The other day I was at a friend's house and we began talking about books. I have several thousand books on various occult topics. Some are very old. Others are quite new. My friend and I both knew of people who had well over ten thousand books, although most were fiction, especially fantasy or science fiction. I started wondering about why people keep large quantities of books. For me, it is so I can do research. Why people keep vast quantities of fiction, since I don't do that, I can't say. But when you go into someone's home and there are shelves that make the place look like a bookstore or library it's, I don't know, impressive? weird? It certainly tells you a great deal about the

She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, "Which way? Which way," holding her hand on top of her head to feel which way it was growing, and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size: to be sure, this generally happens when one eats cake, but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way. So she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake. *  *  *  *  *  *  * *  *  *  *  *  * *  *  *  *  *  *  * "Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak

For about two years I worked full time in the computer industry. I worked in quality assurance for two computer game companies (including Disney Interactive) and then taught basic computer operation, graphics and 3D animation at USC. Later, I returned to QA (quality assurance) at another company and also did some customer support. When you help consumers, to keep track of how you spend your time, you keep a record of each call and how you handled it. There is an abbreviation often seen in the record: RTFM. Without going into details, it basically means that the consumer could have avoided their problem and not wasted our time if they had just Read The Freakin' Manual. (The "F" doesn't

The Great and Powerful Oom As most of you know, I am very interested in the subjects of Tantra, sacred sexuality, and sex magick. I discuss these subjects in parts of my Modern Magick and, of course, in my Modern Sex Magick. Although Tantra is quite old, it's introduction in the U.S. is relatively recent. In fact, the introduction of the high level of Indian thought and theology is relatively new to the West. With the typical sense of Christian superiority at the time, most people thought that Hinduism was just the stupid beliefs of savages until 1893 and the Parliament of World Religions held in Chicago. There, Swami Vivekananda electified the audience as he described the