A beautiful phrase

I had not heard the Bob Dylan phrase "the old, weird America" before I ran across it today. What a wonderful phrase! I wish that I had experienced the old weird America. The new America, though not lacking in weirdness, can be rather mediated.

Crowleyesque bar?

From the Scene Report in the Portland Mercury, comes this interesting snippet:
...Loveland is more or less closed down; in its place Rotture will be opening, and Food Hole will be taking a short break. Says booker Bennett Yankey, "We're opening a new bar at 315 SE 3rd. It's called Rotture (roh-TUR-ay, Italian for 'breaks,' the alternate name for Aleister Crowley's Book of Lies).
If anyone gets there before I do, let me know what it's like.

O.T.O. news: International Cabinet appointed

From the O.H.O.:
...
As implemented in our Bylaws, the Cabinet is not a voting body, being purely advisory. Membership in the Cabinet is not restricted beyond a ceiling of twelve members, and appointees can have differing religious affiliations. The Frater Superior, Secretary General and Treasurer General are ex officio members of the Cabinet. The initial non-member appointments are Prier Wintle (South Africa), David Michael Tibet (UK) and Harvey Bialy, Ph.D. (Mexico), all of whom have longstanding involvement with Thelema.
...

Of the three, I have only had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Wintle. He was a true gentleman and I greatly enjoyed our conversation.

Usually I don't post these 'News of the Weird' type stories

But this one is weirder than average. I wonder if it is Xinhua playing at being The Onion.
Chinese state media says a Chinese woman's attempt to teach her dog how to drive proved a costly error, as her car crashed into an oncoming vehicle.
Xinhua news agency reports no one - including the dog - was injured, but both vehicles were slightly damaged.
Xinhua says the accident happened recently in the city of Hohhot, capital of north China's Inner Mongolia region.
The woman, surnamed Li, had noticed how fond the dog was of crouching on the wheel, and thought it should have a go at steering the car.
She herself operated the accelerator and the brake.

IT - least likely to steal your lunch

From the Houston Chronicle, comes this amusing bit on workplace lunch stealing:
So which department is most likely to steal a lunch?
Accounting, Buffini said, drawing on his experience with personality traits at work. They have to do things by the book, but they're often mad in a passive-aggressive way.
Another likely candidate is the customer-service department, because personnel there are under constant pressure and have to handle angry people, he said.
As for the least likely lunch bandits, Buffini said, it's managers because of the scrutiny they're under from all sides, as well as "hero" departments like information technology, which come to your aid when you're down.
And the mellow marketing folks get so many gift baskets that they're not interested in someone else's tuna sandwich, he added.

Lawrence Sutin profile

The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune has a short profile of Lawrence Sutin, author of the excellent Philip K. Dick biography Divine Invasions. His other works includes Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley.
His latest book, All is Change, 'tracks Buddhism's influence on Western thought from ancient Greece to modern America.'

I heartily recommend Divine Invasions. It is essential to a balanced understanding of PKD.

HH on the recent history of the DRC

Head Heeb has written a good few posts on the Democratic Republic of Congo recently. The latest looks at the recent history of the DRC as a comparison with present challenges. An excerpt:
The relationship between the DRC and the international community is also a very mixed picture. On the one hand, the end of the Cold War has rendered the United Nations' intervention somewhat less partial and more conducive to state-building. On the other hand, the immediately neighboring countries - Uganda, Rwanda, Angola and Zimbabwe - are as interested in controlling the DRC's natural resources as Belgium was in the 1960s, and haven't been hesitant about using armed force and local allies to advance their interests.