Zen – Page 2 – 13 Hour Cafe

Distant Past

Posted by Zen On 17 July 2020

I’ve met Grace in January. We’ve met in a sports club at our university. As per tradition the club went out to the pub after the training session: for chat and banter mostly, not for drinking. Grace was captivating. She was chatty, open minded and I found that attractive. She later told me that I was rather quiet and had somewhat uninviting air about me, which is something I wanted to change. Then we discovered we were in the same lecture course, so, we’d started hanging out together. Thanks to her I met new friends and started involving myself socially.

Roll on February and after attending a Chinese New Year Gala we did something that neither of us are allowed to ever talk about ever again, but I smile when I think about it. Soon, little by little we got to know our past stories and way too much information about ex-boyfriends. At the time Grace helped me to get over a close friendship that went down a spiral by listening to my tear strained face and feeding me ‘medicinal’ chocolate. One of the side effects of the friendship is that I was making way more innuendoes in conversation, even in front of strangers. It was especially fun when we got to play it off each other. We pulled all-nighters to finish our essays together, I made dinners for us, we hangout together at awkward parties if either of us had to be present, had gaming nights and practically lived together. We hang out a lot. A lot. I think I was in love with her before we went home for the summer.

Summer came by and went, and then it was time to go back to university. Big surprise – we decided to move in together: the move was tedious and stressful but in the end we did it. I was really happy to move in with Grace: it was an upgrade to have one flatmate instead of four and with a concrete history of fun we had, you’d think, as flatmates we’d get up to no end of different shenanigans. So we started living together. And then I found out: she had six wives. Well, no, not really. I found out that sometimes, what you want to see in a person isn’t all there is.

The Customer Is Not You

Posted by Zen On 22 May 2020

There’s one Economics class I remember particularly well.

We were talking about the news and Ryanair (an airline) came up. They recently had put up a press release about how they might be developing standing places in flight or something like that, and midst our discussion our teacher said “Don’t you understand? Ryanair is just trying to make you talk about Ryanair” but he was largely drowned out by the class giggling at a girl miming being in a standing seat on the plane. I think that was my first introduction to the idea that marketing can be more than just… description of a product. Marketing can also be something that would make you talk about the company, as in, generate further publicity. This, for refence was 2010.

Skip a few years, and it’s now 2020. AI automation has become a new coming of that jewish bloke and is getting more and more and more involved in companies either because of its functionality or it’s a new toy that executives want to mash with their business model. This has naturally given a rise to a new kind of entrepreneur, ones that figured out how to game the said automation.

It’s not a secret anymore that social media’s revenue generation comes from ads. The use of a social media platform to a consumer is ‘free’, except it isn’t and the payment is your personal data and your attention. To this end, we see ads. The more ads we see – the more revenue is generated. Us seeing ads, or doing the ‘work’ of seeing ads is now a source of revenue.

Case one: The play for your attention.

A couple of Russian entrepreneurs figured out that you can get a lot of attention by creating a content farm that produces a lot of videos loosely based around the ideas of ‘lifehacks’ and diy projects.

7 Universal Truths

Posted by Zen On 22 April 2020

Have You reached complete and utter success? Are you satisfied with the limited monotonous life you live daily? Do you feel like there is more to society than meets the eye?

Esteemed professor of Burnt K. Jung invites you to open the key to the fabric of universal success. Because he knows the Truth after a long and hard life of researching buddaist monks of the world.

And best of all, he’s willing to let you purchase that knowledge for mere 12.99 out of the goodness of his own heart.

The Big Scientific Conspiracy

Posted by Zen On 20 April 2020

I had this professor once. He taught us something to do with…integrated circuits? Or maybe microprocessors? Anyway.

He looked quite the part: older, white hair, sort of a tweed suit (practical shade of dark blue, no flamboyant waistcoat added). He talked at length about his own work trying to impress all the boys and tying to impress the girls. He wasn’t overtly creepy, but you could tell that if there was a chance, he would sleep with his own students. You know, that kind of a package.

Anyway, he was desperately trying to be one of the fun ones (lecturers), so one day he took us all to the pub. And he…started the usual – jokes and goofs and uh moved on to… suggestions for coming over to a barbeque at his house, because it’s summer you see… I mean, you could see he was totally angling, but scrupulous like.

It’s on this trip he told us about this convention he went to – astrophysics or some big-brained moot like that, you know, something ‘up there’ in the scientific world (if you pardon the pun) and he told us about how he stood up in front of hundreds of prominent scientists and said that he knew as they all knew in the room that the Big Bang was… wrong. Is wrong. Never happened! Not real. And the idea of it is ridiculous because…well, in simplest terms that means that matter got created out of nowhere and that’s impossible and silly and everybody knows that!

And then, after the convention people came up to him congragulating him on his speech and agreeing that Big Bang is a scientific conspiracy that should be stopped, I mean, look at how many schools teach it and look at the consequences it has…of fooling so many people into Not Truth. Now, humbly, he doesn’t quite know the truth but he knows there are equasions.

See, there are four equations, just four is all you need to explain the universe. A set of four equations, three of which famous mathematicians came up with… such as, you know, that one – the simple one, and the next one – which is harder, and the third one is a bit more difficult still, and he is trying to find the fourth one to rule them all! *cough* the one to unify them all. See, they are all connected because in the fabric of measured space everything is connected, you just have to put in the work to uncover it all.

And we are close! We are so close, we are so close to uncovering it and once we do, the equation will make complete and utter sense of everything. And make everything alright. Everything.

…

The barbeque at his house never happened, by the way. And as far as I know, The Big Bang conspiracy is still at large.

Hello, could I get to unit 5 in the industrial estate please?

Posted by Zen On 15 April 2020

Me: Hello, could I get to unit 5 in the industrial estate please?

TaxiDriver: That the one in Hillington?

Me: I’m not sure, I’ve never been there before.

Taxi: Aah, the hairdressers is in that one, Iknow

Me: Actually… yes, there is a hairdressers’ there.

Taxi: Well I know I mean thatstheonlythingthatsther’

Me: …

Taxi: You women send too much on hair, what you gonna spend there? £40…£60?

Me: … Well, I get my hair done once a year so I don’t mind.

Taxi: Us menfolk don’t notice athing anyway, we don’t know what women hair make up is, if she’s wearing different clothes anything, anything

Me: I…um…it’s only once a year…

Taxi: See when I look at my wife, I don’t need to look, she asks me, she asks “how do I look” and I don’t need to look I say “You look beautiful”. She has cancer, my wife.

Me: Oh. My sympathies. Is she getting treatment?

Taxi: Ooh yes yes, she’s been having whatjamacallit chromotherapy

Me: That’s good to hear. It’s amazing what doctors can do.

Taxi: Oh yes, I had keyhole surgery on my heart couple year back. They couldn’t do it years back, then arteries clogged up they’ve had to operate now they can just put this thing and it thins the blockage and pop! it just passes through, no need to operate.

Me: That’s great…

…

Taxi: My son gets embarrassed about these tings easily, its quitefunny I tell a, he had an operation on his groin you see, and the nurse looked at him and said “ooh that’s a big boy he is” and he got all embarrassed.

Me: …

Well… nurses and doctors have such strange sense of humour, don’t they? They must see this kind of stuff all the time.

Taxi: Ooh yes yes, she didn’t tell him “oh that’s a small boy”, she told him “oh that’s a big boy” she did, ha ha. Here we are pal, the hairdressers’ just oer there.

Me: Thanks.

I waited until the taxi left to go to the other door.

DESPERATE L0NELY WOMEN LOOKING for ME

Posted by Zen On 4 January 2020

A pink rose lying alone on a wooden log.

I am sick of desperate single women looking for a boyfriend. They keep emailing me of all people, and I don’t see my invoices for passing their details to an actual matchmaking agency being paid.
Lonely Asian, cute russian, colombian & local, ones that want a splendit nigthtimes of disorder, to be out of control in bed, ones that crave to experience a crazy orgasm – you name it.

And what is with the desperation? Desperation isn’t cute. It’s not sexy. It’s 2019 – you can have as many tv shows as you can eat, you can volunteer, or if you can’t afford to travel to remote volunteering locations after work because you live in isolated suburbs – you can have a side gig in copywriting. (‘Side hustle’ for my american readers) There’s so much to do that finding yourself a man is neither necessary financially nor emotionally efficient in the current political landscape.

Of course, if you really need a man, sis, and if your main selling point is your zesty images of UR ideal body and tasty back in your profile! Also that YвЂ™re twenty three YO . Go ahead, finish that tiresome solitude. Who run the world, etc.

What really bugs me is that I have never seen offers from a l0nely single mAn available for dating in my local area, asian or otherwise. Not once! And I know there are desperate men. And I know they sit on twitter, or tinder or are watching Rick & Morty or getting for the night out every friday wearing the only shirt and suit pants they own. And I really think they are missing the trick here!

If only they emailed me that they are looking for care. If only one of them promised to show me his excellent body figure, and much more! That can be viewed in his personal profile at kusnetzoff.info IF only they said that they are even willing to kiss me.

Well. Suffice to say they won’t need to feel l0nely and they will get a newish feelings: they won’t cannot be alone further ever again.

As things stand at the very least I have the option to treat chronic back pain with CBD oil and buy a 12000 lumens flashlight, washing my s0liptude down with a risk-free-Keto-bottle.

Unsatisfactory Endings

Posted by Zen On 4 January 2020

M: I recently have accepted and have even begun to enjoy the fact that endings to films and books don’t have to be perfect.

A: Lol, I learned that when I was nine.

M: ….really. What film moved you so much?

A: I don’t remember. I was nine.

Some people are alright

Posted by Zen On 12 December 2018

Part 1. Bubbles

Some illusions are stronger than others. Most illusions we get from childhood. We didn’t know context then. We could pick the good, leave the bad and keep the world revolving around us. As we grew up we became more and more aware that the World is, actually, quite indifferent. The white of the day at the play park, the black of the monster under your bed has shifted in to the white of the wedding dress of someone you love at the wedding you weren’t invited to, and the comforting darkness that lives behind your computer screen.

The faster the colours change the harder it gets. To hold onto what we once we felt was ‘good’. There are no pats on the head anymore, the rewards for good behaviour are questionably expensive, and the candy is too much for your teeth. Bad people don’t get punished, they get caught. There’s almost no shock factor to anything. No novelty. You desperately want to claw back the faint edges of what you once thought you had – simplicity. Innocence. Sense of world ownership. Nobody blames you, but they all judge. They found a better way to deal with fear of unknown. But you? You haven’t.

Ah, but of course one treat still remains: feeling like the world revolves around you.

DIY Christmas toys

Posted by Zen On 10 December 2018

I had a neat little log that I was planning to cut into circles and make placemats, but lack of any equipment (i.e. a band saw) kinda made the job way harder than worth the effort. I gave it a manual try anyway:

Science and Empiricism

Posted by Zen On 2 October 2018

Sadness is empirical. Science is not…so much. Rationality and intellectualism are more of an aesthetic than men care to admit. When confronted by emotions they try to fit them into a box ‘of reason’ – hacksawing the limbs with ‘logic’, despite it being obvious for anybody looking that a bleeding heart cannot be rationalised away.

I can draw graphs too.