Tunes

Insufficiently caffeinated to type anything yet. Have some synth-heavy nostalgia tunage.

Oh boy, a challenge!

We're only a month away!

What’s an instant camera?
ANY CAMERA THAT POOPS OUT A PICTURE AFTER YOU TAKE IT.

Can you use an “Instant Back” on a fancy camera & still qualify?
YES YOU CAN.

Can you use an instant printer? NO KEVIN, A PRINTER IS NOT A CAMERA WE ARE NOT GOING OVER THIS AGAIN. (pt.2)

— #ShittyCameraChallenge (@ShittyChallenge) July 1, 2022

My body* is ready.

*By which I mean my Fuji Instax Mini.

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Automotif CCCXVI...

Here's a tasty gray market mid/late-'70s 280SL in Signal Red.

Unlike most R107s, which featured V8 power, the 280SL sported a 182bhp 2.8L DOHC inline six. This one's got a manual transmission to boot. (Mercedes never offered the SL with a row-your-own gearbox on the US market.)

Even without reading the "280SL" badge on the decklid or peeking in to see the shifter, you can tell it's a euro-spec car by the aero headlamps and the svelte chrome bumpers rather than the NHTSA-compliant 5mph battering rams that disfigured the bow and stern of official U.S. market imports.

I guess it's something to do.

According to the tabulations in the sidebar, the seventy-nine posts put up here in June is the most in a month since May of 2016.

I guess it keeps me out of trouble.

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What Soda for Bear?

“Thank you all for coming to Intern Orientation. In your packet, you will find your uniform. Questions?”
“Ma’am, it’s just a red shirt?!?”
“Yes…?”
“Well, there’s just one…”
“You won’t need more than that. Everyone wearing brown pants as I said in the email? Good!”

— MateoG (@MateoG) June 30, 2022

From Elsewhere...

"Frickin' Keith Urban was on the Today Show this morning. Dude's from, like, Australia. He's about as authentically Country as Alan Rickman's character in Quigley Down Under."

[h/t to Caleb Giddings for the meme.]

The Mechanics of the Safety

At the FN launch event where they showcased the High Power earlier this year, FN America's head of LE training was helping run the line. He caught sight of me repeatedly fiddling with the safety as I raised and lowered the pistol to my sight line and assumed he had to help a striker-fired shooter out. I had to explain to him that, no, I carried 1911s for years and was just getting a feel for the safety on the new High Power; I'm pretty religious about "On the sights, off safe. Off the sights, on safe."

Of course, that little mnemonic is simplistic, and safety use on a single-action defensive pistol is a little more complex than that.

Erick Gelhaus, who definitely knows what time it is when it comes to SAOs, has an excellent breakdown of sound safety usage in an article at American Cop that you should read.

My main carry gun for a decade. This picture should make you cringe a bit. "iT aIn'T lOw-DeD!"

Incidentally, this is one place where there is a very real difference of opinion between the proper employment of a single action pistol with a mechanical safety in action pistol shooting and for actual carry out where the targets will do more than disqualify you from the match if you crank off a round at the wrong time. 

I'm just going to say that there are a lot of things that I am fine with you doing with a pistol if I'm standing behind you holding a timer that I would be a lot less cool with you doing if I were standing downrange of you as a Human No-Shoot.

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The humidity is back today.

Getting to the indoor range with mags already loaded and ready to go as soon as it's open is going to be first thing on my agenda today.

I usually just use my sunglasses for eye protection in the range (Wiley X Peak shades) which can be difficult at times. It's a brightly lit range but yesterday I had plain black irons against a plain black target with no contrasting aiming point, and once the dark tinted sunglasses started fogging up good, there was a lot of guesswork involved.

I'm trying to get my speed back to something like normal. It's gone to hell because recoil control is something that you can't mimic with dry fire. I was just drawing an imaginary line between his armpits and trying to keep the front sight in the middle of it and let fly every time it settled in the notch... or I thought it settled in the notch. It was hard to tell with the glasses all fogged.

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Automotif CCCXV...

A 1973 Cadillac Eldorado convertible in Cotillion White with an Antique Medium Red leather interior.

Eighteen and a half feet long, this two and a half ton agglomeration of Detroit steel and sex appeal was propelled along the pavement by five hundred cubic inches of displacement divided between eight cylinders, a power plant better measured in gallons than liters.

Weather, but...

Yesterday's weather was glorious again. The high temperature barely touched 80°F and the dewpoint was in the fifties all day.

Outdoor range trip again yesterday morning, this time to do chrono work with the High Power for the Shooting Illustrated review. 

The downside to all this is that we're not looking at any rain in the immediate forecast, which means this is likely going to close out as the eighth driest June on record here in Indianapolis. (The driest ever was 2012, which saw less than an inch of rain.)

Hand-carrying water to the tomato plants is a regular morning chore now.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #215...

The High Power is now a quarter of the way through Lucky Gunner's ammo. Deets at the Patreon page.

Jazz Cabbage Pitfalls

It's Reefer Madness II: Electric Boogaloo...

Using recreational marijuana is associated with a higher risk of emergency room care and being hospitalized for any reason, a new study has found.

"Cannabis use is not as benign and safe as some might think," said study author Nicholas Vozoris, assistant professor and clinician investigator in the division of respirology at the department of medicine at the University of Toronto.

"Our study demonstrates that the use of this substance is associated with serious negative outcomes, specifically, ED (emergency department) visits and hospitalizations," Vozoris said in an email.

Hey, cool study. Now do alcohol!

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Automotif CCCXIV...

Sit there at 54th & College and sooner or later one of everything will drive by...

While the much more interesting "letter series" Chrysler that year, the 300J, had the badass Golden Lion 413cid "Wedge" engine with dual quads on those wild-looking Ram Induction manifolds, it was only available as a hardtop.

Consequently the 1,861-vehicle run of 1963 Pace Cars were built on a regular 300 convertible, with the 305hp 2-bbl Firepower 383 V-8 and a pushbutton-shifted TorqueFlite three-speed automatic.

Weather Broke

A cold front... such terms are relative in a Midwest summer, of course ...blew through yesterday morning and today's weather is supposed to be glorious. 

Low humidity and mid-'70s. The sort of weather that makes the hassles of having a convertible with an aging top worthwhile.

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Automotif CCCXIII...

In 1973, OPEC announced an oil embargo directed at the nations that had supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War. The effects on the U.S. economy were harsh.

"The average US retail price of a gallon of regular gasoline rose 43% from 38.5¢ in May 1973 to 55.1¢ in June 1974. State governments asked citizens not to put up Christmas lights. Oregon banned Christmas and commercial lighting altogether. Politicians called for a national gasoline rationing program. Nixon asked gasoline retailers to voluntarily not sell gasoline on Saturday nights or Sundays; 90% of gas station owners complied, which produced long lines of motorists wanting to fill up their cars while they still could."

The effects on Detroit would trigger the first big round of downsizing and boost sales of compacts, as people suddenly had a reason to avoid "gas guzzlers".

Sales of one model weren't much affected, though...

Despite the embargo and the subsequent gas crisis, Chevrolet sold over 300,000 1974 Monte Carlos, up from the previous record sales year of '73 that saw almost 250,000 cross the curb.

The base engine was a 145bhp 2-bbl 350, and you could get a 400 in either 150bhp 2-bbl or 180bhp 4-bbl flavors, or splurge for a 235bhp 4-bbl 454 V-8.

The muscle car era was over... or at least in an intermission ...and Americans would spend the Decade of Disco enamored with the plush boulevardiers known as "Personal Luxury Coupes".

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Pupper!

This fifteen year old v. good girl liked skritchies and was very interested in french fries and passersby.

Photographed with a Nikon D7100 & 16-80mm f/2.8-4E.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #214

Sometimes gun reviews come in batches. In this case, there's a batch of FN stuff, like this new 509 Midsize Tactical, destined for write-ups in different outlets.

I like the 509 line, and this one's in the size sweet spot. (4" barrel, fifteen shot mag; basically the FN answer to the G19.)

Automotif CCCXII...

'71-'72 Cutlass Supreme Holiday Coupe 

The notchback roofline on the top-line Cutlass Supreme coupe distinguished it from the fastback lines of the lower level Cutlass F-85 and Cutlass S. It was Oldsmobile's shot at the burgeoning "personal luxury car" market.

The family that VROOOMs together...

It's the doggles on the pupper that make the photo...

click to embiggenate

Big Win at SCOTUS

The biggest RKBA case since Heller & McDonald...

The Supreme Court STRIKES DOWN a New York gun-control law that required people to show "proper cause" to get a license to carry a concealed handgun outside the home. The vote is 6-3. https://t.co/jA2Gl7lTiG

— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 23, 2022