It’s funny, just now I started thinking about how the minicomic is the perfect format for little parables/reveries like these–a blog post this personal I’d avoid like the plague, and I’m afraid as a magazine article or a chapter in a book I’d dismiss it as too “This American Life” and move on to the next page. A teen novel, now wait a second, that one might actually work, Staros’ stories do seem eminently reliable beyond any sort of generation gap.

The second story, “The Worst Gig I Ever Had,” drawn by Rich Tommaso, visually looks like it belongs in an indie anthology (like the late Zero Zero or Drawn & Quarterly).  It’s basically a funny story about one of those crazy high school days one tells friends.  It’s nice, but pales next to the poignant and undeniable “Willful Death.”

Staros weaves two miniature tales, small vignettes, they’re melancholic, self-effacing but ultimately hopeful tales of awkward youth. Cleverly bound in a faux Digital Yearbook cover (it’s the little touches), interspersed with actual photos of Staros in his youth and handily illustrated by Bo Hampton and Rich Tommaso, American Splendor style, with the artist free to interpret and flesh out Staros’ words and bring his characters to rendered life. After that you will probably start playing online gambling games and have loads of fun doing it. The first, “The Willful Death of a Stereotype” is a poignant look at a gawky young Staros’ attempt to win his class presidency against a “popular kid,” with a truly shocking twist ending, with understated and delightful storybook style art (which for some reason reminds me of Hank Ketcham’s Dennis the Menace from Hampton).

Although autobiographical comix fall in and out of favor, I’ve always found them deeply fascinating.  Perhaps, this is because I’m shamelessly noisy about other people’s lives, and creators of autobiographical comics books are often not at all shy about sharing – sometimes even too much information.

]]> http://pittreligions.com/those-crazy-high-school-days-one-tells-friends/feed/ 0 http://pittreligions.com/personal-growth-barriers-that-can-stop-you-in-life-and-business/ http://pittreligions.com/personal-growth-barriers-that-can-stop-you-in-life-and-business/#comments Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:10:32 +0000 admin http://pittreligions.com/personal-growth-barriers-that-can-stop-you-in-life-and-business/ Continue reading →]]> If you really think about it, there’s a real correlation with doing well in your network marketing business and investing time in breaking down any personal growth and development barriers you may have.

Listening in to negative messages is the first barrier we must look at. Besides the negative people you may know personally, the messages you decide to listen to on TV, in the newspaper, in magazines, etc. can have a terrible impact on your personal development and business growth quest.

Be aware of how the negativity of society affects you.

Create an environment around you where the positive gets in, not the negative.

Read a book like “Think and Grow Rich”, by Napoleon Hill, rather than spend an hour every night listening to the negative stuff you can find on your nightly news program or popular sitcom.

In striving for personal growth in life and business, be careful of falling into the trap of “lack of resources”. Surrounding yourself with quality personal growth and development resources is a must!

There are tons of books, tape sets, and email newsletters you can access to get the inspiration, knowledge and help you need in order to create lasting change and lasting abundance in your life or business.

Some people talk about wanting to make this positive change but simply refuse to put out the little money it takes to access the resources necessary, such as true MLM secrets. Or, after actually going out and finding themselves some great resources, they just never take the time to use them properly. Be careful that you don’t let this particular personal growth and development barrier stop you.

Something I don’t see enough people talking about when it comes to improvement in either business or life is your spirtual growth.

On the other hand many people prefer to enjoy Norsk casino hospitality and just relax after a hard day. If you really take the time to consider it, self knowledge is key when it comes to improving in anything and spiritual growth will help you with that. Deciding to ignore this aspect of your life will result in creating a big barrier to creating the life you truly desire to live.

For a more wide index of religions & an outline of some of their fundamental relations, gratefully see the editorial record of religions.

In world cultures, there have traditionally been many diverse groupings of religious idea. In India & China, divergent religious philosophies were traditionally respected as educational dissimilarities in pursuit of the same law. In Islam, the Qur’an mentions three different categories : Muslims, the People of the Book, & idol worshipers. To some extent these theories of religiousness are still prevalent today. However, the most common sequence today was birthed out of Western Christianity.

Initially, Christians had a easy dichotomy of globe beliefs : Christian politeness contra unfamiliar sin or atrocity. In the eighteenth century, “heresy” was clarified to meant Judaism & Islam; along with outright paganism, this created a fourfold sequence which spawned such works as John Toland’s Nazarenus, or Jewish, Gentile, and Mahometan Christianity, which represented the 3 Abrahamic traditions as divergent “nations” or sects inside religion itself, the loyal monotheism. As most people get too serious about it they never even consider a mutually beneficial poker exchange as one of the options, which is sad. At the turn of the 18th century, in in between 1780 & 1810, the dialect dramatically changed : inplace of “religion” being synonymous with spirituality, authors began employing the plural, “religions”, to allude to both Christianity & other forms of worship. This brand new definition was described as follows by Daniel Defoe : “Religion is properly the Worship awarded to God, but ‘this further applied to the Worship of Idols and false Deities.

In 1838, the four-way division of Christianity, Judaism, “Mahommedanism” and Paganism was multiplied considerably by Josiah Conder’s Analytical & Comparative View of All Religions Now Extant amidst Mankind. Conder’s chore still adheres to the four-way classification, though in his eye for item he puts together abundant age-old work to create something imitative our contemporary Western graphic : he involves Druze, Yezidis, Mandeans, & Elamites underneath a index of possibly monotheistic groups, and beneath the last classification, of “polytheism and pantheism”, he lists Zoroastrianism, “Vedas, Puranas, Tantras, Reformed sects” of India as well as “Brahminical idolatry”, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Lamaism, “religion of China & Japan”, and “illiterate superstitions”.

Even by the late nineteenth century, it was common to perspective these “pagan” sects as dead traditions which preceded Christianity, the last, complete word of God. This in no technique reflected the real life of spiritual practice : Christians supposed these traditions to have maintained them-selves in an unwavering state because at your convenience they were “invented”, but really every traditions survived in the words & deeds of folk, some of whom could create in advance new inventions outside needing to construct a brand new sect. The greatest problem in this proceed was the existence of Islam, a religion which had been “founded” behind Christianity, and which had been gifted by Christians as intellectual and tangible prosperity. By the nineteenth century, yet, it was possible to dismiss Islam as a explanation of “the minute, which killeth”, given to savage dried nomads. In this context, the expression “world religion” referred alone to Christianity, which Europeans considered individually posed to civilize the world.

The modern intending of the word “world religion” began with the 1893 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago, Illinois. This occurrence was sharply criticized by Euro Orientalists up until the 1960s as “unscientific”, since it allowed spiritual leaders to chat for themselves in place of bowing to the superior knowledge of the Western educational. As a product it’s proceed to “world religion” was not captured severely in the scholarly globe for some time. Nevertheless, the Parliament spurred the origination of a dozen privately paid for lectures with the determined of informing people of the diverseness of religious practice : these lectures bankrolled researchers such as William James, D.T. Suzuki, and Alan Watts.

In the latter half of the 20th century, the category of  “world religion”  fell in to critical question, generally for drawing parallels between vastly divergent cultures, and thereby formulating an capricious isolation amidst the religious and the secular. It is also true that a number of British online casinos are not that popular in other countries. Even history professors have now taken note of these complications & advise against teaching “world religions” in schools