A to Z, Ask Zero Anything (AZAZA)

Hey, you.

Yeeaah, you.

Do you want to play a game?

Let's play a game.

It's called:

Truth

or

Dare.

There's only one catch.

The only dare allowed

is to tell the truth.

Ask me anything.

I mean anything.

Mysteries of life?

You got it.

What should you say to her?

I'll say it to you.

Your homework?

It shall be done.

My favorite color?

The enigma shall be laid bare.

What would Lao-Tzu, Krishna, or Siddartha advise?

I'll ask them.

Why did I start an AMA?

The reasons will be shared. (Answer: all the cool kids are doing it)

How to correctly pronounce my username?

The world will know.

 

@[member="Strytho"]

Because every loss needs a gain and because beauty is pain.

To quote Lao-Tzu in the second chapter of the Dao De Jing:

"Difficult and easy complement each other,
Long and short set each other off,
High and low complete each other,
Refined notes and raw sounds harmonize with each other,
And before and after lend sequence to each other"

We could expand this with "Grace and difficulty permit each other to be". Whether the rose was first thorny or beautiful, it needed to acquire the other trait to ensure its existence. Beautiful but not fortified and they would be all stolen away. Fortified but not beautiful and they would not be cultivated by nature around them.

For every shadow cast, there is a light. For every innovation there was a great deal of toil. For every Joker there is a Batman.

(Wow, I got in an actual ancient philosophical reference in on number one! Another reason I'm glad I read ancient foreign texts)


@[member="Nature Lady"]

Zero is the most unique number there is. Anything multiplied by it becomes it, anything divided by it grows to infinity, anything added to or subtracted from it remains unchanged. From an infinite spectrum of numbers, from negative infinityinfinity to positive infinityinfinity, no other number shares this trait.

The second half, Sifr, comes from the Arabic term for the same number and, through a convoluted etymology, became the English word "Cipher" used today. So really my name is Zero Zero.

(If I bothered for a third word for "Zero", I could have made myself Secret Agent Double-O Zero!)

And I think other than at LV this name is only in use at Newgrounds, despite the fact that I haven't been there in months.

 

@[member="Eclipse"]

1: Is there a language I find more repulsive than any other? English, by a long shot. English doesn't borrow words and grammar from other languages, it leads other languages down dark alleys and mugs them for loose change, taking only the corroded and grimy slivers of what was at one time a coherent piece of linguistic currency. Regularly silent yet consistently useful letters from French become sometimes silent (and never useful when they are) in English, the backwards oriented adjective-then-noun description of objects of German are standard, and the general Latin egotism all make English a Frankenstein's monster of mismatched parts and pieces of in-fighting European dialects. The only, only good thing about English is that we use gender-neutral nouns, unlike many Latin-influenced languages. Sadly, however, we still lack a gender-neutral person pronoun besides it or they, which are disrespectful and ambiguously plural, respectively.

I guess that answers the exact opposite of the question. Visually, I like the way Arabic looks when written, but I like the way Italian sounds when spoken. I suppose those two are tied for my most appealing.

2: I do wear a watch regularly, every time I'm out of the house, in fact. Actually, I wear three, depending on the level of formality: Work+Exercise, Casual, Formal. I'm right handed and I wear my watch on my left wrist, partly because at work my arm-mounted laser cannon (slight exaggeration) is mounted to my left arm, so I may as well put all my equipment in the same place.

Today, for the first time, I tried wearing my watch with its face on the inner side of my left wrist as part of trying a new method of attachment for my arm-mounted laser cannon. I admit, it feels impractical to twist my arm that way to see the time, plus the accompanying wrist-bend feels somewhat feminine and uncomfortable to me, for what it's worth. Back to outward-facing for me.

3: Sorry, but no. I've never used that name and it doesn't stand out to me as anyone I know/knew. If this is because of "Zanza" 's simlarity to "AZAZA" in the title, that's because it was going to be "Ask Zero Anything, A to Z", but then after the incredible length of time it took me to write the first post, it finally clicked to me that such a title would actually be "AZAAZ", which seemed less catchy. Just a coincidence, I'm afraid.

(Thanks for the foods for thoughts!)

 

@[member="Synerjee"]

Stage fright? More like stage delight. Okay, that was. Yeah, no. I should backspace that. But I'm not going to! I'm pretty comfortable speaking in front of crowds as long as the crowd isn't just staring at me during whatever event is having me onstage. Classroom full of fellow students watching me give a presentation on some abstract subject I'll forget about entirely one week after the semester ends? If they're taking notes, or glancing back and forth to the visual aids, or doing something else entirely, then I'm totally fine. If they're just dead-eyed staring I end up getting distracted and the distraction makes me stumble a little bit, giving an effect that resembles stage fright. But actual nervousness and/or fear? Hardly at all.

In fact, I've had enough people shove down my throat the fact that I have a good voice for public speaking (as well as for other things, apparently), that I'm just imbued with confidence when I know people are paying attention to my speech. Maybe one of these days I'll find something to read and record, let you all hear.



I read more now than I used to. I'm working for a book publisher right now, so I get some pretty sweet hookups with getting my hands on new reading material. I don't want to go too deep into detail, but I've probably brought home at least one hundred books so far this year: one third of which I give to a local charity, another third I keep for my eventual offspring, and the remaining third I keep for myself. How many of these hundred or so have I read? Three, I think, with one more in progress, not including the kiddie books I can knock out in two minutes. Mostly I read on my lunch and coffee breaks, but my co-workers are cool people to talk to, so I sometimes go a whole week without reading much at all.

That feeling when you work for a book publisher and walk in and out every day with a book that looks like company property, and you hope nobody accuses you of theft.

 

Diet is absolutely a central part of keeping a healthy mind and body (not that those two are much different, since your mind is part of your brain and your brain is part of your body). Everything your body needs (key word "needs") comes from an outside source. Every vitamin and mineral and drop of water comes from what you consume, other than the water you synthesize through the organic chemistry part of respiration: C6H12O6 + 6O2 -> 6H20 + 6CO2 aka the sugars you've eaten plus the oxygen you breathe becomes carbon dioxide and water, but come to think of it I don't think that's much water at all and I'm not even sure if you breathe it out or if it stays in your system.

Wait, what were we talking about? Oh, yeah, healthy diet for mind and body. My favorite way of proving this to myself is with my headaches. I get some pretty severe (but not deadly) migraines quite frequently, and about a year ago I figured out a remedy that doesn't include any common medicine. If my body is experiencing pain, that must mean something is wrong. If I'm not actually injured, it must be something in a smaller scale, like I have too much or too little of something in my system: water or calcium or iron or whatever. Well, I can fix all those too-low-substance problems in one easy step: take a multivitamin and drink a quart of water and bam! Headache is gone instead of lasting for days. I'm pretty sure a similar thing happens for muscle aches and minor infections and whatnot. Give your body what it needs to do its jobs and it repays the favor by actually doing its jobs.

I tend to do the ones that need to be done soon never and the ones that have more time I do after never. I had an elaborate story to tell here, but it got a little unnecessarily wordy. But big tasks, giant monsters to slay? Those almost never get done. I've had one problem growing for a documented 6 years now, and if I describe it as a slowly growing centipede monster, all I've done is ripped two legs off it. The beast is not slain, and it is quite a beast indeed.

How about smaller scale things than the epic quest to clear this dungeon, like school projects and whatnot? I do it by timespan to the due date. Things that are expected sooner get done first, regardless of their enjoyability or how quickly they can be crossed off. If I have two tasks to do, and one is ten times more time consuming than the other, who cares if I cross the quick one off first? I still have another 91% of my overall task left to do, not just another 50%. Unfortunately, things usually only appear on my radar once three quarters of their entire time has passed. I have a month, I start when I have a week left. I have a week, I start the day before it's due. If not for the procrastination I mix into my prioritizing, I think my system is pretty good.

Have you ever had that feeling that your brain or body hates you? You get an annoying song stuck in your head, you trip on nothing, you spend time describing your problems as giant centipedes and simultaneously make a conscious decision to not doing anything about them? When you become close to your pets emotionally (same for your offspring), you begin to share a mind and, to a much lesser extent, body with them. I want to say it's like psychic communication, but I also want to say it's not. Anyhow, just like your brain might say "I really don't want to get this song stuck in my head, but who cares because the player's gonna play play play play play play play x10000000", you can have the thought of "I really hope poochy doesn't come and poop on the floor right now", and poochy will have that same thought, thereby prompting him to come poop on the floor. He doesn't know why, he just had a thought that influenced him to do something entirely opposite to its own command. Same with kids; you and your spouse are doing your thang in your room, and one of you has the thought "I hope Junior's asleep and not about to knock--" *knock knock knock creak open the door* "Can I get a cup of water?" "YES YOU CAN ALWAYS HAVE A CUP OF WATER JUST GO GET IT YOURSELF!" True story.

 

@[member="Nature Lady"]

When already doing something, or before I begin doing that thing? I'll answer both.

Fortunately for me, I have a pretty good ability of focusing my attention. Once I'm set in motion, I can easily keep doing what I'm doing, since starting is the hard part for me. If there are other things popping up that require my attention and I need to separate myself from the task at hand, I make a physical reminder to myself to return to the original thing. I'll write a note in my phone (since I use and check my phone's notepad function obsessively) or I write on my hand or arm or I stick a rubber band snug onto my wrist or a finger. Something, anything that will stick around in a place safer than my mind to say "Hey, get back to that thing you were doing!". Even the rubber band has that effect, since I'll eventually wonder "Why do I have a rubber band around my thumb? Oh right..."

As for getting distracted from beginning the task at all, well, I don't have much of a remedy. The first step is the hardest for me in almost any situation, but I suppose the same reminder methods might work. Writing a note on my body, etc. so when I have time on my hands later, I can actually see that note and get reminded when I'm able to do the thing.

(By the way, this discussion totally just reminded me that I have to re-inflate my car's tires tomorrow (like I've needed to for the past two weeks, since the first step is the hardest for me). I'm going to write a reminder on my arm and deal with it in the morning. You have my sincere thanks for helping me stave off an unfortunate blowout!)

 

1: It depends on how I wake up. I've psychologically conditioned myself that being woken up (alarm clock, knock on the door, something falls to the floor in another room), then something important is happening. My brain quickly figures out what that thing is (and any other to-do at the same time). If I wake up just by waking up, then my brain will sit there for up to an hour without worrying about anything. I like those days, laying in the windowlight not thinking anything.

2: Umm, excuse me, that's Aquamarine Turqoiuse Mint Viridian, one of the most significant cities in the most significant region of Pokémon history. In addition to that, I think Blue; whose name is Green in Japan, is one of the coolest characters in Pokémon history, and Teal (or Viridian or whatever) is the combination of his two color-names, which means the city in which he serves as gym leader is named after him (or reversed).

Anyhow, a rose by any other name smells just as sweet, a color by any other name looks just as cool. Black and Grae go with just about everything, and much of my fashion consists of Black/Grae plus one other color, be it red or pink or blue or anything. Replace the tie (or, but not necessarily and/or) with any color of the rainbow and I've probably worn that for some occasion (I used to be kind of a Barney Stinson)

3: My car thinks it's dying. I do some pretty good self-maintenance on it, but its onboard electronics are convinced it has a flat tire, is low on brake fluid and oil, and has significant brake problems, none of which is true. Well, except the brake problems. My brakes like to give out spontaneously, and I'm going to die soon if I don't get that fixed.

 

One time somebody told me that on a scale of 1 to 10, my looks are a solid 8. Come on, I'm at least a 9.5.

For real though, most of my responses to this are incredibly dirty things. Use your imagination and I've probably heard it. The weirdest thing someone has told me that I feel okay repeating on a kid-friendly site? Hmm. It's a tossup between "I prefer to use Miracle Whip in my sandwiches." and "I just tried (some kind of apparently manly alcoholic drink, I forget what exactly)! It tasted like guns and blood and fire! SO METAL!"

Wow, I left this thing unattended for almost three weeks and had one question?

 

I have differing levels of perfectionism in my life. Organization in home aesthetics doesn't get much attention to detail from me, but when I'm making something visual, especially pixel-based art, I have detail down to the pixel. For instance, here's a spoilered image of the speed dial I have on my browser. I don't like page previews, and the other default or community images don't often strike my liking. My old speed dial stopped working with a new Firefox update, so my new one has different sized dials. That means that with my particularity of aesthetics, I'm making myself re-make all my speed dial icons from scratch, making sure they're centered down to the pixel, the exact right extracted color from the source, as close as possible to a matching font. It's exhaustive, but I find it strangely soothing to be sure the aesthetics are perfect.

... and I just realized I was using the wrong resolution for the pictures, leading to a slight aliasing effect. Look how clear the bottom-center is compared to cracked.com diagonal centering lines having some blurriness. That's what I was trying to avoid. On one hand, I'm bummed because I have to redo the five icons I've done already, but on the other hand I'm glad I don't have to do fifteen.

Spoiler: screencap goes here

image uploader is going slowly, I'll edit it in.

> Human behavior, mostly. I can observe speech and conscious choice well enough to establish a pattern and almost predict the future if I know someone well enough. Unfortunately, this sometimes simplifies itself in my mind as identifying people as "types" based on similar patterns I've observed with others in the past (or just me being judgmental). Also, did you notice that I only reply to this thread on Fibonacci Sequence numbers? Wait, never mind, that pattern ended on my first answered question.

> If you want and deserve something, anything, then do everything in your power to reach it. If you don't have to do anything and it comes to you, then that's all the better, but stop at nothing to get what you deserve, and do not let politeness or courtesy stop you from reaching your goals.

> (Assuming you're talking about AZAZA) Because I live life on the edge. Of the alphabet! OOOOHHHHHHH!