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The Battle of Rio Dorado

    Hey, y'all. Here we are again at the weekend. Not a lot of movies coming out tonight that I want to see. If I were going, I'd go see Brad Pitt in World War Z. I probably won't go.
    Hey, the British Open is being fought this weekend. Need to set my DVR...
     Hey. Guess what? The other day I was driving down I-75 through the Chattanooga area and stopped at a used bookstore called McKay's. The place is huge. It has two floors. The top floor has comics, CD's and vinyl records, including a few 45's.
     The bottom floor has talking books, DVDs, television series on DVD and a huge amount of hardback and paperback books.
Years ago, when they were in an older building, I went to the place and the prices were really cheap. I think that the prices are a bit higher now. Still, I bought a sackful of stuff for about $30. I bought ten comic books for $1 a piece. Mostly the older super heroes I used to follow. I thought I'd catch up on their lives, you know? See if they got married or produced any super bambinos. I also bought several westerns. Then I happened across a couple of Mass Effect novels. I bought them for the simple reason that I enjoyed the I-Pad game so much for this franchise that I assumed the books had to be good. I bought a hardcover of a book by John Ringo and Julie Cochran. It's titled Cally's War and what a great cover it has! Oh, yeah. I also got two books by Andre Norton.  I read Norton's dragon series when I was a teen. They were new at that time I guess.
     I've noticed that a lot of books like Edgar Rice Burroughs stuff are disappearing from the used stores these days. Sigh. I've also noticed that the used prices, the paperback prices of new books, new hardcovers and E-books are not very different. Whatever.
     Hey. About the title of the blog. I was playing Deus Ex: The Fall on my Padster yesterday. I played this mission in which I went to Panama to find some neuro***** for my girl's bionic problem. Remember, this is in the future. Well, the place is pretty rough. I was wandering around the place, which I am not real fond of doing. I like the combat part of first person shooters more than the role play. I amused myself by prowling through garbage cans as I described the other day. Finally, I got tired of the runaround and decided to start getting physical with the denizens of this virtual city. I went to the Boardwalk. Killed everyone that rattled my cage. I went Downtown. Ditto. I went to the Hotel Ebana. Likewise. Then I went to The Slums. Rough place, trust me. I depopulated that place. I was using not just my guns but also my 'augs'. Ben, my character, has a bionic arm that can brandish a built-in spike and kill even armored dudes.
    As I was walking by this one place, I noticed it had a high fence and there were 5 or 6 tough guys walking around, looking bad. They told me to move along when I appeared interested and one of them was uncomplimentary of my bionic bod. Well, #1, when there is that level of security around a crappy building, there has to be something cool to steal and #2, the dude ticked me off. He hurt my feelings, talking about my arm. So, I killed all 6 of them and went into the building called The Drug Den. They had a big sign that called the joint Rio Dorado. I didn't know if that was about some new kind of Doritos or what. There was no river in the place....
     Much to my surprise (not), the place was a den of iniquity and I had to go to the store and buy some grenades and ammo for a shotgun. Then I had to clean out those vermin, to upgrade the real estate values, you know? Then I had to clean out the adjacent garage and so on. Those dudes were so paranoid that they had placed proximity mines in the garage! Won't get much company with that kind of attitude!
    Hey, you should have seen their lab. Big, modern-looking place except for some dead bodies laid out on stretchers with flies buzzing around them. Cleaned out that place too. Still, by the time I checked my in-game cash, my rewards only equaled my expenditures. Plus, I have not completed my mission and can't return to the safe house and my attractive companion. How I've suffered for my craft!
     From the Rio Dorado, I'm CE Wills.
   


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