Ironhold

manga = Japanese comics. manhua = (South) Korean comics. In Japan, manga is an all-audiences deal. You can find everything from happy little kid-friendly titles to hardcore porn. Generally speaking, manga is serialized through various weekly or monthly publications. One famous title was the long-running Comic Bom Bom, which ran from 1981 - 2007 and included manga based on such properties as "Transformers" and "Mega Man"; sister publication TV Magazine also included "Transformers" manga. If a series is popular enough, then the individual chapters will be collected into paperback books and printed in volumes. On occasion, however, you'll see a manga title that goes straight to collected volumes. It's common for manga to be part of a larger multi-media franchise. In some instances, the manga is an adaptation of a previous work, such as a novel series, a video game, or a television show. In other instances, the manga is the original source and the other media (television shows, video games, movies, et cetra) are adapted off of it. It's common for manga artists to get their start doing doujinshi, small print-run comics that can be anything from "promising but unfinished original work" to "shamelessly unauthorized material depicting characters from another person's property" (Japan's intellectual property laws are so lax that a person can literally make and sell comic books and movies that use someone else's IP). Care should be taken to distinguish doujinshi from officially-sanctioned work, however, especially since much of the former is "adult-oriented" and so unwary individuals mistakenly picking up doujin instead of manga can easily find themselves in for a rude awakening. Famed mangaka Yasuhiro Nightow was reportedly so horrified to discover that a store was selling adult doujin based on his "Trigun" franchise right next to his own official material that he threatened to have his publisher halt shipments of new product to any retailer who didn't keep the two separate.

I'm actually a movie reviewer for a local newspaper, and so I do one movie a week 51 weeks a year.* It may sound like a fun deal, but then you have to remember that for every "Frozen" I get to see I'm also stuck watching a "Bad Grandpa". Last week's film was "No Escape", and this week's film will be "The Transporter: Refueled". *The local theater I go to is part of a larger chain. Corporate policy is that no matter how many new movies come out the first weekend in December, they don't screen so that the Thanksgiving releases can get another weekend to themselves.

http://northtexasmormon.org/ This is a website maintained by the stake public affairs representatives for the Dallas, Texas stake. It's purpose is to archive news pieces (et al) published by newspapers in North and Central Texas that discuss the church, with a primary emphasis on items written by actual members. (disclaimer: a few of my pieces are up there as well.)

The first big hurdle I kept running into was the whole "I'll only date a returned missionary!" mentality. My maternal grandmother had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and so I stayed back home to help my mom take care of her. Rather than ask why I didn't go, however, a lot of people - including some of the local priesthood brethren - simply turned their backs on me. I did eventually find someone around 2005, but I did something stupid and caused a rift in the relationship that never healed. I spent the next two years trying again, but this came to a halt when I was laid off in the fall of 2007. Given that I was in college at the time, this was a severe blow to my finances. Whatever money I made from temp jobs and day labor wound up going for tuition; I simply couldn't afford the local dating scene. I eventually found a job at the end of 2008, but by then my finances were so devastated that I still couldn't afford anything. I finally got my finances back in shape around 2012, just in time for a massive mistake on the part of the grad school I was attending; because of this mistake, I spent an entire calendar year without any sort of financial aid. This broke my finances back into pieces, meaning that I couldn't afford to go anywhere; $20 was a big splurge back then. Well, I made it through graduate school, and I finally started getting my finances back in shape... only for the federal insurance mandate to hit. Even though I'm only carrying a "bronze" plan, my premiums are still the size of a car payment. Between this and all of my other bills, my entire "entertainment" budget each month is a mere $50; that's dinner for two at any place nice.

How exactly do you define "clean"? Do you mean "No violence / nudity / cursing / et cetra whatsoever", or "The less, the better"? I ask this because it's something we'd need to know in order to better tailor our recommendations, especially since manga often have completely different tones from their accompanying anime series. For example, the second "Yu-Gi-Oh" anime, as presented by 4Kids!, was an all-ages-friendly action / fantasy series that covered the second half of the manga series (plus a full season and a half of filler). Said manga, however, was anything but all-ages. I only got as far as the 6th volume before the recession forced me to scale back on non-essential spending, but even then things were already pretty heavy. The main characters aren't even close to being as innocent as the anime portrays them, and in fact they are even forced into killing several villains in self-defense (such as when a wanted serial killer comes after Joey or an escaped inmate takes Tea hostage). Mind you, this is before we include the people who Yami kills and maims simply because he's a psychopath and they've wronged Yugi or his friends in some fashion. A person who expected the manga to be as "tame" as the anime would thus be quite shocked by what they saw.

I'm making my way through the original "Diamonds Are Forever" Bond novel.

I was the finance clerk for the YSA branch I was in. If you're having financial difficulties, then speak with the bishop / branch president over your congregation. This alone should answer any questions about how you stand.

If you have people at work who are causing problems, then keep a logbook of what and when. If things get bad enough, this logbook can potentially be presented as evidence to management / HR / whoever.

Another thing about the military - The town I live in supports a major Army base. Because of this, it's common for members to come and go. This is because the Army can sometimes order service members to deploy with as little as a few hours' notice if it's an emergency situation, leaving them with little time to notify their church leaders that they'll be gone for a while. What's more, during long-term deployments its common for the immediate family of service members (spouse, children, et cetra) to temporarily relocate closer to extended family so that they have a bigger support network. Because of this, it's become a big issue trying to figure out who's gone inactive and who's just simply gone.

I know the feeling. My maternal grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's during my senior year of high school. Even with our putting her in a nursing home, she still needed additional care. Problem was, my brothers had already left home and my dad was busy with a project at work. After thinking long and hard about it, I made the decision that it would be best if I stayed local so that I could give my mom that much more help. Not only did I help her take care of grandma, I also helped when it came to the chores at home. Not only did I give up going on a mission, I also gave up an offer to Rutger's; I wound up going to a local community college before transferring to another local school. Words can't describe all the grief I've gotten from people because I never went on a mission; all they care about is that I didn't go, not why I didn't go. It's also permanently hurt my chances of getting married, as a lot of the local single women are fixated on the whole "I'll only date a returned missionary" mindset.

It's not about how many times you go down. It's about how many times you get back up.

Don't forget the fact that sometimes we can be called upon to show off our gifts in a way that we might not ever expect. I've been trying to get on some place as a professional writer. I actually placed in a writing contest all the way back in the 10th grade, and just about everyone says I have a gift for the literary arts. Sounds like I should be making my $$$ in doing lit, right? That's not actually how it happened. I got a job delivering newspapers to pay for college, first my undergrad work and then - due to the recession - grad school. Well, about two years ago the company that owns my specific newspaper decides to bring in a new publishing editor. The new guy's very first project is to bring all of us employees into his office one-by-one and talk to us in person. During my meeting with him, he asks if I have any ideas for how we can improve the newspaper. I point out that a sister newspaper has a movie reviewer, and raise the prospect of our picking up his reviews as well. The new guy responds by handing me a stack of movie passes. Congratulations, I'm now our paper's official movie reviewer. I've got 600 words each week to say my peace. Since then, I've had people come up to me in public - including workers at the local theater - to ask me my opinion of each and every film I see. They know that since I'm not beholden to the studio system, I'm going to be as frank and honest with every movie as I can be. This includes a number of individuals whose primary concern is whether or not there's anything out which they can show their kids or grandchildren. What's more, I've also learned that it is a rare thing to have an openly-religious movie reviewer working for a secular publication, something that helps me stand out that much more. And oh by the way, since I'm a regular part of the paper's writing pool, I was given the option of doing my own weekly edutainment column... wherein I'm allowed to write one church-related installment a quarter. And I'm on as a stringer now, too, meaning that I've done several pieces on the local LDS congregations. All because I accepted an offer I didn't anticipate ever getting.