bye, he opened the door for us and said to his secretary: 'everything is OK.'

Which really meant: 'he doesn't need to pay.' And yes, while I know that he received and treated me because I'm one of Fernando's close friends, his gesture was the best, most elegant thing I've seen in a long while.

So for all this, Dr. Francisco Gómez Bravo is the Gizmodo's Reader of the Month (and to me, reader of the whole year.)

I'm not sure what show this video is from, but it is funny—and that dude's skills with a digging machine are impressive to say the least. It's not really NSFW because in the end she is no where near fully undressed, but you might want to take caution when viewing the video after the break just in case.

[Arbroath via about:blank]

After diving into the disastrous effects having a toy collection can have on the love life of a grown man, I feel compelled to ask: are you an adult that still plays with toys? And, just to be clear, when I say 'toys' I am referring to products normally reserved for children—like action figures and legos. If you do, make sure to list your favorites in the comments.

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

Not so fast employees and customers of PC Club. The computer store isn't closing down and firing all its workers as we saw on Wednesday, they're getting a bailout by NAOC Holdings. Reader dudersnoopz says that managers are calling up their workers and telling them that they can get their job back if they want, and all customer warrantees will still be observed.

One of the commenters (centerpeace) last time pointed out that their strategy was to open up right next to a CompUSA and staff their stores with people who actually knew something about computers. Come to think of it, our PC Club was right next to a CompUSA too, which was weird since they were both out in the middle of nowhere. Guess when CompUSA took a dive and got resurreted by Tiger Direct, PC Club just had to follow. [Club IT - Image Credit]

Mainichi Issho, a Japan-only PlayStation Network game that's been out since 2006, has quietly brought a pretty killer function to the PlayStation 3. Players can now record gameplay and upload clips to YouTube from within the console. Better still, Sony has confirmed that the toolset will be distributed to developers to integrate into games at their discretion. With the popularity of fan videos and YouTube, it's great to see Sony embracing networks outside of their own. Good stuff, and forward-thinking on Sony's part. [Gamespot via PS3 Fanboy]

This overwrought leather and anodized aluminum slab is $6800. It's a MacBook. Sure, the underside is European aniline leather, and it comes with Windows XP and Office pre-installed. But it's just a MacBook, fattened up with 2.5 extra pounds and a couple extra inches of aluminum and dead animal hide, and a generous slathering of shitty taste. But don't feel guilty! No, because you're also buying an XO Laptop for a struggling child in a developing country, like Alabama. And that is priceless. Plus six thousand, eight hundred dollars. [Munk Bogballe via Ars Technica]

Some use the Force. Others just need the delete key. Still, we're really enjoying this fontified Darth Vader—especially the subtle use of color with his red equals sign lightsaber. To see the Death Star in fonts, hit the jump.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Who knew it was so simple to draw an X Wing? Chances are that our site will cut off part of that second image, so make sure to hit up the third link to see the whole thing. [Ironic Sans via BBGadgets and Justin Chrisostomo]

Fujitsu is set to launch an external graphics card solution dubbed the 'AMILO GraphicBooster' sometime in the 'next few weeks.' Unfortunately, this information was leaked from a presentation, so there isn't a whole lot in the way of details—but we do know that the GraphicBooster is based on ATI XGP technology, it will allow users to connect up to three external displays to their notebook, DVI-D and HDMI connections are included, and it can reportedly deliver a 4.7X performance improvement over the graphics of a small form factor AMILO notebook.

Furthermore, the leaked graph above claims that an AMILO notebook with the GraphicBooster can get up to 8,000 points in 3DMark06. We have heard promises of external hard drives for laptops before, but so far nothing has been made available to the public. With any luck, there will be some truth in all of this (and the card with work with more than just the Fujitsu AMILO laptop). [Notebook Review]

I say 'guaranteed' date disasters, but that may be a little too strong a word. After all, it is possible to find a cool chick that can handle your geeky obsessions—but the likelihood of that happening is remote at best. So, if you have a date this weekend, it is probably in your best interest to hide gadgets that could be viewed negatively by women—gadgets like those found after the break.

If the Clapper is bad, a Star Trek Voice Activated Light Dimmer is liable to have her hospitalized for tearing a muscle in a fit of laughter. This geeky gem plugs into any standard wall outlet and can be illuminated in three brightness levels using simple voice commands—which will be confirmed by the voice of Majel Roddenberry herself. It also doubles as a night light—and we all know how much women love men who are afraid of the dark. Available for $69.99. [Kleargear]

Creepy binoculars that make you seem like a pedophile are a definite no-no. So steer clear of these plushes with built-in binoculars. [Global Sources via Link]

Finally, the furniture you select to decorate your home says a lot about you. And if you happen to have a coffee table shaped like an NES controller (or a coffin) and a dresser resembling the lower half of a naked woman—that says you are a twisted, geeky pervert. A bed with springs for legs won't help boost your image either. [NES Table and Coffin Table and Sexy Furniture and Spring Bed]

Base model: $25,995 (one screen)

Add-ons

Panoramic display system: $12,995
Six-speed gated shifter and progressive clutch upgrade: $1,049.95
Sequential shifter and hand brake: $1,049.95
Mobility System: $529.95
Carbon fiber bodywork kit: $1,799.95
Advanced on-site setup and training: $2,995

The other options, like the custom paint for the bodywork, are listed as 'Call.' And then you have to add the software, like Rfactor for $450 or Race for $195. Too expensive to buy? You can rent one: six hours for $1,400 or a week for $12,200, plus two operators at $750 for half a day. And shipping. [CXC Simulations—full video at Inside Sim Racing]