Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who is nothing if not capable of punching a man-card.
1.
Darwin reminded me I needed to write a Glock post. No blog is complete until you’ve done that. And look what I brought home from the library the other month, when I needed something completely different to get my mind off life for the weekend:
The boy took one look, and asked, “Why would Barrett write a book about Glocks??” He recognized the name of the CEO of a competitor, because um, because he did. Y chromosome on that child, confirmed.
I pointed him to the inside back cover. “I think it’s a different Barrett.” It is.
2.
Anyway, I enjoyed the book even more than I’d expected. Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun tells the story of Glock Inc. from the time Mr. Glock decided to try his hand at designing the weapon, through it’s rise as a market leader in the US, and into the human resources nightmare that ensued when radical success met original sin. Well told — Paul Barrett is a great story teller, and he explains the technical bits with the detail you need in order to understand the story, but without losing the non-technical audience.
As a business book, it is top-notch. Great look at the talent and plain old good fortune that made the company so successful — including some surprising twists in the gun control movement that helped spur sales and raise margins. Ideologically, Barrett is pretty firmly in the middle of the road on gun topics, and he keeps his politics out of all but a few annoying paragraphs of opinion* near the conclusion — you can just skim and move on.
Language caution: Don’t let the Amazon preview fool you, Barrett’s sources get quoted saying all kinds of words not allowed around my house. It isn’t overdone and I did not find it bothersome as an adult reader, but it’s not a g-rated book by a long shot.
As a morality tale, Glock is a brilliant study in human weakness, and the way that vice unchecked leads to perdition**. Barrett is Mr. Neutral through all of this — neither disturbed nor impressed by Glock’s sales tactics, other than to observe that they worked and they were legal. Turns out men are fairly predictable in certain realms.
–> For this reason, the book makes a great parent-teen book study . . . but only once your boy is already aware of the various perils men need negotiate. I held off on letting Mr. Boy read the book just yet.
3.
Why is it that it only takes 2 seconds to accidentally upload a profile pic on Twitter that, taken out of context, will totally horrify 98% of the people who have often suspected as much . . . but it takes about an hour to get Twitter to accept some innocuous substitute hiding in the same file folder? I suspect a plot to trap the careless.
3.5
Speaking of talented Catholic young men who like guns abridged anime – if you share the same interest, check out this guy: Mattroks 101’s You Tube channel. And with that you know more than I do, for I am utterly out of my depth on all things anime, except maybe you are wondering how I ended up linking such a thing . . .
***
PS: Link day. Help yourself if you are so inclined. Post as many as you want, but only one per comment or the spam dragon will eat you up and I’ll never even know.
*It is possible that if you read here, you secretly enjoy reading annoying opinions. Good for you. There’s three or four paragraphs you’ll just love.
**Not just eternal souls, though of course those are not to be neglected. But also small things teens can appreciate, like your colleagues trying to kill you, stuff like that.
“Why would Barrett write a book about Glocks?” Wow. I am impressed.
I read a review of this in the WSJ last month IIRC; thanks for this review, I may check it out of the bib. I recently read this:
http://www.amazon.com/Ak-47-Story-Gun-Michael-Hodges/dp/1596922869/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335275121&sr=1-10
so the Glock book would make sense. OTOH, I could just give you a list of books I’d like to read and you could read them instead & write a long & substantial review.
Yeah, he’s maybe just a tiny bit obsessed?
Oh that does look interesting. Maybe we could work out an arrangement where I send you the crib notes on the gun books, and you keep my philosophy straight for me.
Okay and this is my new angle: I go to these workshops where they tell catechists they have to watch Glee and High School Musical and learn how to text so they can be in tune with their students. I’m not holy enough to pull off that much penance. But maybe I can be the person who tells catechists they have to read gun books so they can be in tune with their testosterone-laden, detail-obsessed future-soldiers-of-america students.
No, never mind, that might not get me many repeat speaking invitations.*
[*Bystanders: I am JOKING. JOKING.]
Glee and HSM? I say WHAT?
“I go to these workshops where they tell catechists they have to watch Glee and High School Musical and learn how to text so they can be in tune with their students.”
Good God that’s more scary than any of Dante’s circles in Hell.
Here’s me venting yesterday:
“I go to those things & sit & think how do they expect that to be of any use in a classroom? I already know about being Catholic [or texting]; what I want is info on catechizing. There is a difference. When catechesis workshop speakers say I need a good prayer life or something, I assume they don’t know anything about catechizing & are stealing my time and money. I may as well be in a winter driving class where the speaker says I need to change my oil every 3k miles & check my transmission fluid. Am I pontificating?”
I think you’re ready for the speaking circuit. My DRE is thrilled that she works in a parish where all the catechists attend mass. I kid you not. Words of gratefulness candidly spoken. [She has lived all over the US, so she’s not describing DOC parishes, FYI.] So yeah, it’s that bad.
And in fairness: Some of the youth leaders do a good work by relationship-based ministry. I’m not knocking it. I do the same, I just do it with boys who want to know about the rules of combat, stuff like that.
Jen – you need to link back!
And please tell Karina that I’m still reading her book – I’m getting through it, it’s just I’m not sticking to The Plan as well as I should.
Oh nuts – right. I scheduled this last week and was buried in being a responsible person all weekend. (By “weekend” meaning, “through today”.) Okay I’ll go link.
And I won’t tell you who did it, either.:-).
Im still trying to get over you being told to watch Glee & HSM for a catechist “teaching point.” Yes Glee covered an episode on lots of topics that are hot today and texting while driving was one that whole show is will a bad taste in your brain Jen.. don’t be tempted. Im willing to admit that I liked season 1 and some of 2 for its braveness in tackling taboo and hot current topics… but after that it just fell off my radar completely and utterly. I have no respect for the show at all.
Instead, and in honor of link day, tell those people to watch this so they can be better in tune with what’s really going on with texting.
http://youtu.be/91gVlAxoL7E
Every generation has it’s “thing” and learning more about it from the latest TV craze is wrong, just wrong ….
and I found another link..it is longer..but putting it in another combox so the spam dragon doesnt try to eat me 🙂
It was a few years ago, so those particular shows are not the point (other than the searing memory of the horror of it all — trust me Sandra, no risk I’m gonna start watching HSM.). And it wasn’t so much in order to know what the kids themselves are up to, as to be coming to the youth group familar with the cultural references and how the kids are likely to see the world . . .
I think a useful takeaway is that catechists (and grown-ups) should care about what kids are thinking, and have some respect for their experiences, and want to take an interest in the students and what it is that interests them, and more to the point, appreciate that the kids are immersed in a different culture than the adult.
My FIL has us addicted to Monk now. So, um, that’s where I am in TV land. About 2004.
I tried getting into Monk… just some shows don’t catch me right away. My current TV obsessions are Black Adder (I blame Delia) so I can beat your 2004! Otherwise current shows Im hooked on The Voice (so much better than American Idol ever was), Once Upon a Time (really neat modern meets fantasy rewrite to the Snow White story with all the fairy tales sliced into it), PanAm, Community (love this show, better place to start than Glee but is for young adult crowd vs teen theme), Bob’s Burgers, Suburgatory, Modern Family and but not least GCB: Good Christian Belles (although the book it is based is titled slightly different… this show is absolutely hilarious) most of these are available to watch on Hulu or Netflix BTW.
It helps if you live with some people who, say, walk down a flight of stairs and tell you how many steps there were.
I watched Community at Julie D’s recommendation — yeah, that’s good. Oh and Portlandia. Okay next time I need to goof off I’ll look at some of the others on your list. Delia’s good for TV ideas.
See where gun talk leads? To TV. If this keeps up, there’s no telling where I’ll end. Goodness.
LOL gun talk + TV shows makes me think of The Walking Dead… but I don’t think you are into post-apocalyptic zombie themes. But whether or not guns are a good idea to have at your side is often visited in different scenarios and executed well (no pun intended). And not just the “it’s easier to kill zombies with a gun” approach but other aspects that can be gut wrenching ethically.
Yeah, I only do zombies under special circumstances.
That’s pretty funny. Love the ending.
This one is neat… but focuses on social media in general… it is also a 4 part series… should be able to click the next parts in the right hand column. (Mouse over the link title so you can see the full title containing what part number it is)
http://youtu.be/Vc0Kc873Vqw
That’s a good series. Helpful ideas in there. Cool – thanks!
You thought I was done, huh? Nope… here is my final link although it was something completely off topic. But it is funny and everyone likes the silly things that make life funnier.
http://laughingsquid.com/airplane-lavatory-self-portraits-in-the-flemish-style/
Those are awesome. Wow. Quite the technical study, really.
I almost see it as a challenge if I have a flight to Korea this fall… but Im not sure my creativity wants to go there… but then again it might.
Byzantine. We want Lavatory Byzantine. And Lavatory Mongolian.