Just Found...

One of Mac's (2008) shadow self-portraits.

"Ach weißte. Erst dieser Mist mit der Zeitumstellung. (Ich prüfte gerade mehrere Minuten, ob die Welt kaputt ist oder doch nur mein Gehirns. Es stellte sich heraus: Mein Gehirns war’s. Wir ham‘ wirklich ’ne Stunde früher.) Dann erschreckt mich Facebook (mit welchem ich täglich arbeite) mit einem neuen Look. Okay, denk‘ ich mir, Okay, lieste halt ein paar Feeds zur Beruhigung. Da ich am Wochenende nicht soviel im Netz hänge wie in der Woche, stauten sich also jede Menge ungelesene Artikel in meinem Reader. Und was war der zweite Artikel den ich las? Genau:

Mac Tonnies ist Tod!

Mir fehlen da so ein bisschen die Worte, jetzt. Ich hatte kurzen Email-Kontakt mit Mac. Und dieser war äußerst freundlich und sehr amüsant. Wir verlinkten und das Eine oder Andere mal gegenseitig, haben rumgetwittert; und ich freute mich erst vor ein paar Wochen sehr darüber, das Mac mich in seine Blogrolle aufgenommen hatte.

Mac wurde bereits am Donnerstag in seiner Wohnung gefunden und starb eines natürlichen Todes. Ich habe gerade Tränen in den Augen. Weil: Er war ein solch‘ toller Autor, Ufo-Freak, Transhuman-Interessierter und irgendwie einfach ein Teil meines Lebens. Hört sich doof an. Ist aber so. Gewesen.

Rest in Peace, auf das du den CERNern das Fürchten lehrst. Wo auch immer du jetzt stecken magst, Mac. Ich vermisse dich schon heute; hoffe das ein awesome-Weblog und deine incredible-Website dem Cyberspace noch lange erhalten bleiben.

So kann’s gehen. Ist das Leben kurz, oder was? Regt man sich über Scheisse auf, oder was?  Scheiss‘, da!

Mac, ich weiß es ganz genau: Jetzt machst du den Titel deines Weblogs zum Programm: Tanz uns den Posthuman-Blues, Baby! Danke für alles, Mac! I’ll never forget! "

- Chris Heil's Doktorsblog post (October 25, 2009): OH MIST. MAC TONNIES IST TOD.

***

In an effort to repair a link (and a video) in this post, I found myself scrolling through the comment section of Mac's last Posthuman Blues' post, Triptych #15... a rather sad place I hadn't been to in a long time. Sad because it represented the unfolding nightmare of Mac's passing and the slow process of realization left to his friends and followers. After all, none of us knew firsthand... we had to find out the Virtual Reality way.

As it was, my venture was not successful, but, lo and behold, I found the links to several memorials I had been totally unaware of all this time. Well, better late than never!

The first was found in this comment from Thorsten Küper:
"Many people will remember him, its the same over here in Germany. Doktorsblog and Kueperpunk blogposted on Mac. He left a mark not only with his blog. I hope for him there is a posthuman life, that he will experience now."

Happily, I did find Chris Heil's Doktorsblog post (linked to above). (I'm going to see if I can somehow reverse-translate his post via the Google translation widget on PMB.*

As for Thorsten Küper's blog Kueperpunk, I'm afraid posts before 2012 are no longer available. But, I think Mac - who was of German ancestry - would've been pleased to know he had a number of German fans...

* Well, gang, this is the translation (such as it is) after I "reverse-translated" it, but, obviously, it's horridly inaccurate... which bothers me more than I can say. I cringe to imagine how poorly I'm being misinterpreted in translations; it boggles the mind. My guess is that the Google translations are generated by AI... which gives you some insight on the reliability of AI. Then again, maybe it's just the result of reverse-translating text. In any event, although Google does prompt for a more accurate translation, accomplishing this for ones own entire blog - in a number of different languages - is... well... impossible for this blogger!

Anyway, take the "translation" below with several grains of salt... you can probably figure out for yourself much of what Chris Heil actually wrote.

"Oh y'know Only this crap with the time change (I just checked a few minutes, if the world is broken or just my brain It turned out:... My brain's all we ham 'really' an hour earlier).. Then frightened me Facebook (with which I work daily) with a new look. Okay, I think me, Okay, Lieste just a few feeds to calm. Since I do not so much in the network depends on the weekend as during the week, so bunched up a lot . unread items in my Reader And what was the second article I read exactly?:

Mac Tonnies is death!

I'm missing because a little bit the words now. I had brief email contact with Mac. And this was extremely friendly and very amusing. We linked and one or the other times mutually have rumgetwittert; and I was happy until a few weeks ago delighted that Mac had taken me in his blog roll.

Mac was found on Thursday in his home and died of natural causes. I just tears in his eyes. Because he was such a 'great author, UFO freak Transhuman-Interessierter and somehow just a part of my life. Sounds goofy. But is that. Been.

Rest in Peace, to you teach the CERNern fear. Wherever you now stuck like, Mac. I miss you already; hope remain cyberspace long an awesome weblog and your incredible site.

Things can move fast. If life is short, or what? If you excite yourself about shit on, or what? Shit 'because!

Mac, I know exactly: Now you make the title of your weblogs to the program: dance us the Posthuman Blues, Baby! Thanks for everything, Mac! I'll never forget! "

______________________________

"We have access to his mind, not because his consciousness was uploaded by curious extra/crypto/terrestrial archivists, but because he documented his life "religiously" (his word) as a blogger and tweeter. Altho he labeled his posts "Tears in Rain," they were not. "Tears in rain" (a BladeRunner reference) denotes the meaninglessness of all of one's experiences and memories dissolving into the nothingness of death. Mac's posts were not tears in rain, but rather more like pearls, or perhaps grains of pollen, carrying their genetic information to the bottom of the lake or to the amber gem where the deposits can be studied by future archeologists or random web surfers. He was wise --and brave-- in that way to put his thoughts out there and not just sit in a room thinking to himself.

...I'd expect Mac to return soon, and not waste time. Various people carry components which we could identify as "Mac", or should we say "macian," "tonniesian," or "mactonniesian," but the entire "nexus" (;-) we called Mac Tonnies will be back soon. He may have already been reborn, perhaps in South Korea, as a woman this time, for a change, or perhaps as a man again. He wouldn't wait a full year or more to be reborn, and would choose a Buddhist family over a Christian one, I imagine. This isn't death, but merely a minor setback, a restructuring of the corporeal realm in preparation for future growth. Come to think of it, I think he'll want to speak English again, but if, on the other hand, North America is fated to fall into decrepitude while China explores the solar system, maybe he'll come back in ZhongGuo. Anyway, I reckon we'll be able to read a new, remarkably Mac-like blogger by at least 2026.

...Mac had read through many hundreds of books on ufology and other inexplicata, and by reading what he has written could help avoid many dead-ends, disappointing reads, money spent on bad books, and could steer one to the better-written material. There is no one on Earth whose opinion I'd trust more right now than Mac's. He was not a fanatic but a very skeptical, sincere seeker who calmly and analytically accepted the physical reality and the reality of the experiences of many and tried to find explanations. One great thing about Mac was that pretty much any idea you'd ever had about these phenomena, he had also considered, often more deeply. In addition, he had considered hypotheses which had never occurred to most people. That quality will be missed."

-  From "Blues Tea Cha's" January, 2010 post: Posthumanist Mac Tonnies (さよなら)

***

And, then, I found a link from "Blues Tea Cha" (Blues teacher) to his own tribute to Mac... which I enjoyed and figured some of you might as well, so I posted some excerpt's above. In the body of his post was also a list of links to other Mac memorials. Unfortunately, most are inaccessible now for one reason of another, but I saved a few... notably, this one by Peter Watts... and a post by the Monkey Buddha (in which Mac's death is mentioned).

As seems to be the case in BlogLand, where many a dormant blog floats around in cyberspace like a ghostly vessel after the "captain" abandons ship - Blues Tea Cha's blog went silent several years ago. I'm hoping he's alive and well in the real world! 

BTW, all four links mentioned here will be posted in the "Memorial" section on this blog's sidebar.

______________________________

On a very last note, for those of you who may have been following my personal UFO (UAP) saga... well, it currently appears the saga has come to a dead end. Strangely - and it seems this became the case the minute I posted about it (!) - there has been no further activity. Nothing. Zilch. Zip.

Now, a great deal of this "lack of activity" may, in part, be due to a lack of visibility; the skies have been overcast - off and on - for weeks now.

But, in any case, the mystery has not been solved... and, like many mysteries, well, will probably never be. :-(

PS  Uh, let me update that... because I saw one of the "stars" last night... (that is, the night of the 111th). There was just one, and it was around 2 A.M., so, I did not wait around for its enigmatic departure. But, my guess is that the old adage is true: it's not over... till it's over. ;-)