He’s so unhip that
When you say Dylan, he thinks you’re talking about Dylan Thomas,
Whoever he was.
The man ain’t got no culture.
Seems like this has been my week for brooding about things that don’t matter. Leg hurts, neighbor’s got the flu which has me waiting to get the f*cking flu, which’ll be a month out of my life if I even survive it. Nothing going on to liven things up. Weather’s gorgeous – gorgeous! – and I don’t want to do anything but sit around and brood.
Which, since there’s nobody else around here to call an asshole, gets me to thinking about all my various vacuous inadequacies.
When I was a little kid we moved around a lot. This raised certain issues, some of which were immediately apparent and some that didn’t make themselves known until later. Having never actually had a circle of friends to clue me into things, there are wide swaths of popular entertainment of which I went through life blissfully, and sometimes not so blissfully, ignorant. I enjoy listening to classical music, but since every single composition seems to be titled Symphony in B Minor or something like that, I have no way of actually telling them apart. Pop music? If it wasn’t on the radio in the ’70’s, I don’t even know what people are talking about. When I was a kid I always knew when a fad had just died, because it was always the moment just before I publicly adopted it. Yeah. I was that kid.
Lately – and by “lately” I mean before Wildblue turned my download speed to -11 – I’ve been presented with listicles of ever-so-famous books and movies, the majority of which I never heard of. This morning I went to Tam’s place, where she eulogized a dead, famous and apparently beloved gun writer – of whom I swear I never heard. And that kind of hits me where I live, y’know? Because you’d think I’d at least be up on gun culture.
And speaking of that…For years I’ve stood in a corner of the playground and watched the cool kids shoot their fancy custom ARs like this…
Which looks really awkward and uncomfortable but what the hell do I know. In my day, to the extent that I ever had anything I could dignify as a “day,” people argued about the Weaver Stance. So, y’know, do as thou wilt.
But this has got to be wrong…
I mean, that is seriously LOL Dude WTF You’re-Doing-It-Wrong wrong, as the hep cats are reputed to say. And yet both those photos are of some guy named Chris Costas, who’s supposedly a famous competitive shooter and who presumably knows what he’s doing. Maybe he’s just messing with people’s heads, I don’t know.
Well, whatever. I shall now strap on my scratched Taurus and sally forth to cut up old pallets. Which I can probably just barely get right, even though I’m pretty sure you’d never catch cool kids doing it.
“since there’s nobody else around here to call an asshole”
So, let me present myself for that role by asking….about the Wildblue problem, you have checked the dish that it’s not falling off the Lair(again)??? ;-}
I’m going to be thinking of you today as Eeyore. 🙂 Can’t imagine you never read “Winnie the Poo,” but if you have you know you sound just like him right now.
But I do understand… life just seems to gang up on us sometimes.
Go do some shooting, Joel. Always makes me feel much better. 🙂
🙂 Yes, CH. The dish is fine.
The way I can tell, other than that time two days ago when I went out and gave it a wiggle to see if the fasteners were tight…when there’s a dish problem, the satellite modem becomes reluctant to connect. In this case the modem connects just fine. Probably I exceeded my download limit, which is a big 750 mbyte/month, and now Wildblue has gone Nurse Ratched on my ass.
ML – actually I’ve never read Winnie the Poo in my life. Saw the cartoon, though, so I do know who Eeyore is. Guilty as charged.
My first thought was, “Frank James? I thought that outlaw died a century ago.” (seriously) Thinking on it, the name did seem vaguely familiar, but darned if I can name a thing he wrote.
Fact is, gun culture and gun writer culture are very different things. They’ve got a fairly narrow area of intersection on a Venn diagram.
Joel, it’s the infection in the wound on your stump affecting your brain. Once you get that taken care of your world will look soooooooo different.
That’s entirely possible, Zelda, and a serious indication of complications. Time is of the essence, Joel. A systemic infection is not something to fool with. Don’t wait to get an appointment with a wound clinic. Go to the ER as soon as possible. Let your neighbors help you that much, at least this once.
“Fact is, gun culture and gun writer culture are very different things. They’ve got a fairly narrow area of intersection on a Venn diagram.”
Have you considered taking up pipe-smoking?
Yep.
Dear Lord, Joel, I do hope it’s just a trivial thing, and they don’t have to haul you off to a hospital to be fawned over by pretty nurses and given so much Demerol that you can’t appreciate it.
I was taught that the support hand goes under the point of balance of the weapon, which is of course where they put the mag wells. I understand the reasoning, but there is no reason not to have a bulge or ledge to one side or the other or even both sides of the mag well.
Get cheek weld, got good grip, got the support hand doing diddly. Support elbow is supposed to be in, re-inforced by contact with the hip bone or rib cage (off-hand), knee (kneeling or sitting), or good old Mother Earth (prone).
The support hand techniques are useful for “spray and pray”, but that’s about it.
The phrse of art is “so unhip he has to wear overalls”
Joel,
As you know, I’m one of the “cool kids”. So cool in fact is seems a certain conspiracy theorist still pines for me and some of my irreverent droogs on his blog…… or so I hear through….other cool kids.
This is something you are personally aware of.
I have no ideas at all who this guy on Tam’s blog was.
I also can’t for the life of me think of why people hold their rifles that way. That’s not how I hold mine as I was never trained in that manner of grasp, and I’ve had to hold it in the for realz. Other cool kids I know, the kind who made a recent living killing brown people with M16s, tell me they aren’t sure either.
So, maybe you aren’t as uncool as you think, you just don’t try and stylize it as much.
Regarding the pictures of Costa above, both are legitimate ways to hold a rifle.
If you look closer, you’ll see that the top photo shows him using a non-magnified red-dot optic (looks like an Aimpoint T1), and using a stance/grip that allows a high degree of speed and control. It’s not a good stance if you want to shoot pretty groups at long distances, but it’s great for shooting multiple targets quickly when you’re relatively close to them. The hand far out on the rail gives you more leverage to start and stop the rifle, so it makes it easier and faster to transition.
The second photograph shows him kneeling while shooting a rifle with some variety of magnified optic. This, and his positioning of his support hand thumb, indicate that he is shooting at relatively distant targets. While his support hand position appears unorthodox to some/many, it’s certainly a valid method: competitive target shooting at distance often involves stances that look downright wrong, but actually work. His stance in the lower photo is an example of just such a stance; if you look at photos of people shooting CMP/olympic/similar matches, you’ll see some people using a similar support hand grip.
I’m not saying he’s perfect, just that he should be ridiculed for the right reasons. Pretty much every product he has slapped his name on (Nighthawk 1911, LaRue OBR, tarted-up M&P, some dumb and ugly backpack, etc.) is stupid and/or overly expensive and/or highly impractical. At this point he’s pretty much just jumping sharks and trying to cash in on his name. If you’re going to make fun of him, make fun of him for that.
Here’s the reason to ridicule him:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3CxkhMVva4
Hey, I don’t even know who the guy is, and I’m not ridiculing him. And I have been to a high-power match or two. I am aware that for many years long-distance competitive shooters have used some extremely unorthodox stances. While I confess I’ve never understood the purpose of the grip in the first picture, actually that second one isn’t all that unorthodox. It just doesn’t make any sense in the context of ‘tactical’ shooting.
I said I’m unhip, I didn’t say I fell off the turnip truck yesterday. Thanks for the info, though.