Im Perfect Youre Doomed

I'm Perfect, You're Doomed is the story of Kyria Abrahams's coming-of-age as a Jehovah's Witness -- a doorbell-ringing "Pioneer of the Lord." Her childhood was haunted by the knowledge that her neighbors and schoolmates were doomed to die in an imminent fiery apocalypse; that Smurfs were evil; that just about anything you could buy at a yard sale was infested by demons; and that Ouija boards -- even if they were manufactured by Parker Brothers -- were portals to hell. Never mind how popular you are when you hand out the Watchtower instead of candy at Halloween. When Abrahams turned eighteen, things got even stranger. That's when she found herself married to a man she didn't love, with adultery her only way out. "Disfellowshipped" and exiled from the only world she'd ever known, Abrahams realized that the only people who could save her were the very sinners she had prayed would be smitten by God's wrath. Raucously funny, deeply unsettling, and written with scorching wit and deep compassion, I'm Perfect, You're Doomed explores the ironic absurdity of growing up believing that nothing matters because everything's about to be destroyed.

I'm Perfect, You're Doomed is the story of Kyria Abrahams's coming-of-age as a Jehovah's Witness -- a doorbell-ringing "Pioneer of the Lord." Her childhood was haunted by the knowledge that her neighbors and schoolmates were doomed to die in an imminent fiery apocalypse; that Smurfs were evil; that just about anything you could buy at a yard sale was infested by demons; and that Ouija boards -- even if they were manufactured by Parker Brothers -- were portals to hell. Never mind how popular you are when you hand out the Watchtower instead of candy at Halloween. When Abrahams turned eighteen, things got even stranger. That's when she found herself married to a man she didn't love, with adultery her only way out. "Disfellowshipped" and exiled from the only world she'd ever known, Abrahams realized that the only people who could save her were the very sinners she had prayed would be smitten by God's wrath. Raucously funny, deeply unsettling, and written with scorching wit and deep compassion, I'm Perfect, You're Doomed explores the ironic absurdity of growing up believing that nothing matters because everything's about to be destroyed.

Madison Spencer, the liveliest and snarkiest dead girl in the universe, continues the afterlife adventure begun in Chuck Palahniuk’s bestseller Damned. Just as that novel brought us a brilliant Hell that only he could imagine, Doomed is a dark and twisted apocalyptic vision from this provocative storyteller. The bestselling Damned chronicled Madison’s journey across the unspeakable (and really gross) landscape of the afterlife to confront the Devil himself. But her story isn’t over yet. In a series of electronic dispatches from the Great Beyond, Doomed describes the ultimate showdown between Good and Evil. After a Halloween ritual gone awry, Madison finds herself trapped in Purgatory—or, as mortals like you and I know it, Earth. She can see and hear every detail of the world she left behind, yet she’s invisible to everyone who’s still alive. Not only do people look right through her, they walk right through her as well. The upside is that, no longer subject to physical limitations, she can pass through doors and walls. Her first stop is her parents’ luxurious apartment, where she encounters the ghost of her long-deceased grandmother. For Madison, the encounter triggers memories of the awful summer she spent upstate with Nana Minnie and her grandfather, Papadaddy. As she revisits the painful truth of what transpired over those months (including a disturbing and finally fatal meeting in a rest stop’s fetid men’s room, in which . . . well, never mind), her saga of eternal damnation takes on a new and sinister meaning. Satan has had Madison in his sights from the very beginning: through her and her narcissistic celebrity parents, he plans to engineer an era of eternal damnation. For everyone. Once again, our unconventional but plucky heroine must face her fears and gather her wits for the battle of a lifetime. Dante Alighieri, watch your back; Chuck Palahniuk is gaining on you.

From legendary baseball Hall of Famer and his wife comes a marriage guidebook for the not-so-perfect marriage—filled with extremely candid, practical, and biblically based principles—proven to make any relationship successful. Darryl and Tracy Strawberry admit they have “made every possible mistake you can make in marriage.” Together, this devoted couple has suffered through—and survived—adultery, addiction, financial destruction, and many other all-too-familiar struggles. A no-holds-barred account of their personal journey, The Imperfect Marriage provides a step-by-step program that will help you and your partner understand the key issues that could be causing damage in your relationship and recognize turning points on the journey toward marriage restoration. Darryl and Tracy Strawberry know firsthand what it takes to make it through the battle and how to come out victorious. Beginning with putting God at the center, their words will inspire you to transform your marriage into an enduring and vital relationship. The Strawberrys keep it real and preach it real. They deal with real people, real problems, and offer solutions for the present. Through candid anecdotes, a great deal of self-awareness, and a true sense of honesty, Darryl and Tracy offer the vision, encouragement, and practical advice that every healthy marriage needs in order to thrive. Whether you and your partner are looking to heal a broken relationship, or avoid the mistakes that doomed a past one, The Imperfect Marriage offers the guidance and “brutal honesty…[that] will be inspiring for many” (Publishers Weekly) and will help make your marriage a success.

"University sophomore Miwako Sumida has hanged herself, leaving those closest to her reeling. In the months before her suicide, she was hiding away in a remote mountainside village, but what, or whom, was she running from? To Ryusei, a fellow student at Waseda; Chie, Miwako's best friend; and Fumi, Ryusei's older sister, Miwako was more than the blunt, no-nonsense person she projected to the world. Heartbroken, Ryusei begs Chie to take him to the village where Miwako spent her final days. While he is away, Fumi receives an unexpected guest at their shared apartment in Tokyo, increasingly fearful that Miwako's death may ruin what is left of her brother's life. Expanding on the beautifully crafted world of Rainbirds, Clarissa Goenawan gradually pierces through a young woman's careful faðcade, unmasking her most painful secrets"--

Masters of Doom is the amazing true story of the Lennon and McCartney of video games: John Carmack and John Romero. Together, they ruled big business. They transformed popular culture. And they provoked a national controversy. More than anything, they lived a unique and rollicking American Dream, escaping the broken homes of their youth to co-create the most notoriously successful game franchises in history—Doom and Quake—until the games they made tore them apart. Americans spend more money on video games than on movie tickets. Masters of Doom is the first book to chronicle this industry’s greatest story, written by one of the medium’s leading observers. David Kushner takes readers inside the rags-to-riches adventure of two rebellious entrepreneurs who came of age to shape a generation. The vivid portrait reveals why their games are so violent and why their immersion in their brilliantly designed fantasy worlds offered them solace. And it shows how they channeled their fury and imagination into products that are a formative influence on our culture, from MTV to the Internet to Columbine. This is a story of friendship and betrayal, commerce and artistry—a powerful and compassionate account of what it’s like to be young, driven, and wildly creative. “To my taste, the greatest American myth of cosmogenesis features the maladjusted, antisocial, genius teenage boy who, in the insular laboratory of his own bedroom, invents the universe from scratch. Masters of Doom is a particularly inspired rendition. Dave Kushner chronicles the saga of video game virtuosi Carmack and Romero with terrific brio. This is a page-turning, mythopoeic cyber-soap opera about two glamorous geek geniuses—and it should be read while scarfing down pepperoni pizza and swilling Diet Coke, with Queens of the Stone Age cranked up all the way.”—Mark Leyner, author of I Smell Esther Williams

At the heart of our current moment lies a universal yearning, writes David Zahl, not to be happy or respected so much as enough--what religions call "righteous." To fill the void left by religion, we look to all sorts of everyday activities--from eating and parenting to dating and voting--for the identity, purpose, and meaning once provided on Sunday morning. In our striving, we are chasing a sense of enoughness. But it remains ever out of reach, and the effort and anxiety are burning us out. Seculosity takes a thoughtful yet entertaining tour of American "performancism" and its cousins, highlighting both their ingenuity and mercilessness, all while challenging the conventional narrative of religious decline. Zahl unmasks the competing pieties around which so much of our lives revolve, and he does so in a way that's at points playful, personal, and incisive. Ultimately he brings us to a fresh appreciation for the grace of God in all its countercultural wonder.

How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business "The real value of this book is that it makes SOA and Webservices, which are critical and business-transforming,crystal-clear to the layman, both business and IT leaders. The bookstays focused on the real-world issues facing business andgovernment institutions today. In an industry full of experts ofmany stripes, Ron and Jason are the real thing: savvy, experienced,and realistic. They have produced a must-read book formanagement." —Paul Lipton, Senior Architect, Unicenter Web Services andApplication Management Computer Associates "This is by far the finest publication on SOA of our time. Fromcover to back, Service Orient or Be Doomed! strips away thelayers of confusion most IT stakeholders face when confronted withenterprise architecture, and illustrates pragmatic and practicalpaths towards a sustainable and efficient enterprise architecture.Both the technically savvy and the bean counters will enjoy thisbook that speaks to the critical points they need tounderstand." —Duane A. Nickull Senior Standards Strategist, Adobe Systems,Inc. Chair, OASIS SOA Reference Model Technical Committee Vicechair, United Nations CEFACT (UN/CEFACT) "If you're looking for a guide that's based on reality, this isit. These guys know how you can service-orient your enterprise andhave the best chance of success. This book is the best SOA tool youcan buy. I'm recommending it to everyone." —Dave Linthicum, CEO, BRIDGEWERX "Jason and Ron are experts on Service-Oriented Architecture(SOA) and have written the first book that is aimed at helping anontechnical businessperson understand why the SOA computingrevolution is critical to business. Rather than provide a nerdydeath via buzzword book, Jason and Ron take a humorous, clever, andinsightful romp through this new technology and how it impactsbusiness in general." —Brad Feld, Mobius Venture Capital Authors Jason Bloomberg and Ronald Schmelzer-senior analysts forhighly respected IT advisory and analysis firm ZapThink-say it allin the title of their new book, Service Orient or Be Doomed!:How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business. That is, ifyou fail to service orient your company, you will fail in competingwith the organizations that do. This provocative new book takes service orientation out of itsmore familiar technological surroundings within service-orientedarchitecture and introduces it as a philosophy that advocates itsrightful place within a business context, redefining it as a newway of thinking about organizing your business and itsprocesses. Informal, challenging, and intelligent in style, ServiceOrient or Be Doomed!: How Service Orientation Will Change YourBusiness shows you how you can best use technology resources tomeet your company's business goals and empower your company to gofrom "stuck" to "competitive."

A collection of essays by Hunter Thompson that chart the high and low moments of his thirty-year career as a journalist

"A fascinating glimpse into the consciousness of being an outsider in every possible way, and what it takes to find your path into the life you'd like to lead."--Nylon A riveting memoir of losing faith and finding freedom while a covert missionary in one of the world's most restrictive countries. A third-generation Jehovah's Witness, Amber Scorah had devoted her life to sounding God's warning of impending Armageddon. She volunteered to take the message to China, where the preaching she did was illegal and could result in her expulsion or worse. Here, she had some distance from her community for the first time. Immersion in a foreign language and culture--and a whole new way of thinking--turned her world upside down, and eventually led her to lose all that she had been sure was true. As a proselytizer in Shanghai, using fake names and secret codes to evade the authorities' notice, Scorah discreetly looked for targets in public parks and stores. To support herself, she found work at a Chinese language learning podcast, hiding her real purpose from her coworkers. Now with a creative outlet, getting to know worldly people for the first time, she began to understand that there were other ways of seeing the world and living a fulfilling life. When one of these relationships became an "escape hatch," Scorah's loss of faith culminated in her own personal apocalypse, the only kind of ending possible for a Jehovah's Witness. Shunned by family and friends as an apostate, Scorah was alone in Shanghai and thrown into a world she had only known from the periphery--with no education or support system. A coming of age story of a woman already in her thirties, this unforgettable memoir examines what it's like to start one's life over again with an entirely new identity. It follows Scorah to New York City, where a personal tragedy forces her to look for new ways to find meaning in the absence of religion. With compelling, spare prose, Leaving the Witness traces the bittersweet process of starting over, when everything one's life was built around is gone.