lesensiealle

I don't watch the grammys, but as if I needed another reason not too, the rock awards were really terrible. I mean the nominees were hideous. But best rock song this year was Paramore. In what universe is Paramore rock? ugh.

Zombies suck.

I am not a fan. To put it mildly.

I can't watch movies with zombies. I have a hard time reading books with zombies in them. It really takes a lot for me to do that (I'll tell you about a zombie book series on Monday). I think I may be more comfortable with books, but only rarely.

I don't care if they are fast zombies, slow zombies, radiation zombies, virus zombies, whatever. Don't care, don't want to deal with it.

Here's the thing. Your body is more or less ok. But your mind is gone. Your body is moving around trying to eat your neighbors. And everything that made you you is gone. Ew.

But that's ok, because zombies are fictional. A zombie causing event is not going to happen.

Want to know what's not fictional? Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's is pretty much the same minus the trying to eat your neighbors. Except Alzheimer's patients may experience levels of lucidity. Which can be in the I know who you are today category. But can also be in the category where they realize they are losing their minds. And that is painful to see.

My grandmother had Alzheimer's. Two elderly friends of my mom had Alzheimer's. It goddamn depressing to watch people you know forget who you are. Forget who they are. And it's even worse to watch them realize what's happening to them.

That is where zombies really have it good over Alzheimer's. Zombies don't know what's going on. The you that was is no more. You don't see your body eating the neighbors. Too bad real life couldn't be that kind.

I kept referring to this as the Null set, but apparently that is something entirely different. It sued to be the same, but the name was taken for a particular purpose.

The Empty set is a mathematical term and it refers to the set that has no members. For the record, a set that contains only 0 is not an empty set, it has an element.

Math has rules about the empty set. Well, about all sets.
the empty set plus any set A is A.
All that the empty set has in common with any set A is the empty set.
And relatedly, the empty set is a subset of any set A.
There are more rules, but I don’t want to think about Cartesian products, Cardinality, etc, so I’ll stop there.

What does that last one mean? Every element from the empty set is part of any set you want to think of. in layman’s terms, you can give whatever characteristics to the empty set that you want.

You my dear readers are an empty set. Or at least I hope you are. There is no reason for you to not be.

Which is why you want to know what I think or why you missed me. Or why you are all 7 feet tall with purple hair. If I were to say “one of my readers is 7 feet tall with purple hair”, that would be inaccurate. But if I say “my readers are 7 feet tall with purple hair”, I’m not actually saying that I have a reader like I am in the first one.

Math is fun!

Tom Petty was in the news a bit recently over Sam Smith's Stay With Me. I have no idea how similar they are, but I have no skills with music.

The settlement might have brought him to mind but I'm talking about him today because I like him. Who doesn't enjoy Tom Petty? If you meet someone who doesn't like Tom Petty, run away. Don't walk, run.

Anyway when I was a preteen, I used to go over to my friend's place and I remember being very envious of her Tom Petty cd. And the fact that she had MTV and VH1. I first saw Don't Come Around Here No More at her place. I also watched a lot of country over at her place, but that's what her favorite style.


Because I just mentioned it.

So Petty is a classic rock musician, with a fairly recognizable style and voice.
Petty has been going since the 70s. And yeah, he's still going. His most recent album Hypnotic Eye debuted on Billboard at no. 1.

I have no video for this because I still haven't listened to that album.

Tom Petty is probably best known for being in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. TP&TH has released 13 studio albums, and you probably know at least one song from half of them.


EVERYONE knows Mary Jane's Last Dance.

He also did 3 solo albums. Which then gets really confusing because sometimes things from the solo albums are also listed as & the heartbreaker songs.

I remember watching this at Heather's.

O! He was also a member of the Traveling Wilburys. This was not a name that meant anything to me until a few months ago. But yeah. It was a supergroup. SUPER group. Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, and Tom freaking Petty. For the record, Jeff Lynne is from ELO. I don't even like Bob Dylan but I know most people rank him higher than Petty. Anyway, they did two very nice albums (Orbison died before the second was released).

I like the tribute to Orbison.

Back tracking a bit. One of the & the heartbreakers albums was a soundtrack to a movie I have no desire to see, Songs and Music from She's the One. ugh. But it has one of my favorite TP songs.

Circus forever! Never No. 3.

o, and he's probably a bit of a stoner.

I remember when this came out. All the controversy over a pot reference.

Sorry, I didn't mean to be away this long.

I'm currently reading Mira Grant's Newsflesh series, but I'm not going to do that one until I finish the series.

So let's try Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga. Well, an introduction to it.

LMB is one of my favorite authors. Especially her Vorkosigan saga. I've been reading her since I was a teen and I reread large sections of the saga about every year.

It's probably best to read them in internal order, though they weren't written in that order. There are a few outliers. Falling Free is far before the rest of the series, but you can get away with not reading it until maybe half way through. Some of the short stories were also written out of order. But the first main book of the series, is Shards of Honor.

Let's rewind a little. Humans have traveled through wormholes to arrive at other galaxies and planets. They colonized other planets. All of these planets developed on their own and have different governments, different lifestyles, etc.

Perhaps one of the most successful is Beta Colony. They are the leaders in most science (The Centagandan Empire has them beat on human genetics, but probably that's it). They actually have Survey crews who fly into new wormholes to see where these wormholes go. They don't do it for profit, they do it to explore, and it's fairly risky, you don't know where these worm holes let out. And places on these crews are Competitive. We are talking best of the best here. Beta Colony is home to our main character for the first two books Cordelia Naismith, a Survey Captain (to begin with).

One of the other problems with those wormholes is that sometimes they are not stable. A group of colonist went to a new planet which they named Barrayar, and before long, the wormhole collapsed. They coped. Created a weird culture. Very warlike, the ruling class (the Vors) started many wars between themselves. Centuries later (I know not how long), they are rediscovered with a new wormhole our of Komarran airspace. 20 years later, The Centagandas, looking to expand, bribe the Komarrans to let them through and try to take over Barrayar. That became a nice long war. One of the heros of that war was Count (or possibly Lord, I have no idea when his father died) Poitr Vorkosigan. Skipping more war, his son Aral eventually was one of the generals in the war against Komarr. Barrayar couldn't risk Komarr selling them out again, so they took it over. It was mostly bloodless except for one of Aral's subordinates ordering the slaughter of a group of Aral's prisoners. Aral caught the blame in the global community (everywhere but Barrayar) and picked up the nickname the Butcher of Komarr. He's our out main character, though everything is from Cordelia's point of view.

The first book is called Shards of Honor.
Cordelia is out surveying a planet that is thought to have been undiscovered. Aral is out securing Barrayar's new planet. They meet in bad circumstances. And they end up on different sides in a war. And they save each other a few times. And I really don't want to tell you want happens. Suffice to say, Cordelia ends up on Barrayar as the Lady Vorkosigan.

It's part of an omnibus with Barrayar. It's politics and Barrayaran society. And a villain I think should be played by Christopher Eccleston.

Most of the rest of the series is from the point of view of their son Miles. I read once that as soon as LMB started writing Cordelia and Aral, she knew that they would have a son who was not the perfect Barrayan. Miles was damaged in the womb during Barrayar, and is short with brittle bones in a society that values soldiers. It's very interesting how he copes with it.

Wow. I really suck at this. Thank god I don't have readers.

Ok, if you aren't watching ABC's Galavant, you are missing out. Not only is it interesting and funny (with a really great cast), it's a musical. Musical!

It starts off with a number that sets up the whole backstory.

Exceedingly enjoyable song, and it introduces us to 3 of our main characters (Galavant, Madalena, King Richard).

Ok, so just a bit about the show. It's a limited show, only 8 episodes. The king and queen bad, though as you quickly learn, the queen is worse. the King is mostly inept, the queen is psychotic. The Hero has some issues. The princess is telling some whoppers. The squire is cool. OL, and the king's body guard is probably the only reason he's still alive (great performance by Vinnie Jones I think).

There are several great songs in each episode. I personally think the second episode might win because it has two awesome songs. I'll only give you one of them.
.
My favorite part is "worse than scurvy".

Here, have this :

I'm really sorry this is from AOL, I couldn't find a good version on youtube (I didn't look really hard because I don't really care).

The soundtrack is available on Itunes, and I'm probably going to buy it (though not until after Sunday when the last two episodes happen, I don't want spoilers).

In my first real post, I talked about a book by Seanan McGuire. Today, I'm doing another book by her, Parasite, which she wrote as Mira Grant (yes, this is the book I was reading when I first mentioned her). It's not that I don't have other people to write about. I have a whole list of people to write about. I've even tried to write about KB Spangler's universe a few times. But I'm back to Seanan McGuire.

I'll be honest. I just finished it. I had put it down to read other things. I'm not really sure why. Probably because it's listed as horror. Ok guys, this is not horror. It's really just scifi.

On to the story.

The year is 2027, most diseases are a thing of the past. Almost everyone has a worm in them, I want to say the brand is Intestinal Bodyguards. Our hero is Sal. She's living a second life after almost dying and losing her memory in a car crash a few years ago. But now, Sal, her boyfriend Nathan, and much of her family end up investigating the cause of a new disease that is popping up. As the description of the book will tell you, the worms want a life of their own now. And they are taking over. People will be fine one moment, then they will stop, as the worms start to take over.

SPOILER under the photo folks.

photo from goodreads, click it for more reviews

It's not really a spoiler guys, I figured it out by page 50. Sal is a worm. Sally died in that car crash, the body was brain dead when the worm started to take over. Sal needed to relearn everything. She was basically newborn when she woke up. But this seemed reasonable considering how bad her accident had been. Sal has a completely different personality than Sally (and according to her dad and sister, it's a much better one).

I'm not going to give you any real spoilers. Just that Sal and Nathan learn a lot about what is going on. And Sal has several chances to realize what she really is. And she doesn't. Nathan picks up on it pretty quick, but doesn't have any problems with it. He actually tries to prevent her from figuring it out, which was reasonable, because she really did not handle it well.


one last thing. I picked this book to start reading Seanan's "horror" novels because I wasn't expecting any zombies. yeah, for most people, once the worms start to take over, they are practically zombies. Goddamn zombies.

Chloe Howl is probably not a name you are familiar with, but you should be.

Chloe is a young (19!) English singer(-songwriter). At the moment, her catalog is rather small, especially what we can get in the US. But I really like it.

In the US, you can get her Rumour EP. It's 4 songs. Yeah. 4 songs But she has an album (or ep, I don't know) coming out in July. If you are in the UK, you can preorder it now. Not so much if you are in the US. On youtube, she has 2 other songs.

I was listening to foxes one day on Youtube, and stumbled upon Rumour. I saw it on the sidebar, and loved the look of it (for some reason the red hair and that hat just worked for me), so I thought I'd give it a listen. And I was gone.

It's so catchy. And it has good lyrics.

From there, we have No Strings, which has a fun video. Warning for "explicit" language


I'm not going to go through all of her songs that are available. I could, I mean it's only 6. But I don't think that is how i should do this.

So I'll end the videos with Disappointed. Because I know you are all now disappointed in me.


I love her lyrics. With most of her songs the, lyrics just work for me.

Ok, I hang out on a lot of websites. Amazon is bad for my wallet. Reddit is bad for the general use of my time. Coursera is great for my education, when I remember it. But Habitrpg is genuinely productive. Or at least helps me be productive.

I suppose we'll start with the habit column. I don't really muse most of my habits. I'll do them, but I don't care about checking them off. if they are yellow, that means you don't do them very often. For positive habits, green means they've been done today and blue means they are done regularly. It's orange and red for negative tasks.

This reminds me, I did dishes today, I need to check that off.
You get points (XP and gold) when you do positive habits, and lose HP when you do negative tasks. You don't take damage if you don't do your habits.

Dailies, however, I use that a lot. This is a part of my daily tasks. It it's checked off, I've already done it, if it's still in color, I need to do it, and some of them I only do certain days of the week.

Dailies can only be checked off once a day, and if you don't check them off, you take damage if you are on a quest.

Todos are super useful. You can set a due date. And say it's a big project, you can set up a checklist, so that for each part you can see that you are making progress. Plus, it's worth more points if you have a checklist.

Yeah, I'm disgusting, I haven't put my laundry away yet.

So where does the rpg really come in? Quests and item drops. My party and I do an amount of damage based on the amount of dailies and todos we've done. We need to do a certain amount of damage to defeat the monster, and we will be rewarded with pets.
not these pets, we'll get some octopi. And they release a new quest pet about every month. Now drops. When you do a habit, daily, or todo, you may get a drop, it could be a basic pet, a potion (those determine what color the pet will be), or pet food. after you feed the pet enough, they turn into mounts and you can ride them.

It's more complicated that than, but that's a decent beginning.

So I think that's enough, until next time, slay everything in your path

And now you are all thinking, did she forget it's a book day?
Nope. Foreigner is a series by CJ Cherryh. It's amazing.

So here is what you need to know. This books is set in the distant future. A ship is headed out to a planet they are to colonize. But they get lost. Very lost. THe ship builds a station around a very nice planet then goes off. Eventually, the humans end up (it was a one way trip) on that very nice planet and start interacting with the locals, the Atevi. Atevi don't think like humans. Atevi don't act like humans. When humans and atevi first started interacting, the lack of understanding between the two led to a war. At the end, the humans got an island, and one human was allowed on the mainland to interact with the atevi, the padhi. The padhi is the interpreter and the one who controls the release of concepts and technology to the atevi (the atevi's technology had been equivalent to the 17th-18th century).

The padhi is a very tough position to get. Years of study of the language and the culture. And after you do all of that, the job might open up in time for you to go for it. And on the mainland, the padhi is a fairly small position. Stays mostly out of the way. Well he was. Then [Spoiler (click to open)]the ship comes back. And everyone freaks out.

Politics on the island. Politics on the mainland. Politics on the ship. Not to mention all sorts of groups not understand the others.

Why I like it:
The atevi are not just green humans. They have different mental and emotional processes. Numbers a huge part of their mental processes (which I like also), they form very different emotional bonds. And I like that.
Also, we get almost everything from Brent (the padhi)'s perspective. Brent is that one treaty allowed human. He's feeling all of these human emotions for those that CANNOT feel them for him. Not only that, but they cannot understand what he feels for them, and he cannot truly understand what they feel. He lives with the atevi. He's got a pretty good grasp of how things work (which improves as the series goes), but it's never much of a surprise to find out when he's wrong.