The Escapist

Ok, that was a crap post. Let’s try this again…

Currently, I’m reading “13 Bullets” by David Wellington.

It’s a charming tale about an old man, and the blood thirsty killers with sharks’ teeth he has hunted for 20 years.

Lisa bought me Vampire Zero on Friday, not realizing that it is part of a series. After reading the back, I immediately ordered the first two books in Wellington’s series and now I’m reading 13 Bullets, the first book.

I’m a little over halfway through with it and it’s great. It’s not a hard read, full of action, and the characters are interesting. But what makes this a great book is something that happens in the three opening chapters of the novel… As a young man, one of our protagonists is about to be fed to a group of crippled vampires by the only vampire in the room currently capable of movement… And he has to rip the vampire’s heart out with his bare hands as the wound is closing up from the ineffectual bullets he had previously tried.

Ripped. Its. Heart. Out. WITH HIS BARE HANDS!

I’m in love with this book.

In the To Read Pile:

Thank god.

I have the worst case of senioritis ever in recorded history.

I’m a terrible person when it comes to school lately. I’m getting behind on a bunch of stuff I need to turn in by the end of the semester (so I have about a week). I also learned  that if I was interested in a position with the university newspaper (not really, but I need to build my resume), I need to apply by Monday. Also, there are finals coming up. I am so tired of school I don’t even care, really…

So with an application to fill out, three articles to write, my first final on Tuesday night, what did I do yesterday? I went to Best Buy and bought a game for the Xbox.

(Maybe I’ll resist the urge to take it out of the shrink wrap until next week.)

I’ll eat your fucking digital hearts!

(I’ve been getting a ton of spam since my two posts yesterday. I think that’s a sign that I need to update my list of words that trigger a small electrical shock to the genitals of an actor from a herpes commercial every time I get a comment telling me to buy insurance.)

I’ve been distracted. Sorry.
I’ll try to be better. A bunch of my friends and I recently started a site about the mainstreaming of geekhood. I’ve made a couple of posts there, and doing that as well as pointed reminders by people that they want to see more new content here have gotten me back to posting.

A couple of the posts I’ve made there haven’t exactly been in the mainstreaming-geek theme, and probably should have just been posted here, but what are you gonna do?

Austin’s newpaper, the Statesman, has recently made a big push towards internet content. And that’s good with the state of the industry currently.

Here’s a story on one of their blogs that caught my eye today:

The City of Austin is looking at a $30 million budget gap next year, city budget staffers told the City Council at a work session this morning.

That gap in revenue assumes that the City Council will adopt the rollback property tax rate, which is the highest rate the city can charge without requiring voter permission. It also assumes that the hiring freezes and other cuts the city has already made will stay in place.

Isn’t that wonderful? $30 million in the hole for the year DESPITE raising taxes and freezing salaries and new hires. Awesome.

Austin has been doing comparatively well in this “downturn” so far, we had SXSW to help with March revenue, but even that wasn’t enough to dig the city out of it’s financial hole.

It’s probably just going to get worse, too. Isn’t that a cheerful thought? Read the comments on that link. The local nutjobs always make a good showing on these sorts of blog posts.