It Just Goes (Amaz)On and On and On...

January 24, 2015

It Just Goes (Amaz)On and On and On…

(This week’s Secondhand SCIENCE is lost… in… spaaaaa-aaaace.

Well, almost. It’s actually all about trans-Neptunian objects, which aren’t quite “lost”. But they are really, really far away. And there might be more of them than you think. Have a looksee.)

I’m not much for New Years’ resolutions.

“New Years’ resolutions are like assholes: everyone’s got one, and nobody wants their face rubbed in someone else’s.”

Partly because they’re a little too common. I tend to stay away from the conventions that everyone follows, because how interesting are those? To paraphrase a popular saying about opinions:

New Years’ resolutions are like assholes: everyone’s got one, and nobody wants their face rubbed in someone else’s.

Wait. Maybe that was birthdays. Anyway, you get the point.

Also, I don’t like New Years’ resolutions because the tradition is completely arbitrary. A large fraction of the eastern hemisphere doesn’t even recognize January first as the start of the new year. A few hundred years ago, various Europeans celebrated in spring, or September or December 25th. And between all the adjustments and gaps and tinkering with the Gregorian and Julian and other calendars over the centuries, who knows whether modern “January 1” is still the same “January 1” people were talking about through history, anyway?

What I’m saying is, if you simply must make an annual resolution, pick whatever day you like. It’s fairly likely it was “New Years’ Day” to someone, sometime, somewhere in history.

Mostly, of course, I’m just lazy. So I don’t make New Years’ resolutions. But this year, I am making a “Second-to-Last Week of January resolution”.

Which is perfectly as good. See above, if you don’t believe me.

What I’m resolving is to finally finish reformatting and re-releasing the Amazon prank review articles I wrote for ZuG.com a while back.

(A recap of the situation, for those of you — okay, all of you, who can’t be bothered to link through and catch up:

ZuG.com was a Boston-based humor site for around 15 years, featuring pranks, articles, message boards and some of the least uncomfortable talk about “pee tubes” you can imagine.

Also, some of the most uncomfortable talk about pretty much everything else. And yes, it was glorious.

I wrote two series of around fifty articles each there — one involving Facebook post pranks on companies, and the other silly Amazon reviews. When ZuG closed up shop on April Fools Day 2013, I was able to grab the materials [and permission] to repost those articles here.

I got the Facebook posts cleaned up and reposted by April 2014. The Amazon articles, not so much. Like I said, I’m lazy.)

So, I’m making a late-January resolution to get these silly things live by April 1st, the second anniversary of ZuG riding the old flaming Viking funeral ship out to sea.

(Or choking on a cocktail wiener while sitting on the toilet. None of us has actually seen the medical examiner’s report.)

To be honest, I’d nearly forgotten about those old Amazon reviews, but my memory was jogged when I found out two of them were hand-selected (by Amazon automated delivery drones, possibly) to appear in Did You Read That Review? It’s a book chock full of odd and hilarious reviews of Amazon products, and I’m proud to be a part of it.

Also, now I want to get those articles up so I can read what the hell I was thinking when I wrote that nonsense.

So if you want a sneak peek of the Amazon-pranking goodness to come… again, by April… probably, unless it’s really hard… then check out the book. Or just sit back and wait (like I’ve basically done for nearly two years), and perhaps the articles will magically reappear.

Either way, this is the best non-New Years’ New Years’ resolution I’ve ever heard of. Anybody can lose weight or quit smoking or get elected to Congress in the space of a year. But I’m taking laughs from the internet tomb in which they lie (and also, a book), and bringing them back to life — the better to be ridiculed, mocked and vilified for creating them in the first place.

If that doesn’t say “brave new year”, I don’t know what the hell else does.