Limeodor

09:32 pm - Summer Hair

stutefish and I got haircuts. You probably already know what the befores looked like; here are the afters:

Lori had hers cut first. Not drastic, but significant. It was the end of a 4 year run for her.

A few days later, I cut mine. Big difference; It had been about 1 year of mostly uncontrolled growth.

11:29 am - Rootin' Shootin'

Last night I went to the gun range with Lauren. It was my second time shooting, ever. I was excited to try something bigger than the .22's I shot the first time, so I rented a .45 with a laser sight.

Why is the caliber of the gun such a big deal? After I go to the range, I feel the urge to buy a gun, but I picture buying a .22 target pistol and applying a monastic intensity to learning how to shoot; controlling my breathing, timing my shots between heartbeats, i.e., meditative shooting. But when I was actually on the range I couldn't wait to try firing the big .45. BLAM! A few clips through that was about all I could take, and I switched to the 9mm.

In the context of meditative shooting (which I suppose could be done in a different way with big caliber guns, too), the laser sight seems like a bit of a cheat. But not in the way you might think, not because it makes it easier to hit a desired target. I thought the interesting thing about the laser sight was that it amplified the invisible tremors of my hands into a violently jittery bright red dot way off in the distance, on the target. I suppose it compresses the experience of sighting down the barrel, shooting a full clip, recalling the paper target and interpreting the pattern of holes as a map of the shooting technique that occurred a minute earlier into something more immediate and direct. A little like using a digital camera, where you have immediate feedback as to how good a shot is, compared to a film camera where you may have to wait days to see how your pictures turned out. It's probably something that's more helpful to beginners than to experts.

05:10 pm - johndog

“John” as defined by Google's image search (because stutefish and velvetdahlia did it):

11:05 am - lemonodor

Some unknown LiveJournal user even made it so my other geeky thing, lemonodor, is available here on LJ.

10:33 pm

There's more there than here, but it's not exactly general interest.