10 Shots Down

It's the day after Christmas and I'm driving with my father, two uncles and two cousins to Bulls Eye Range LLC. Bulls Eye Range houses itself in a squat white building in the heart of downtown St. Louis. If not for the banner labeling it as such, I would have guessed the building vacant. The parking is a sandwiched section of asphalt, lunging out of the acute angle between the building itself and the road it sits on. Parking required hopping a curb. The entrance continues the unassuming blandness of a vacant building. The door opens into a surgically white waiting room, itself a staging area towards two more doors. One is marked employees only, and the the other opens into the elbow joint of a hallway. A camera sits perked at eye level, a lifeless and banal "What's up?" that violates any practical retail business model. But we're not here for the merch. We're here to shoot.

The hallway opens up into the store itself, and the first thing I see is a man holding up a pistol behind the counter, rag in hand, wiping away at what every Hollywood movie has told me is a silencer. I dispose of potential conflicts of legality by passing it off as a fake. Only later would I come to find that silencers have actually been legalized in Missouri, as an NRA study reports that no crime has ever been committed with a legally registered firearm mounted with a legally registered silencer (though I can't help but wondering, if they've always been illegal, how evidence could construe that one has or hasn't ever been indicted in any crime as a legally registered silencer as, well, they've always been illegal. Not to mention, if Hollywood movies are to be believed, the men who should be found guilty in a crime involving a silencer, legally registered or otherwise, usually have connections that would alleviate any chance of conviction; i.e. they're mobsters)*.

The store strikes my as remarkably similar to a rural country store, except it's stocked exclusively with firearm paraphernalia. It's walls are a lined with that fake plastic paneling which could be warm and cozy from 20+ feet but, as retail spaces are almost always more cramped than that, just looks cheap. The products all seem to have been packaged in some other decade. The guns themselves are mounted in three long, glass display cases, mounted side by side like the profile of a stair step, to allow for a work area at which the guy with silencer il diligetnly wiping away at his silencer. Overall the store feels grungy yet robust, and I get the odd sensation that I'm actually in the presence of real arms dealers.

My history with guns hasn't extended much beyond videogames. In Boyscouts I attended the 'shooting camp out' once and fired a .22 rifle at a milk jug and a couple of shotguns at clay pigeons. However, I've never fired a handgun. My uncles and cousins on the other hand, fire them regularly, and brought several with them to family vacation for this very purpose**. They are housed in industrial strength casings or portable safes. The largest looks as though it could house something much more sinister than handguns. Something on the line of bazooka or missile guidance system.

As I continue to take stock of the guy with the silencer behind the counter***, my uncles head right to the range director to get us signed in. The range director sits casually on a stool and asks how many of us have shot before. Outside of this building, I would have no problem admitting this fact, but in here, not just in front of this range director, but now a line of three other people, all with there cases and their clear intention to shoot, I kind of meekly raise my hand. Because of this, my uncle is required to coach me, staying with me in lane as I shoot, and takes full responsibility should I damage anything or anybody. I feel like my uncle didn't hesitate enough in his consent. Behind the Range Director a penisula juts into the range itself, each side panelled with thick windows.

--tobecont.--

*Further evidence reveals that it is state law that determines the legality of silencers. At a federal level, they are permitted but purhase includes a $200.00 tax. And they don't require a license either.

**You can actually check firearms on a plane, which, considering the raised security since 9/11 seems insane. It requires some paperwork and for a complete examination by TSA agents, but firearms and ammo can find there place in the hull next to all the generally unremarkable luggage (by comparison).

*** Later I'll swing a bit further down the display cases and see that he doesn't have just one, but two pistols mounted with silencers. The guys seems jovial and interactive enough, and the cilentelle don't really consider it odd as he lifts both of them, Rambo style, barrels to cieling, and continues to talk to one of the customers. I find this mildly terrifying, especially as this seemingly jovial and interactive salesperson is wearing a baseball cap embroidered with that dangerously reductive word infidel.

I love the way you dot your j's

At work the other day I sold a man a gift certificate for $20.00. Normal, except he had me write his daughter's name after the "For:" and Mom and Dad after the "From:." He based my handwriting's merit on the gift log entry I filled out in front of him. I don't have good handwriting. It's not even decent. My grip starts classically enough, index finger pressed firmly against the pen, fingerprint an inch up from the tip. Except instead of pinching the pen with my thumb, I tuck it up and under the arch of the index finger. My writing fulcrum moves from this traditional pinch to the soft fleshy apex where the two fingers meet two inches further up the implement. My whole fist pivots and swirls as I write, and it results in a sloppy scratch of scrawl that most find unintelligible.

Thus, I'm finding it tough to understand why he enjoyed my handwriting sufficiently enough to label a gift for his daughter. This man seemed astute enough, a sharp suit and flashy ivory rounded glasses, that I can't deny the possibility he's a calligraphy enthusiast. But possibility aside, that's just not probable. More nefarious rationale don't deserve this blog's attention.

There's a field of study that legitimately analyzes handwriting. It's called Graphology, and I'll only give it cred where it is used medically to track disease progression. It also, and this is alleged, is an apt tool in determining employability, fitness as a juror, and even marital compatibility. I have no idea what my handwriting says about me, except that I address a mean gift card. Three cheers to ambiguous scrawls.

May I recommend the Gabfest? (Or, Thoughts on Gaming pt. 1)

This pertains to this: http://www.slate.com/id/2236985/.

Slate's culture gabfest is a summation of week by week cultural movements and trends, dealt with by people armed with brains. It's Lady Gaga tunes crossing paths with reverent PHD's.

Okay. 3rd segment this week concerned gaming as 'art.' Their conclusion maintained the status quo on the discussion of late, that it's an 'open' question. It's a juvenile entertainment media, not just in content, but in actual age. Atari and the early nintendo systems were as much about computing polygonal movement as they were about entertainment. Let alone slip in the notion of these early games as 'art.' From there it's been developed by fringe rogues; gaming gurus are mostly rebirthed dungeon dwellers. Add to this mix that, as an entertainment medium, the dollar drives development and leaves little room for the industry to flex its artistic muscles. The gaming industy though, is gaining legitimacy through numbers. People are gaming. A lot.

I am one such gamer (though at current I'm attempting to become a rehabilitated gamer). The question of gaming as art isn't really pertinent to me except through the confines of art as worth. Is experiencing art worthwhile? Though semantics could wrangle this sentence to death (e.g. what is art? is it high art? if art doesn't touch everyone can it be meaningful? etc.), I think a general consensus is that yes, most encounters with art are meant to be worthwhile: valuable not as ego-centric currency to cash in as flourishes in any beleaguered conversation, but as engagements meant to push previous boundaries and encourage some form of growth.

So, a real question for the merit of video games becomes, are they worthwhile? At the fundamental level of 'game,' they must be, as they provide ample distraction through a fictional set of rules and logic that one must then adhere to and master in order to solve. But for most video games this trait is provided solely through the inherent nature of a video game as a 'game,' rather than developer intent. Most games seem to be about entertainment and distraction. Providers of fun. Worthy of are attentions perhaps, but still ambiguous on the question of worth itself.

The train of my current logic seems to indicate that, in their current state, video games have not provided much worth as an art. I've invested too much time into them to really let that conclusion stand uncontested. For one, their worth can be traced in other, secondary ways. Worth as a social and interactive medium, for example. For another, I have hope that their legitimacy will allow them to push into the 'art' realm further. Even if I'm not playing them.

BNAV 2010

Picked up the Best New American Voices 2010 today from the Raven. The initial step in had been for a holiday card*. BNAV 2010 centered itself on the new releases shelf. It coaxed, buy me and measure up. Contributing editors I recognized, but not the lead. Purchased on the merit of these lines: "Stephen went to the woods instead of math class. His algebra book was still under the backseat of the school bus, or under his bed, or maybe even somewhere in the woods, swollen and muddy from last week's rain. Losing the textbook had meant weeks of calling out answers with squared Ys to problems that had no Ys, which equaled weeks of the math teacher yanking him into the hallway and yelling at him." Solid lines from "Horusville" by Christian Moody. I would assume this isn't the same Christian Moody who was part of KU's national basketball championship, but if it is, and he's still here in Lawrence, I should hunt him out.

A work day later I pick the book back up and Lawrence comes full circle, as the intro cites a story titled, The Burning of Lawrence. Allegedly it follows the fictitious examinations of a KU grad student on said sacking of Lawrence. We'll see. If it measures up to blog standards, I'll let you know.

*(my choice: 'Birthday Greetings' scrawled over an idling canoe. Paddles strut to the sides as the lounging captain cocks arms behind his head. Legs splayed forward open to inked lines of current. The captain smokes a pipe and wears a sombrero. Sharpie will nix birthday and stencil in 'Holiday;' a red felt pen will convert sombrero to Santa cap. Santa's probably dreaming of such a lazy river ride anyway right now.)

Getting Started

David Foster Wallace is keeping me up now. I ran into him via Imad, a creative writing prof who could drop writers with rolodex precision in any situation. Need some help on theme, here's X. Character? Check out this story by Y. However, if story needed, or was like X, and X=brilliance, he'd reference David Foster Wallace. He kept popping up, moving in between the ears, until I finally picked up Consider the Lobster. The first essay, "Big Red Son" begins, "The American Academy of Emergency Medicine Confirms it: Each year, between one and two dozen adult US males are admitted to ERs after having castrated themselves." 10 pages later I put it down. The first DFW prose I'd read covered the annual Adult Video News awards. Porn prizes. An author to be taken seriously?

DFW's untimely demise was the ignition switch that had me pick this book back up. Death by his own hand. For a few months the literary media scape trickled out bits of obit / memoir. And I picked back up the Lobster. I've only read DFW's nonfiction completely (Consider the Lobster, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again). His fiction I've touched (Girl with Curious Hair, the beginning of his first novel: Broom in the system) but never completed. It's experimental, zany, a bit odds n' sodds like Pynchon. For DFW writing seemed to be cathartic, a way to answer the problems he was facing. And his fiction couldn't do it. Or more accurately, his writing couldn't do it. For him at least. But his nonfiction forced his scope away from himself and onto the world, and the impressions he leaves are staggering. Brilliant. But dead.

Read:
Kenyon College Graduation Speech:
http://goaheadsueme.blogspot.com/2005/05/david-foster-wallace-at-kenyon-college.html