I had a dream last night/this morning, from which I awakened. It’s behind the cut.
It had a lot of things in it. Two of the most memorable — an entire company of female exotic dancers with bunny ears, and an arsenal of Beretta Xtrema2 recoilless shotguns.
My job was keeping the shotgun-toting dancers supplied with skeet. Their job was to get instructed on how to use the weapons, which, because they’re recoilless, were perfect shotguns for lightweight ladies. (Note: the Beretta Xtrema2 is a real weapon, which I’ve researched a little bit since someone mentioned it to me a week or so ago. Here’s video)
So… what does it mean when my only covetous desire during the dream was to get to shoot one of those weapons?
I’d like to think it means I’m sexually satisfied, but really want a new shotgun. I suspect any freudian analysis will feature the weapons as phallic symbols, and proceed rapidly downhill from there.
I prefer Jung’s take on the matter – “. . . it is plain foolishness to believe in ready-made systematic guides to dream intepretation . . .”
Since, I’ve ventured a reply, I’ll go ahead and give my thoughts on your dream. You really want that shotgun. You see it as a beautiful, sexy and exotic object in it’s own right. It has nothing to do with sex or your sex life – only the drooling most guys do over a weapon of power and style. And like most guys, your dreams have a higher sexual content than a woman’s would.
Nothing unusual.
Anyway, more thoughts from Jung’s Man and His Symbols on dreams for your consideration:
1) “The two fundamental points in dealing with dreams are these: First, the dream should be treated as a fact, about which one must make no previous assumption except that it somehow makes sense; and second, the dream is a specific expression of the unconscious.”
2) “The general function of dreams is to try and resolve our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium.”
3) “No dream symbol can be separated from the individual who dreams it, and there is no definite or straightforward intepretation of any dream.”
Not my dreams!
There are exceptions to everything. According to my psych prof, some women have male brains.
That would explain certain things about my life… and raise other questions!
Who said women’s dreams didn’t have as much sexual content as men’s? I expect it’s much the same. Different symbols used, maybe. But I suspect that often when anyone dreams of something that seems sexual (like exotic dancers) it’s really a symbol for something else, whereas the actual sexual content of a dream is presented as something else, like (for me) flying.
I think Howard’s dream means he watched that video too many times, and he really wants that shotgun.
In other words, “oh crap, somebody’s found a counterexample to my men-more-sex-obsessed-than-women hypothesis; umm, umm, I know, pull a No True Scotsman fallacy! They’re not REALLY women!”
Psychiatrists seem to be some of the worst kinds of pseudo-intellectuals who are more interested in appearing right than actually being right.
No. In other words, there is physical evidence of this brain showing signs of a testosterone spike in its development.
You should perhaps try not to jump to conclusions so easily.
heheh – sometimes, a sword is just a sword.
Ah, but sometimes a gun has no recoil!
=)
Just to throw a few bits out….
The guns have no recoil. They don’t push you away or kick you.
You’re keeping the ladies supplied with things to shoot out of their guns.
The women had bunny ears… they were animalized in a way, but in a way that is nonthreatening or cute. Also, bunny = Playboy bunny.
Actually, I was supplying the skeet — the targets. Ammo was provided at the shooting stations.
Oh, and I think somebody else was actually throwing the skeet. I was just hauling boxes of the stuff. My involvement seemed to be “minimum-wage gofer at the shooting range.”
Well, I generally don’t believe in analyzing dreams too deeply, but I’d say that this means … that you want both bunnygirls and high-quality shotguns in your life.
…Hell, I’ll trade the bunnygirls for that shotgun. Man, that thing looks sweeeeeet!
I don’t mean to be a party-pooper, but calling the Xtrema 2 “recoilless” is not accurate.
It does have many features intended to reduce perceived recoil, but Newton’s Second Law still rules the day.
It’s clear from the trick-shooting video that the shotgun is recoiling back into the shooter’s shoulder with each shot.
This shotgun may be more comfortable to shoot for certain recoil-sensitive shooters, but it’s not ‘recoilless’.
In fact, the recoil acting upon certain portions of the skeet bunnies’ bodies would likely produce quite an aesthetically pleasing sequence of oscillations. 🙂
“Perceived recoil”?
Okay, now you’re just being silly. Recoil is ALREADY perception.
If the “equal and opposite reaction” is channeled into cycling the chamber in such a way that the barrel does not buck and the weapon does not kick, the weapon is “recoilless,” because the things that happen that we call “recoil” are not happening.
Newton is not being cheated. There’s still an equal and opposite reaction. Momentum is conserved.
That said, the weapon does still move a bit with each shot, but when the trick-shooter holds the weapon upside down over his head and fires, it becomes pretty clear that the Beretta is not kicking anything like a conventional 12-gauge semi-auto. It’s not just more comfortable to shoot — it’s a weapon you can easily keep on target after multiple rounds in short succession.
There is a large difference between energy of recoil and perceived recoil. I am not being silly. I did not make up the term “perceived recoil”.
Here’s a mind experiment: Take a regular double-barreled shotgun. Shoot it. Now slip a “recoil reducing” foam butt-pad onto it. Shoot it again with the same load. What changed?
The actual recoil energy? Or was that energy just spread over a longer time of impulse, resulting in less _perceived_recoil?_
Read more about recoil and perceived recoil here in Wikipedia’s article on ‘recoil’. Note: I am not an author or contributor to this article.
Many of the features of the Xtrema 2 are aimed at spreading out the recoil impulse over a longer period of time. This has the effect of causing the _perceived_recoil_ to be “soft” rather than “sharp.” The gun still recoils rearward.
It is true that semi-autos in general, and the Xtrema2 in particular recoil less than their cousins the pumps, otherwise similar in stock-configuration and operating system, except that the entire force of the charge leaves the barrel frontward when the pump- (“slide-action”) shotgun is fired, while the semi-auto’s gas system absorbs some of the energy (and reduces the shot velocity as well, by the way) in accelerating the piston and cycling the bolt against the main operating spring.
But most of those masses are accelerated rearwards during the operating cycle, and they compress mechanical or gas springs as they are decelerated to a stop. The net result is that the force which accelerated them rearward accelerates the gun rearwards as they stop and are pushed forward again by their springs.
Careful design allows this to happen smoothly, and paces the rearward forces of the firearm so that they occur over a longer period of time, reducing _perceived_recoil_ and making the gun more manageable, easier to return to target for following shots, and more pleasant to shoot than other shotguns without similar features.
But it still kicks. It just kicks less.
Look at this graphic from Beretta:
Through the magic of marketing, we see that, compared to “Brand E” at nine bars of recoil, the Xtrema2 scores a 5, or more than half of Brand E’s recoil. Half is not zero.
As to the tricks this professional trained shooter can do to promote this firearm, well, he makes it look easy. He should. He practices a very great deal, and gets paid rather well do promote the shotguns that he promotes.
The Xtrema2 may be a very fine shotgun, and I would like the chance to actually handle and shoot one. But I don’t expect it to have zero recoil, and I think it’s a bad idea to lead your readers to expect so either.
~Rick
I still prefer handguns.
Mmmmmm…
Shotguns…
It meens you were asleep.
Great, now I am gonna dream about shotguns and girls, or shooting bunnies with recoiless rifles, none of which are particularly new to me, but if at any time Lil Jon shows up and says “skeet skeet skeet”, I shall be very put out.
Just noticed your post in regarding caffeine in hot cocoa. Though it noted that caffeine is present in prepared cocoa, caffeine does not naturally occur in chocolate. The only chemical is theobromine, a close relative of caffeine. If you make cocoa on your own from cocoa powder, milk, and sugar, there is no caffeine.