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I was awed by its power. When I pulled the trigger the world seemed to split apart. I had the power to kill with a movement of my finger. Suddenly I understood why gangsters go crazy when they get that kind of power in their hands. I can imagine living a meaningless and impotent life, always the punk and the victim and the loser, and suddenly becoming a god with the power of instant death in my hands. Handguns are serious business. I like taking the uninitiated to the range. We've all seen the movies, we're numb to the handgun. But once they get to the range and feel the gun kick - almost jumping out of their hand - and hear the thunder of the gunpowder, they understand. The fundamental physics behind guns are extremely simple. If you have ever fired a spitball from a straw, you have employed the same general principle. Guns work because pressure builds up behind an obstruction in a tube, and this pressure forces the obstruction out with great force. In the case of the spitball, the pressure is caused by your lungs, and in the case of the gun, the pressure is caused by the burning of gunpowder. If you pour a pile of gunpowder on the table and light a match to it, it will burn very rapidly, but no explosion will occur. It is quite safe (other than the fire hazard) to light a decent sized pile of gunpowder on fire. The power comes from confining this burning process in a metal tube, blocked by an obstruction called a bullet. Back in the old days, you just packed a bunch of gunpowder into your gun barrel followed by a bullet, and the firing mechanism would ignite the gunpowder, forcing the bullet out of the barrel. This was an extremely inefficient process, and this allowed dudes with swords to actually compete against people with rifles. These days a bullet consists of four components. 1) The metal bullet (the actual thing that comes out of the barrel and kills you) 2) Gunpowder 3) Primer 4) Casing (usually made of brass) that holds all of these things together. When you fire a modern gun, the hammer of the gun strikes the primer, causing a tiny explosion, this explosion travels through a hole in the casing to ignite the gunpowder. The rapidly burning gunpowder expands into gas, increasing the pressure in the barrel and forcing the bullet out of the barrel. The bullet then flies really fast and either hits 1) A target 2) A bottle 3) A stop sign 4) A little kid who lives next door to the gangsta you were shooting at. Number 4 is why you never hold a handgun sideways. Modern handguns are divided into two broad categories: Revolvers and Semiautomatics. The first three guns in the picture are all revolvers. They are called revolvers because they contain a cylindrical chamber which revolves as bullets are fired. The first revolver in the picture is what is known as a Single Action Revolver Single action revolvers are the oldest type of revolver. They are essentially obsolete for self-defense (well, the bullets of course will still kill people). Sometimes single action revolvers are referred to as "Cowboy Style" revolvers because, well, that's what cowboys shot. A single action revolver cannot be shot simply by pulling the trigger. You must first cock the hammer with your thumb, and then pull the trigger. To fire another bullet, you must repeat the entire process again. In addition, most single action revolvers must be reloaded one bullet at a time. The cylinder is usually fixed into the frame of the gun, and cannot be popped out for quick reloading of all 6 rounds. The second gun shown is a Double Action Revolver. A double action revolver can be fired as described above, but optionally you can simply pull the trigger to fire the gun without cocking it. The advantage of cocking first is that you use much less finger strength to fire the pistol, and hence are usually far more accurate; the advantage of not cocking is that you can repeatedly fire very rapidly without involving your thumb. Finally, most double action guns feature the ability to pop out the cylinder, and thus use a speedloader to quickly load all 6 (or 5 or 8 etc.) bullet chambers in the gun. The third revolver is known as a Double Action Only (DAO), or hammerless revolver. It does not have a visible hammer, and thus cannot be cocked. You can only fire it by pulling the trigger, and thus lose the accuracy advantage gained from firing a cocked gun. The advantage is that you do not have a big hammer hanging off of your gun that can snag clothing etc. For this reason, DAO revolvers are popular guns for wearing underneath clothing. Finally, you have Semiautomatic pistols. There are many variations of semiautomatic, and in fact there are DAO semiautomatic guns, but all semiautomatic guns share the common feature of using the kinetic energy caused by the gunpowder explosion to chamber bullets. In a revolver, it is actually your finger strength which causes the cylinder to turn, and thus make another bullet available for firing. In a semiautomatic pistol, the kinetic energy of the explosion causes the top portion of the gun to slide back, readying another bullet for firing. You have no doubt seen people in movies pulling the top half of a gun before firing (and in gangsta movies, it is also necessary to hold them sideways). The reason you must do this in a semiautomatic gun is that the bullets are contained in a rectangular container called a magazine. When you initially slide the magazine into the pistol, all bullets are still in the magazine. It is the sliding motion of the top section of the gun which readies a bullet for firing. The first round must be readied by the shooter's manually sliding it. As mentioned earlier, subsequent rounds are automatically readied by the kinetic energy of the gunpowder explosion. Because of this auto-chambering and rapid reloading using magazines, semiautomatic pistols are superior to their revolver counterparts. In theory. The problem is that semiautomatic guns are far more susceptible to mechanical problems than revolvers. In addition, they are dependent on proper bullet firing for their chambering. This leads to many different situations where the semi-auto can jam, misfire, or otherwise not work. Revolvers, on the other hand, are extremely reliable, and even if one bullet misfires, you can simply fire again and be fairly sure of no mechanical failures on the part of the gun. My current pistol collection consists of the following: Ruger P95 9MM Semi Auto. Ruger Blackhawk 44 Magnum Single Action Revolver. Ruger (something) .22 Single Action Revolver. My next gun is going to be a Smith and Wesson Double Action .357 Magnum pistol. Permalink to this post. |
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Already the hippies are throwing out their conspiracy theories. Bush had him killed because of his political speech. You can't see me, but right now I'm miming a jacking off motion. These are stoners whose sole exposure to the man is through Johnny Depp's portrayal of him in a movie. People who haven't read anything in 10 years other than Zendik Farm and High Times. My first exposure to him was about 10 years ago. It was an independent movie filmed by two hippie girls. I think it was called "Drive Across America," or something along those lines. These girls drove across America and interviewed their idols. Robert Redford, Hubert Humphrey, Willie Nelson, and Hunter S. Thompson. I remember seeing this crazy old man hiding behind a car. Yelling at the cameraman. Asking why they were trespassing on his property. He had a gun. He fired a warning shot. It was like something out of a movie. Well, it was a movie, but not fiction. This was a documentary. They stayed on his property for days, but he only showed his face for a couple minutes of screen time. He reminded me of a cornered animal. Of course, I saw "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Later, I began to read his column on ESPN. This guy loved guns. I am currently reading "The Rum Diary," which, incidentally, is being made into a movie with Johnny Depp and Benecio Del Toro. I have been around guns most of my life, and I learned at a young age to respect them. You treat them as if they are always loaded. They are always one click away from killing you. You never point them at anyone or anything you do not want destroyed. You never handle them drunk. Hunter spent the better part of his life inebriated and handling guns. I have long wondered how he managed to survive this long without killing himself or someone around him. When I heard that he had shot himself, my first thought was not suicide. The jury is still out on what happened, but I'd be willing to bet that it isn't a cut and dry "I'm so sad" suicide. Hunter is one of my top 5 favorite writers. I feel a bit like Aerosmith. Everyone said that they were ripping off the Rolling Stones. Stephen Tyler said he didn't mind being called a ripoff, but he was pissed that no one realized they were ripping off the Beatles, not the Rolling Stones. Similarly, a lot of people compare my writing style to Chuck Palahniuk, when I'm really trying to rip off Hunter S. Thompson. Chuck Palahniuk has a very distinctive voice, and in the past couple of years I have read all of his published books. I picked up "The Rum Diary" to try and dilute the Palahniuk influence with a bit of HST. That, and I've been drinking a lot while writing. That helps. I have always lamented my inability to write good fiction. I have a hundred short stories buzzing around in my mind, but I cannot write them. I cannot write in the third person to save my life. I cannot write in anything but my own voice, and I cannot write about anything but my own experiences. When I try to merge these with fiction, I get very embarassed. When the "character" has a thought about a girl, it's really my thought. When "he" does something horrible to someone, it is really me doing it. The fictional worlds I create are dark and horrible places, and the truth is that I am writing about myself. It makes it extremely uncomfortable for me to put into print these horrible fictional worlds I imagine. Hunter S. Thompson is really the guy who made me feel better about this. Because of him, I realized that when I write about things that happen to me, in a sense I am writing fiction. I am writing about my inner experience, which is not necessarily what happened. In fact, it is often wildy inaccurate, and some may say delusional. The day I realized this is the day I began to write prolifically. I feel a great sense of loss at his death. I will leave you with my favorite Hunter S. Thompson Quote: "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." Permalink to this post. |
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So, here is a completely unordered list of things we need to do before Niki leaves: Daytime / normal human New Orleans sights. Have beignets at Cafe Du Monde. Visit a cemetery. Jackson Square / Cathedral. Wax Museum on Conti Catch a couple of parades at Canal and Decatur. Maybe take a haunted history tour... Get some food at Fiorella's. Get some food at Praline Connection. Get some crawfish at that place on Decatur. Nighttime / Quarter Rat New Orleans sights. Might hit the fetish thing at Twiropa Friday night. Krewe de Noir thing Saturday. Dervish after that. One Eyed Jack's at some point. Bourbon Street, just because it's famous. Stop by Pat O's. Friend Suggestions: Muffeletas at Central grocery. Ride the streetcar to audubon park. D-Day Museum. Permalink to this post. |
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There are a lot of interesting characters out here. In this picture you can see two of them. I don't know the third guy. The guy on the left rides a bizarre bicycle around the quarter. It has propellers and antennae and dongles. It is silver. The guy in the back has a VW bug covered in toys and mirrors and chess pieces and army men and Ninja Turtles. He has been gluing these things on his car for years. He stands on Decatur street with a beer and watches the tourists ogle his car. And they give him money. One night I walked out of my house and they were in the middle of the street playing chess. No rhyme. No reason. Just playing a nice game of chess, in the street, enjoying a few beers. That is why I live here. Permalink to this post. |
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I won't bore you with the technical details of what happened to the server, but trust me when I tell you that it took quite a bit of effort from both Brent and myself to get it back up. When we got it back up it was with a new version of PHP (the web scripting language I used to write this site). All of my pages were pretty badly broken. I went ahead and did a total rewrite of the site to make it work a little more cleanly. I haven't touched the code in over two years, and when you're a programmer you always cringe at anything you wrote when you were that naive. During the rewrite I implemented some basic aesthetic changes. But there is one final change that is starting now. I am going to write down everything I want to write. When I started this site several years ago I pretty much wrote whatever came into my head. Right away my mom was horrified at the things I had said, and so I toned down the site to keep her from getting upset. Over the years I have gotten a LOT of hate mail. And one by one, I have removed the "controversial" parts of my site. I removed the "Annoying Bitches of Hollywood" section, I removed my political rants because my URL was getting passed around angry Left-Wing sites and I was getting gobs of pissed off socialists calling me a Nazi. But what happened is that I still wrote these things down. I wrote them down on paper, on other sites, and on "Social Networking" bloggy-type sites. One day Brent asked me, "Doesn't it bother you that your REAL site isn't even hardgeus.com? That all of your real writing is hidden so you don't upset your mom?" When he put it that way it seemed pretty lame. I am going to be 30 pretty soon. It is a bit late in the game to try to hide stuff from my mom. Interestingly, my mother and I are extremely close and very open with one another. I think that I am a lot closer to my mother than are most men my age. Anyway, enough momma's boy talk. The point is that I have some interesting stories to tell, and not all of them are good clean and wholesome. Those of you who do not want your image of me tarnished should probably watch an episode of Friends rather than return to this site. For the rest of you...stay tuned! Permalink to this post. |
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