The Zolton You Never Knew You Didn't Know

February 20, 2011

The Zolton You Never Knew You Didn’t Know

This being Sunday — and my first Sunday back at the old blog in quite a while — I thought I’d do a bit of cleaning up.

(It’s either this, or fold laundry. And my wife has forty-seven pairs of socks that she insists differ in subtle gradations of shade, pattern, wear, length and form. While I, what with owning a penis and all, see ninety-four identical socks. Not ‘midnight blue’ versus ‘indigo sky’, or ‘fleur-de-lis’ versus ‘paisley dots’. Just socks. A huge honking pile of same-looking socks that would require a microscope, a fashion consultant and a forty-page instruction manual for me to fold ‘the right way’.

I choose this. Because, you know — duh.)

So far, so good. I’ve pruned a few sidebar links to sites that appear to have ridden off into the long interweb sunset. And I ditched the couple of GoogleAds that were hanging around, cluttering up the layout. I figure most people (like myself) browse with ad blockers turned on, anyway, so nobody’s really seeing the things. For people who were seeing them, I can’t imagine they were of interest. I mean, just look back at this week — how ‘topical’ can Google make ads to fit posts about dogs defiling condo floors or the physical charms of a commercial actress from an ad campaign that hasn’t aired during the current presidential administration? If Google’s got targeted ads for that, then by god, I don’t want to see them. Or wish them on anyone else.

“I figured if you’re reading this — and you’d be interested in more outlandish tales, dubious behavior and actual photographic evidence of my possible mental instability — then you might want to follow along.”

One more positive change I wanted to mention, though, is a couple of new links in the ‘Highlights’ section of the sidebar. I mentioned quite a while back that I write periodically on the baseball ‘n’ humor site Bugs & Cranks. That’s still true; they haven’t fired me yet and the link — should your peccadillos tend toward the tarred bat handles and the flashing leather, you filthy little minx, you — remains available on the sidebar.

It’s now joined by two others, related to legendary comedy site ZuG.com.

(They call me ‘Zolton’ over there; if you’re curious why, then this — or, if you’re truly brave, this — should make things clearer.

Frighteninger, perhaps. But clearer.)

I’ve rubbed elbows and various other pointy body parts with the members of the ZuG community for a few years now on the message board, and occasionally posted a few pieces from over here to over there. But it’s only relatively recently that I started writing original articles especially for the site. The first, back in summer of ’08, was entitled “Monster Love”.

(And if you thought ‘Zolton’ was scary, then maybe feel lucky that article is lost to the ages. Lucky if you enjoy sleeping at night or managing your dating site profile, anyway.)

Beginning last summer, though, I’ve contributed a regular biweekly series of pieces called ‘Zolton Does Amazon’, wherein Zolton buys and posts reviews of products on Amazon.com, then describes the ridiculous (and possibly felonious) experience in the ZuG article. I figured if you’re reading this — and you’d be interested in more outlandish tales, dubious behavior and actual photographic evidence of my possible mental instability — then you might want to follow along.

In the interest of catching any game readers up to speed, here’s a list of the Zolton Does Amazon adventures, so far:

Ed. Note: On April 1, 2013, ZuG shut its doors, after eighteen years of yuks. Over time, I’ll be migrating my Amazon/Facebook ‘prank’ posts over here and reproducing them, with permission, from ZuG’s parent company, MediaShower. For now, please excuse the mess and the lack of tasty linkage. Danka.

(Update: For the sake of having all these links in one place — and nowhere else to put them at the moment — I’ll update this post each time a new Zolton adventure goes live on ZuG. Just so’s you know.)

So, there’s that. Hence the ZuG and Amazon links over on the sidebar.

Meanwhile, I can’t even update my template without a 500-word dissertation. Man, it’s good to be back. Happy Sunday, kiddos.