Back in the day, when I didn't feel like writing but wanted to do something creative, I decided to try my hand at scrimshaw.
Never got good at it, but I did a couple pieces that were okay. The images here are the faux-ivory grips on a S&W M-52 .38 Special mid-range wadcutter target pistol.
These are, The Shadow (top) and a copy of a Vaughan Bode cartoon, from Cheech Wizard.
Tapered off, then quit, eating sugar and chips and ice cream six weeks ago, to see if I could lower my triglycerides. Getting labs done today, so we’ll see.
The result so far is that I went from 196 pounds (89 kilos) to 188 pounds (85 kilos).
Skeletal muscle up 1.2%, body water up 0.6%, body fat down 1.1%.
When I was writing animation for the tube, we bitched about how we were caught in a trap, making money for not much work. And that we had made a deal with the devil and would come to regret it.
I wrote a song about about it, and later fiddled around with GarageBand to do a weird three-part harmony.
Memory came up when I was researching the Joe Louis quote about a match he was about to have with Billy Conn.
(.22 LR handgun, above, airgun targets, below.)
I’m not a serious rifle shooter. I’m okay at it.
Some years ago, I shot in club-competitions in a discipline called smallbore metallic silhouette, using a handgun.
The short version: There were forty targets, set ten each at various ranges. These were vaguely-shaped animal outlines: chickens, pigs, turkeys, and rams. The chickens, about the area of a teacup, were at twenty-five yards; pigs, maybe a saucer-size, at fifty yards; turkeys, a vague bird-like shape a bit larger than the pigs, seventy-five yards; rams, a pie-plate size, at a hundred yards.
The competition was simple. Forty targets, forty shots. Final score was how many of the targets you knocked over on the railroad ties upon which they were set. If you hit it, but it didn't fall over? It was a miss.
You were limited to a pistol or revolver in .22 LR caliber, with iron sights — no scopes — and you had to shoot them in order, left to right.
I was a AAA-rated shooter. Pretty good, but not as adept as the International Masters. What that meant was, I scored 37-39 at an unlimited match. The really good shooters consistently shot 39-40.
One was allowed to lie down and prop the gun against a leg or knee, and to have a spotter with a scope report where the target was hit. There was also a standing event, which was harder.
If I had misses, these were almost always a turkey, which were narrower and more iffy if there was any wind blowing.
I hit ten of ten rams most of the time using a Browning semi-auto pistol with a bull-barrel, notch-and-post sights.
A maybe easier visualization, put a pie plate on the goal line of a football field. Walk to the other goal line, lie down on your back, rest the gun against your leg or knee in what is called Creedmore, or a Perry Post, position, shoot and hit that plate.
Then do it nine more times.
That’s a handgun. With a scoped .22 rifle? Even a dot scope? I could shoot all day and not miss a target. I practiced once a week, a hundred rounds.
The big bore version of this had larger targets, but set at twice the range. If you can make a 200-yard shot on a ram target with a handgun and iron sights? A scoped rifle is a gimme if you dial it in right.
