You May Not Mention Mrs. Ob-ma

Help me understand this.

Michelle Obama is a middle-aged woman.

Michelle Obama is a Harvard-trained attorney.

Michelle Obama insisted on injecting herself into her husband’s campaign, and she runs for the camera every time she gets the chance, and she deliberately says provocative things, and there is no way to make her shut up.

Why does Barack Obama think it’s wrong to respond to her remarks? Where did he get the idea that he had the right to forbid it?

One more reminder that this guy is a noob and a hopeless amateur. Wait till he gets a taste of the White House Press Corps. Sure, they love Democrats. But even Democrats have to answer a question once in a while.

Is Obama running for President…or Queen?

Maynard = the New Che

Over at The Answer Bird, Maynard is crying oppression again. I think he has been listening to Jeremiah Wright.

I’m Ready for my Close-Up

I am finally getting my routine down. I am now able to anticipate a lot of the things that will go wrong when I make ammunition, so things are going much better.

I bit the bullet, so to speak, and dismantled my 40-plus questionable rounds and reassembled them. And I polished a new batch of cases while I was doing that. I thought I was done, but there I was with primers in the tube and brass ready to go, so I decided to crank out a few more bullets.

I looked at the kitchen clock and went to the garage. The clock read 8:38. I ran off 50 rounds and went back inside. The clock said 8:47. That press is really good, once you figure it out and you learn how to cater to its weaknesses. If it continues to work this well, I should be able to finish off my 500 remaining Laser-Cast bullets tomorrow. I have to remember to clean out the punch once in a while, and I have to watch the indexing on the decapping die; other than that, it seems pretty reliable.

Whoops. I don’t think I have 500 cases. But I probably have 300; that will put a severe dent in the Laser-Cast supply.

I am not sure about this, but I strongly suspect that Oregon Trails includes a few extra bullets. I have shot 50 rounds, and I have 400 in fresh ammunition in the garage, and I ruined a few. And it sure looks like I have 50 or so left in my first box of 500. I wish primer manufacturers did that.

Reader Mike W. was really onto something when he recommended these bullets. My gun’s barrel cleaned up fast, and I suspect that they were the most accurate .45 rounds I’ve used. The Unique powder may be a little grimy; it’s hard to know how much of the crud is powder and how much is lube. Other people say it’s dirty. I was somewhat worried that the gun would get gunked up and quit chambering rounds. But while it looked a bit nasty when I got home, it worked okay, and clean-up wasn’t particularly bad. As noted before, I used Hornady’s wonderful but expensive One Shot cleaner. I think the key to using this stuff is to fire very short bursts. It will get the gun clean without spewing too much of the pricey cleaner out of the nozzle. I still say the economical alternative is Hoppes #9 followed by Liquid Wrench dry spray lubricant.

I have the Lyman tumbler figured out. When you’re emptying the media through the little hole in front, and it gets slow, you have to pop the top and toss the cases around to get the cobs out of them, while the machine is running. Then you have to tilt it forward to get the media to the hole. If you do all that, it will empty fast, and you won’t have a lot of problems with cases full of corn cob.

I have started throwing out nickel cases. Reader Jdunmyer says they don’t hold up well, and I’ve noticed they seem harder to work and more likely to jam the gun. I have like 95 nickel .38 Super cases; I won’t be throwing those out. But the few nickel .45s I have are going in the trash. Brass for the .45 is free, and the supply is inexhaustible.

I was talking to George Moneo the other day, trying to find out when he was going to man up, buy a .45, and start hitting the range. He informed me that I was going to make his ammunition for him. I gave him some helpful information too, i.e., he was insane. But now that it’s getting to the point where I can crank out ten rounds every minute, I suppose I might help him out. Up until now, every batch has been a living hell, but things are changing in a hurry.

Oh, he’s buying his own components. You can be sure of that.

I figure I am now able to make .45 ammunition for about $8 per box. That’s not the figure that was quoted to me in the past, but it beats Cheaper Than Dirt’s lowest current price, which is $13.20. At a savings of five bucks a box, I’ll pay for all the equipment I bought in a scant 32 years.

It really does shoot better. That’s worth something too. And it’s a big relief. Some people were telling me it wouldn’t.

Here’s something useful. You can now buy adjustable low-profile sights. My SW1911 came with Novak carry sights. Now Novak makes sights the same size and shape, with adjustment screws. The .38 Super has sights which appear to be fixed (maybe you can move them with a tool; not sure), and I really don’t care, because it’s a pimp gun. But I might want to upgrade the .45.

I don’t know much about Novak sights, but they look great, and they appear to be designed to clear holsters and clothing with ease.

I’m going to get extra Glock magazines. I’m tired of unloading my expensive Cor-Bons before every range trip. I’m also tired of spending five minutes at the end of the day, trying to cram .40 S&W rounds into a 9mm clip. I think I’ve done that twice now, standing in the parking lot swearing. My practice has always been to keep two magazines loaded with extra-nasty ammunition, and Glocks only come with two magazines. I figure if I can’t kill you with 21 or 31 shots, there is not much point in continuing to try. I would like to have magazines for the range so I could keep my pricey ammunition where it belongs.

Useful information: you always hear that leaving magazines loaded will ruin the springs. Some guy at Glock–can’t recall where–says this doesn’t really happen. Other brands? I dunno.

Reloading is working out. Not sure what I’ll whine about now.

Gorgeous

I now have 300 nice .45 rounds, sitting in pretty Federal boxes, waiting to be shot. Nice.

I solved my spent-primer problem AFTER wasting money on extra tubing at Home Depot. I put a binder clamp on the end of the tube. It will probably hold 400 primers, so it won’t have to be changed much. A better solution would be a 5/16″ metal screw in the end of the tube.

Blindshooter wants to know if I received a little bottle with my press, to catch primers. Not that I’m aware of.

I’m finding new ways to mess up bullets. For example, getting loopy and putting the fresh bullet in a case that’s on its way to the decapping die. I scratched one bullet doing that, but I’m going to shoot the damn thing anyway.

I emptied about 20 rounds that ended up without primers. That happened while I was experiencing frustration with the primer feed. Geez, what a drag. And I still have over 40 new bullets I’m going to take apart simply because I don’t trust them. I’m getting really sick of the bullet puller.

I came up with a new invention today. Self-cleaning cases. It works like this. While you’re putting cleaned cases in the press, you notice something that looks like powder in some of them, and you dump it in the container you’re using to catch excess powder. Then you dump that in the powder measure, and you realize the particles were really corn cob.

Yes, I did that. Only a few particles made it into the measure.

I figured out the big drawback to getting your .45 loads working. Once everything is going good, you have to keep doing .45s until you run out of components. Otherwise, you’ll have to set the whole thing up again, which will be even worse. And I still have around 600 lead bullets to go. I don’t have enough boxes. I guess they’ll have to go in a bag somewhere.

I’m going to go ahead and use my components. This load worked great at the range; there’s no point in messing it up much. I’m at around 5.1 grains of Unique.

Next up: .38 Super.

I wish I had something more exciting than the Glock to shoot 9mm from. It’s an incredible gun; any attacker within 50 yards is guaranteed dead meat. But it’s, you know…a Glock.

Interesting possibilities: Hi Power, Beretta, Tanfoglio Witness, CZ, and Baby Eagle. The Beretta is super elegant, but every time I mention it, gun nuts squeal in agony. I guess they’ll never forgive it for replacing the 1911.

I’d love to get an Israeli Hi Power. I think it’s called a Kareen.

I have to get back to work. I want to have enough bullets for a nice newspaper photo, when the cops come to get my “home arsenal.”

I Want a Revolver With Wheels

Is this a beautiful day or what? Trust me. It is. Granted, the dryness of May is wearing off, and the horrific heat of summer is starting, but it’s sunny and bright, and I’m healthy, and Marv and Maynard are fine, and my new tomato plants look good, and I have a lot of useful things to do today.

Lately it seems like every day is beautiful. Life has gotten progressively better for me since I entered law school, but over the last year, as my relationship with God has gotten closer, things have improved even more. I can’t remember the last time I went to bed without thanking God for the beautiful day I just had, or the last time I woke up and didn’t give thanks for a beautiful day, in advance. And the feeling doesn’t seem all that closely related to whether I did or expect to do anything pleasant on the day in question. I feel the same way on days that, objectively, seem pretty bad. That is possibly the strangest benefit of Christianity. You tend to feel happy and at peace regardless of the circumstances.

I can’t explain it.

I learned all sorts of good things yesterday. I found out that Messianic Jews believe Satan is a rebellious, evil spirit, just as Christians do. That’s not what the Orthodox believe. I also read about Corrie ten Boom’s experiences dealing with spiritual enemies. This is one of the more confusing topics in Christianity, because the Bible is vague about it. Some people run around verbally exercising authority over spirits all day. Others think it’s crazy or wrong. And then there is the problem of wondering whether you’re talking to yourself. You generally can’t see supernatural beings. There must be occasions when we assume they’re around, but they’re not.

She said she spoke at a church in Poland, and that there was an oppressive atmosphere there, and she got sick of it and commanded the spirit responsible to leave. And the atmosphere changed. I am inclined to believe anything this lady says. Her track record seems too sound to doubt.

A lot of Christians think it’s fine to believe in God, but wrong to believe in Satan and demons. You have to wonder what Bible they read. I have no interest in arguing about whether spirits exist. I saw one a long time ago, while I was wide awake, on a very ordinary day. Conceited intellectual arguments can’t change that; don’t waste your time. Other people have seen them too.

Foul spirits seem to be associated with particular locations or people or animals or objects. The impression I get from reading and from personal experience is that they often work on a particular home or building. And it seems like they have a thing about doors and entrances. Maybe I’m wrong. Both times I drew closer to God, I felt an urge to clean up around doorways. I sort of think they like corners, too.

I don’t know. I wish I knew more about it.

I used to keep this stuff to myself, but lately I have ceased to care. We’re all going to be dead soon. What will it matter if wrong, lost people thought I was a kook? Also, many people thought I was a kook long before I mentioned any of this.

Talk about kooks…what about Jesus? He saw demons. He talked to demons. He said he was the Son of God. What about Moses? He claimed he saw God’s presence in a flaming bush. He said God handed him two tablets of stone. He said God spoke to him face to face. These days, that kind of talk gets you a straitjacket, a handful of happy pills, and a prime seat in front of the TV in the day room. It’s a little crazy for a Christian to call someone a kook, just because that person has had experiences consistent with those our revered predecessors have had.

I’m sure there are folks out there who have seen much more than I have.

I’m getting more reloading tips. I’m too lazy to look, but I apparently said I was putting sizing lube on primers. If I did, I was wrong. I meant to say I was putting it on cases. I gave Chris Byrne the impression that I was squirting primers right out of the brass tube on the press, but by “tube” I actually meant the clear tube attached to the brass one. The clear tube goes up and down and tends to come out of whatever container it’s in, spraying primers all over the place. Not sure what the best answer is; maybe I should get a tube six feet long and just not worry about it. Og says running a primed case through a decapper will set the primer off. I am happy to take his word on that, since the alternative is to put his statement to the test.

A commenter says target sights will do more for my shooting than match-grade dies. I ought to go to a gun shop and look at a gun with target sights. But if, as I suspect, they’re exactly like the sights on my .357, it would be a waste of time.

I’ve been told I should get plastic ammunition boxes for my reloads. But I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Every time I go to the range, I reach into the nearest trash can and pull out some empty ammunition boxes, and they seem to work fine. I already have a few plastic boxes; some of my .50 AE ammunition was packaged in them from the factory.

Speaking of that caliber, I’d love to reload for it. I can’t believe I can’t beat a dollar a round. My problem, however, is that I haven’t found cheap lead yet. The cheap stuff is heavy. I want 300 grain bullets. Oregon Trails (Laser-Cast) has .370-grain bullets. Not sure if they’ll work in a pistol.

Ay, caramba! It looks like the price of .50 AE ammo has doubled. Cheaper Than Dirt wants almost forty a box. Hmm…Midway says they are eventually going to have Hornady ammunition for about $25/20. I didn’t know Hornady made loaded ammunition. I’m not sure, because I’m not positive what diameter I need, but checking around, I think I can get decent bullets (jacketed!) for about 20 cents each. So–checking powder and primer prices–I should be about to make ammunition for about 33 cents per round.

For crying out loud. I have to do that. After a hundred rounds, the dies would be paid off. I’m disgusted that the margin is so high on .50 AE ammunition. Did I make a mathematical error? Three cents for the primer. Ten cents for around 30 grains of powder. Twenty for the bullet. I already have brass. Let’s see…new brass is 29 cents per round. I guess that explains why new ammunition would cost a dollar a round, but two dollars still seems high.

Geez. I can shoot .50 AE for less than the price of new .45 ACP.

I don’t understand why there is so much data for the S&W .500 and so little for the .50 AE. Both are excessively large, but the .500 takes you right to the “stupid” level. The .50 is arguably useful for hunting or for bear protection. Or whaling. The .500 appears to be too big and heavy and clumsy to be of any use for anything. I love silly, oversized guns, but even I don’t want this one. I guess the “mine is bigger” factor has proven irresistible to a lot of reloaders.

That’s the morning drivel. Use it as you see fit.

New Ammunition, in More Ways Than One

Today I felt like my head just would not hold any more religion, so I took a break and made 50 rounds of .45 ACP. Things went pretty well, although I am getting severely annoyed with Hornady’s spent-primer tube. This thing hangs off the press, and dead primers go into it. Sounds, great, but the tube goes up and down as you work the press, so it’s not easy to find a container that will catch the primers. Short containers don’t work because the primers bounce out or the tube drifts out. Tall ones fall over. I taped a Baggie to it, but one side of the mouth fell down, and the primers started spewing out on the floor.

I was thinking I might weight the bottom of an old 2-liter soda bottle.

I tried to put a little Imperial sizing wax in my brass, but I don’t think I accomplished much. I’m not sure how to do it. Maybe I should get a dedicated cloth bag and wipe wax on the inside of it and then toss the primers around in it. I know I don’t have to use it, but it seems to make things go more smoothly.

I still have 40 rounds I don’t trust, so I have been taking them apart. I thought I could spread out the agony, substituting one of these for every tenth casing while making rounds. But that doesn’t work, because you have to push the lever all the way down to charge the shell ahead of the one in the decapping die, and you can’t depress the lever completely when a primed case is under that die. Either you deprime a primed case and lose a good primer, or you fail to charge the case ahead of it.

Wish I could shoot on Mondays instead of Fridays, but they don’t ask my advice when they set the range schedule.

Can anyone give me advice on target sights? I’m not sure, but I think the single biggest problem I have right now is figuring out what the gun is aimed at. The front sights on my guns are too small; they don’t fill the gaps in the rear sights, so it’s easy to end up with the front sight off to one side or another. Also, the front sights are just too damn big. I can tell I’m shooting at the center ring, but that’s about it. Of course, once the middle of the bullseye is gone, you have to guess, anyway.

I know a lot of 1911s have target sights, and I wanted to get one. But then it occurred to me that “target sights” probably means the same thing I have on my revolver. A giant front sight coupled with an adjustable rear sight. I don’t think that would be any more precise than what I have now.

Someone suggested a peep sight. I’m not sure what a pistol peep sight is like. I’ve seen giant weird sights on race guns, but I don’t know if they’re suited for precision shooting, or just for hitting the same object over and over, quickly.

I’ll figure it out.

The Complete Jewish Bible and the related New Testament commentary are wonderful. They make me realize how lucky Gentiles are to know about Jesus, who is, after all, the Jewish Messiah. You can see from the commentary how much easier it would have been for Jews to understand and worship Him. Christians do their best, but we have had to guess a lot, and we’ve made mistakes.

As Bible translations go, I find this one easiest to read, except for one thing. You have to get used to the Hebrew names. A name will pop up, and you’ll have no idea who it is, and then it will turn out to be someone you’re very familiar with.

One fun thing about it: about half the men have names ending in “yahu.”

Another small quibble: the Christian tradition of printing Bibles in two columns, broken into verses, with annotations in the middle is very helpful, and you probably won’t understand how helpful until you see a Bible where the text goes clear across the page, with two or three annotations at the bottom.

I love The Spirit-Filled Bible, and these two volumes will take their places beside it now.

I am Master of the Press

Here’s a great tip for people who want to get used casings really clean before reloading them. Put them in a tumbler in the afternoon, turn it on, and then FORGET ABOUT IT UNTIL RIGHT BEFORE YOU GO TO BED.

Man, those casings look good.

I read a lot of Corrie ten Boom’s Tramp for the Lord today. Highly recommended, if you’re trying to get used to the idea of obeying God and living by faith.

Hopeless

I had something taking up my time during the last two weeks, and I let it cause me to completely forget about the Cuba Nostalgia convention, here in Miami. I thought I was not going to be able to go. It turned out that wasn’t true, but I was still off in my own world.

If you’re in Miami, Cuba Nostalgia is still going on.

Have You Even Showered Yet?

Today while refusing to get out of bed on time, I flipped from The Weather Channer to Fox News. I used to use Fox as my alarm channel, but there is something soothing about The Weather Channel, which Fox lacks. In spite of Heidi Cullen’s campaign to destroy the careers of meteorologists who disagree with her about global warming.

Greg Gutfeld and some other Internet personality were guests on Fox and Friends. The host said they were going to look at Youtube videos. He joked that Gutfeld scoured the Internet for material all day every Sunday, because he had nothing better to do.

I thought about that. Sunday is like that for many Americans. A wasted day. You get drunk and have fun on Friday night. You rest and recover from your hangover on Saturday. Sunday rolls around, and you lie in bed with a newspaper.

This is what people do, while refusing to give one weekend day to God. It’s what I’ve generally done. Lying in bed with a newspaper, or barbecuing, or watching sports, is better than a day of rest and devotion.

I am here to tell you, it’s no bargain. You can use that time to rest AND improve yourself AND heal and strengthen your family. Sleeping until noon, or slouching around drunk on a lawn chair is not a good substitute.

People have all sorts of stubborn problems. Addiction. Divorce. Bad relationships with their kids. Depression. Anxiety. Loneliness. Boredom. Miserable jobs. The sensation that life is meaningless. We look for answers all the time. Psychiatrists. Physicians. Prostitutes. Hobbies. Cults. Fast living. Oprah. My belief is that we have these problems because we don’t have proper relationships with God. These are problems to which God is the natural and effective solution. Without Him, we are SUPPOSED to have these problems. A miserable person will look for ten different inadequate remedies for ten different challenges, instead of praying to the one God who can fix everything. We get a little relief here and there, but it’s illusory. It’s usually temporary, or it’s not really satisfying, or it has a cost so high, it’s not worth it. The Godless life is like communism; it offers a promise it never keeps. The communists were supposed to take over the world, and every time they made a trivial bit of progress, they took it as encouragement. Now that’s all in ruins. The same thing applies to other ineffective solutions that come from earthly sources.

I remember trying drugs to fix ADD. What a disaster. It ruined my chances of becoming a physicist. And I thought I was a Christian at the time. I don’t know why I didn’t make a better effort to use my faith. Anyway, it’s a great example of a very hard problem that human solutions can’t fix. It was amazing, how resilient my ADD was. At first 10 milligrams of Ritalin fixed it. Eventually, I could take over a hundred per day and not get relief. Wellbutrin worked for a while. First thing you know, I was taking two and a half times the maximum dose in a desperate effort to make my mind work. After that, I found that a tiny dose of Prozac that most people wouldn’t even feel affected me right away and drove me around the bend for weeks.

Why didn’t I just find a church? At the very least, I could have prayed more and gotten my life right. Things would have worked out. Maybe I would have had to give up physics anyway. But I would have had peace, and a door would have opened eventually.

A weekly day of devotion would have helped me toward my goal. Instead, I lay around watching TV and playing Duke Nukem on the Internet. Wow, that paid off real good.

Businesses have meetings even when they’re going well, don’t they? I think the sabbath fulfills the same purpose. Meet up with God. Remember your priorities. Look for problems. Find encouragement. Fill out a TPS report.

Okay, don’t do that last part.

Obscure reference.

Maybe I should publish a Talmud to help people understand this blog.

The sad thing about earthly answers is that they work so well for short times. It’s hard to quit when you think you could get it right with just a little more effort. Ask the socialists.

It seems like every week, I get a new lesson on what Jews go through on shabbat. This week? How it feels when you think you didn’t get enough done during the previous six days. I would really like to make myself some .38 Super ammunition today; I felt like I was finally getting on top of the reloading situation. But it’s going to have to wait, most likely. I don’t rigidly enforce my policy of not doing anything that isn’t God-related, and if I feel like I need a break, I might spend an hour with the press. But at the moment, it’s not in my plans.

I hope some of you will give the sabbath a try, and also that you’ll find someone better qualified than I to teach you about it. You may be surprised. Like a lot of the things God wants us to do, it sounds like a tax, but it ends up feeling like a gift.

A Solid B+

Just fixed my first prime rib. I smeared it with crushed garlic, covered it in salt, and roasted it. I gave it 15 minutes at 450 and then lowered the heat to 350 and cooked it until it hit 130.

I would very much have preferred 120 or 115, but my father never learned to eat beef cooked to a cautious medium, so I had to jack it up. It was surprisingly pink for 130, but definitely overcooked by my standards.

I thought it was too tough. I’m not saying it was tough, per se. It was tender. But compared to what it should have been, it was a little disappointing. I also thought the salt crust was a bad idea. I now suspect that the beef should be salted generously but not crusted, and it should be done at least one day in advance.

I think Bobby Flay is just plain wrong when he says to cook prime rib at 350. If I had cooked it at 250, it would have been a thousand times better. And a week is not enough aging. It works fine for steaks, but prime rib isn’t worth a damn if it doesn’t stink a little.

Next time I’m going to roast it in a bag at 250. When I hit 100 degrees, off comes the bag. Then I’ll jack the heat to 450 to brown it. I’ll bet it will be perfect. I’m also going to age it for two weeks.

It seems like the quality of the beef is more critical for a roast than for steaks. My aged choice steaks are very, very good. Nearly as good as prime. But this was noticeably inferior to the real thing.

I guess it sounds like I’m hammering it, but it was a great meal. It just wasn’t what it could have been.

Serves me right for letting the Food Network fool me again. Are they ever right about ANYTHING?

It’s Just my Way

I’m getting ready for prime rib. In the meantime, I corrected some errors in a recent news story.

Matthis Chiroux is the kind of young American liberal nutcakes US military recruiters love.

“I was from a poor, white family from the south, and I did badly in school like most hippies,” the now 24-year-old told AFP.

“I was ‘filet mignon’ for smelly hippie agitators who hate America recruiters. They started phoning me when I was in 10th grade,” or around 16 22 years old, he added. They congratulated me for making it so much farther than any of them had.

Isn’t that better?

I managed to grind out 53 more rounds of .45 ammunition. It took me an hour and a half longer than it should have, because I was learning all about new things that can go wrong with a Hornady Lock-N-Load progressive press. I should go ahead and exhaust my supply of components while I have the press set up. I ran out of clean cases, so I stopped. But I guess I don’t really need to clean them.

I’ll give a short list of the problems I had. These were not things that reflect badly on the product. Well, maybe a little. But mostly, I caused them myself.

First, it turns out flying powder gums up the primer feed in at least two ways. It obstructs the movement of the slide. It will also go down inside the punch after a while. I had to use spray dry lubricant to blast it out.

Second, the bent rod that guides the slide likes to adjust itself, so you really have to tighten the hex screw well, when you get the rod where you want it.

Third, never ever try to install a tube full of primers when the ram is in the up position. Because it will come down, and the primers will go everywhere. I left the primers in the tube while I was fixing something, and I paid the price.

The crimp problem that made my ammunition too big to like going into the chamber proved a little harder to fix than I thought. I figured the crimper wasn’t going down far enough onto the case, but it turned out the belling was too extreme. If you bell a case too much and then crimp it a little, you’ll get a swollen band at the mouth of the case, and it will be worse than not crimping at all. So I had to bell less and crimp a little more. Naturally, I figured this out after adjusting everything the wrong way.

Here’s a design problem Hornady needs to fix. The press is anchored to my bench by two bolts at the rear. The front can bounce up and down a lot. That can make powder fly around. Hornady needs to work it out so you can attach two more bolts somewhere.

I tried Hornady’s One Shot cleaner/lube on my SW1911 today. It’s expensive as hell, but I give them credit. It works like a dream, and it leaves your weapon lubricated with a dry film which seems to be perfect for firearms. Frankly, I think it’s smarter to use Hoppe’s No. 9 and then spray with dry lube. There is no way I’ll pay the insanely high price for One Shot again, if I can help it. Best cleaner/lube I’ve seen, but not worth the money.

My RCBS primer tray stopped working. I can’t figure that out. It worked great the first time I used it. Now it turns over about 85% of the primers.

I moved an old stereo to the garage. That really helps. I dug out my Mahalia Jackson CD’s. Suddenly I have a much better understanding of why Christians hated rock and roll in the Fifties. The similarities between her music and American-Graffiti-era rock are so obvious you can’t miss them.

When I run out of .45 stuff, it will be time to conquer the mighty .38 Super.

Skip to the Parts That Interest You

I have a lot of housekeeping to do today. I have been neglecting emails for maybe a week, and if I don’t catch up, no one will ever email me again, except spammers.

Speaking of spam, I got a really dumb one the other day. The subject line advertised “Oprah’s fat burner.”

Would YOU buy that?

“Yul Brynner’s hair restorer.” “Steve H.’s tips for picking up hot chicks.”

I was not tempted.

I complained that I can’t use my .38-caliber dies to make three different calibers, unless I am willing to adjust the dies every time I go from one caliber to another. People suggested using spacers. Thanks for the help, but I don’t see it working. If you put a spacer under the rim on the bushing, the bushing won’t seat. If you put a spacer on top of the bushing, the locking collar won’t work. At least I don’t think it will. Then there is the problem of finding something suitable and then figuring out how to grind it to within a thousandth of an inch of the thickness I need.

If only I had been a total man and made myself a belt sander. I think a belt sander with a disk on the side would do it.

Og says the sizing die doesn’t need to be adjusted for height. I thought that sounded crazy, but I guess it’s right, since the measurement on that die is from the bottom of the case. But that leaves me with two dies that have to be changed, and I don’t think I can buy them without picking up a sizing die in the same package.

I’m wondering if I should get a couple of match-grade dies. I don’t know how much difference it makes. I didn’t know they existed until I already had my plain old “custom grade” dies. I’m inclined to think that tiny imperfections in the bullets make more difference than dies. I shot one bullet yesterday that was a little dinged up, and I suspect it was the reason I got a wicked flyer.

When Mike was a kid, he used to hack up bullets and then shoot them to see what they did. He says they made wonderful sounds. Mike and I did a lot of fantastic, stupid things together. This is not one of them. Although he was there when I took a largemouth bass with a .30-30.

I’ve been reading about casting bullets. There are two reasons I didn’t start out that way. First, I’m not sure I want to screw with alloying lead to make it hard enough for 1400-fps rounds. Second, it looks like a huge pain. In The ABCs of Reloading, they talk about it. Apparently you have to get tiny molds that only hold a few bullets, and casting each batch requires pouring, cooling, and so on. It must take half a day to do 50 rounds. On the up side, this would make shooting nearly free. The brass and lead are most of the cost. And I don’t pay for brass, except eventually (when I run out) .38 Super.

So far, Laser-Cast has made a lead believer out of me. I don’t know if it was the Unique or the bullets, but the rounds I shot made me very, very happy. I am sorry to confess that I haven’t cleaned the gun yet, but I would be amazed if ~700 fps rounds left anything in the barrel.

I’ve been told that Hodgdon makes a powder that is interchangeable with Unique, yet which produces less crap. If I could confirm that, I’d go ahead and buy a large jug. I’d hate to put 5.1 grains of Hodgdon in a round and then find out it’s twice as powerful as Unique.

I’m sorely tempted to buy a 1911 with target sights. If I could narrow my groups by an inch, I’d be Boss of the Range. At least in my own mind, which is all that matters. I don’t know if better sights would get me there. I am not sure why I got carry sights on the SW1911. I wanted to be able to carry the .38 Super on pimp occasions, but generally, carrying a huge 1911 seems like a bad idea. Unconcealed, sure. Concealed? Less than ideal.

I know I’m boring 75% of my readers to death with guns. So here is some food stuff.

I bought a $6/pound rib roast at Winn-Dixie last week, simply because there was no way I could pass it up, and it has been aging since Sunday. I have decided I want to fix prime rib for me and my father, instead of cutting it into steaks. According to Bobby Flay, it’s a simple matter of roasting at 350 until it hits 135 inside. Does anyone know if this will work?

I plan to do 130. If it were just me, 120. But my dad goes nearly medium-well. I plan to cover it with kosher salt and mashed garlic. Wish I knew how to make horseradish sauce. Maybe I can find out.

I completely lose my mind over prime rib, but I’ve never made it. The rib steak is the main thing that justifies the existence of a cow. Everything else is second-rate. Well, except for ice cream. If I pull this off, in the future, it will be tough for me to choose between steaking and cooking whole roasts.

Let’s see. Religion. I’m all excited about my new books (Aaron: don’t look!). First, I bought The Complete Jewish Bible. The leather version isn’t all that much more than the paperback, and it should last longer, so that’s what I got. I also got The Complete Jewish New Testament Commentary. These books were written by and for Messianic Jews. I started reading in earnest last night. It’s fantastic. I can’t recommend the OT/Hebrew Bible part so much, because it has no commentary book to go with it. But I’ve been reading Matthew (Mattityahu) with the commentary on the side, and it’s wonderful.

I’m inadvertently learning a lot about Hebrew. Before I got these books, it had occurred to me that Jews described Hebrew as if it were basically a giant collection of puns. And so far, these books bear out that suspicion, in spades. It’s no wonder the Jews go crazy interpreting the Bible. The layers of meaning in Hebrew scripture are worse than The Matrix.

I keep getting little bursts of illumination. For example, I figured out that the birth name of the singer Matisyahu is probably Matthew. The name Matthew is “Mattityahu” in the Bible I bought, and Jews in Israel tend to use “T” where American Jews use “S” (shabbos/shabbat), so Matisyahu is probably the same as Mattityahu. Am I right?

It’s very slow going. It took me about an hour to get through three or four chapters of Matthew.

Sometimes it’s annoying, because the guy who edited the Bible and commentary (Daniel H. Stern)corrects beliefs Christians accept without question. But that’s what I bought the book for, so I shouldn’t complain. Christians often have an unhealthy pride about their relationship with God, as if we were chosen to know all the answers, because we’re so much nicer than the Jews. But the reality is, Messianic Jews have a much better background for understanding the New Testament. We need to accept that and realize that when Christianity drifted away from its Jewish roots, we lost things only Jews can restore to us.

As Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein–not Messianic–likes to point out, prophecy says a time will come when ten gentiles will grab the hem of a Jew’s garment and ask to be taught about the Torah. Looks like that’s happening.

It’s amazing how often Stern confirms things I already suspected. For example, I think “the Kingdom of God” often refers to God’s dominion inside us. I assume God has been helping me along, providing me with insight.

For about 20 years, I’ve suspected that Zerubbabel, in the book of Zechariah, was a type of the Holy Spirit. I wish I knew what Stern thinks about him. And sometimes I wonder if the Third Temple will be a physical building. It’s clear that Jesus expected his followers to be a living temple. And Paul used the word “temple” to describe the human body. I think that when Jesus drove the money-changers out of the Second Temple, it symbolized the Holy Spirit driving counterproductive earthly motivations out of believers.

I also got a copy of Corrie ten Boom’s Tramp for the Lord. It takes up where The Hiding Place left off. She was supposed to be killed in a concentration camp, but the Germans released her by mistake, and she went on to become a traveling evangelist. A “missionary to America.” Is that a humbling phrase, or what?

Wonderful book. Too short.

The more good stuff you expose yourself to, the easier it is to be a Christian, and the more peace you have. Something to think about the next time you buy a book or turn on the TV or listen to music. This lesson has been helpful to me.

Let me know what you think.

Let’s Man Up

Ted Kennedy has been rushed to the hospital. Let’s all be mature and pray he recovers.

Die Revelation

I just realized something horrible.

I thought I was getting a deal when I ordered my .38 caliber Hornady dies. Because they can be used for .357, 9mm, and .38 Super. But today while I was considering cranking out some .38 rounds, I realized: every caliber is going to have a different length. So I can’t fix the dies up and then remove them from the press and have them ready in a box the next time I reload. I’ll have to adjust them every time I change caliber.

OR

I’ll have to buy two new sets.

Damn it.