Posthuman Blues - The Hard Copy(?)

Mac's photo of his own handwriting... found here

"There are a number of ominous trends within the publishing industry that appear to support Mailer's prediction. Did you know that there's a spin-off of the ghastly Christian Fundamentalist "Left Behind" saga targeted at juveniles? No kidding. It's called, accurately enough, "Left Behind: The Kids." Or something like that. The point of this series -- and the point I'm trying to make about so much of today's "literature" -- is that it's not even remotely intended to provide an aesthetic experience, but to sow ideological seeds. (I find it distinctly amusing that so much of this garbage is co-authored, as if recycled Armageddon fantasies require the combined mental might of two authors -- and I suppose since we're talking about Fundamentalists, they very well might . . .) 

Most of the time the ideology being packaged is laughable and harmless, as in the case of Atkins devotees. But then there's the truly detestable stuff: masochistic biblical fantasies masquerading as Tom Clancy-esque thrillers; demeaning supernatural claptrap disguised as "inspiration" or "self-help." Once upon a time, you found cheaply printed gospel tracts in restroom stalls; now you find their elegantly bound and savvily marketed descendents combating for shelf-space in actual stores. 

And people can't get enough. Like the "reality TV" craze, spin-offs proliferate with the tenacity of kudzu vine. Any day now, I expect to find "Chicken Soup for the Soul for Dummies" staring back at me from a prominent display. The Wal-Mart-ization of the written word will have triumphed, leaving an embittered subculture to hoard the few remaining works of Kafka and Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut . . . "

- Mac Tonnies via this 2004 Posthuman Blues post

Happened across the comment section (thanks, Dana) on this page today, so, I thought I'd pass it along.

Personally, I think "Posthuman Blues - The Book" is a wonderful idea. I think Mac himself would've been pleased to see his essays in print. Anyone who has ever read Posthuman Blues or mactonnies.com knows he was enamored with books - the real thing... the "dead-tree" editions...

But, then again, humanity - or, as pop culture would have it - appears to be free falling into a different epoch... And everything pre-2000 must be relegated to "once upon a time"... whereas we must harken back to the days when ancient people wrote words on paper with pens, amassing these words into articles referred to as manuscripts... Then, as history reminds us, there were Publishers... Marvelous entities who transformed the manuscripts into magical artifacts referred to as Books ... and they did so because they admired them, and thought they were "good"... These paper Books could be found in a public place called a Library... where many people often went just to be in the same place with all that priceless illuminated paper.

I digress. Way back in 2004, Mac was worried about the "Walmart-ization of the written word". Eight years later and it seems that just about everything has gone the way of Walmart... capitalistic gain and mass-marketing strategies being the alpha and omega of the new millennium. And nowhere is this more apparent than on the internet... 

So, should Mac's Posthuman Blues essay's be published in dead-tree form? Well, kats and kitties, there's always the possibility that one of these days the juice may suddenly, inexplicably, be cut off and all our electronic media will just shut down like a zillion blinded eyes... I imagine the ensuing mass-reaction similar to a disturbed anthill. Happily, some of us will have candles and dead-tree editions to read while the rest of the world goes to hell. ;-)

A Familiar Face

The Stars are Falling - 2006, DS
(click to enlarge)

"This notion struck me as deliciously ironic. It suggested that the encounters with nonhumans that haunt our folklore were real, not necessarily projections preying on our gullibility. Could "fairies" and" elves" - and all their mythical successors - be distorted representations of an actual species?"

- Mac Tonnies, via The Cryptoterrestrials: A Meditation on Indigenous Humanoids and the Aliens Among Us  (a fuller version of this quote can be found here)




I popped over to Mysterious Universe today and found a familiar face. Looks like Nick Redfern is talking Cryptos and he means business.

For your viewing pleasure I've posted an earlier version of he/she-who-is-nameless (above), entitled: "The Stars are Falling."

(Note - Updated 8/6/13: This graphic originally appeared on my "other blog", but, has been reposted here, replacing the image detail previously shown.)

Shine On, Mac!

Oracle (Cerebus Palus) - Nicholas Kahn & Richard Selesnick - found here

"On their adventures, North Wind brings Diamond to the country she lives in, a country without pain and death. Yet, he is brought only to a shadow of the real country at the back of the North Wind. The real country is open for him only after his death. At the end of the book, Diamond dies, finally able to see the country."

- via the Wiki entry for At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald

This is PMB's third post regarding Mac's Birthday since he re-entered the cosmos in 2009. (See: 2010 and 2011 posts) And he's still missed. Very. Not a day goes by when something somewhere doesn't remind me of him... and not a cyber-minute goes by when I am not alerted to something I know he'd enjoy. Case in point is the Curiosity landing, of course, but, even more so, is this recent art installation created by Nicholas Kahn & Richard Selesnick, Mars: Adrift on the Hourglass Sea - Desolation and the Sublime on a Distant Planet. Apparently commissioned by NASA, the installation includes "photographs" (like the one above), 3-D artifacts, and surrealistic panoramic views that recall an ancient civilization! Truly wonderful and strange!

Thanks to Red Pill Junkie at the Daily Grail for this link!

That being said, I think I'll let Pink Floyd have the last word (as they so often do), specifically this 2002 live rendition of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" (link to the original studio version,  released in 1975, the year of Mac's birth), by Pink Floyd's David Gilmore.

Shine on, Mac!

"Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

You were caught on the crossfire of childhood and stardom, 

blown on the steel breeze.

Come on you target for faraway laughter, 

come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!

You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Well you wore out your welcome with random precision,

rode on the steel breeze.

Come on you raver, you seer of visions, 

come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

Nobody knows where you are, how near or how far.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Pile on many more layers and i'll be joining you there.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
And we'll bask in the shadow of yesterday's triumph,
And sail on the steel breeze.
Come on you boy child, you winner and loser,
Come on you miner for truth and delusion, and shine!"

Artist: Pink Floyd

Album: Wish You Were Here (1975)

Lyrics: Roger Waters

***

... And, by special request: Diamonds, diamonds and more diamonds...(!)

Doing Time

Found on the Posthuman Blues "Doing Time" re-cap page

As I write this post, I'm listening to Greg Bishop's 2006 Radio Misterioso podcast, Can Ufology Be Saved? (in two parts) featuring Paul Kimball and Mac Tonnies. Mac is currently speaking about Mars - specifically, anomalies on Mars - how timely!

It's a podcast (feed page here) I haven't heard before, found via Paul Kimball's latest post on his Tears in Rain blog. But wait, there's more. The link to this podcast is found embedded in a featured PDF file of a script for a play entitled "Doing Time", a collaboration between Paul and Mac I blogged about here in 2009. I was always curious about the content, so it was a real treat to finally read it... so, many thanks to you, Paul, for posting it!

His post also features some Doing Time production shots - more can be found on this Semaphore Theatre Company page.

Regarding the play, well it's good, unwholesome, trippy fun - kind of like Alfred Hitchcock on "Martian pharmaceuticals"...  or a collaboration between Jean Paul Sartre and Philip K. Dick. You do yourself a disservice by missing it!

Paul also recounts an earlier blog discussion with Mac in the play's introduction. Here's an excerpt from Mac's side of the equation:

"While in California I phoned an author acquaintance to say hi. We ended up talking about Kurzweilian life extension, which my friend thought indicated an unhealthy fear of death. I offered that, without definitive proof that there is an afterlife, radical life extension –perhaps via mind-uploading – is both sensible and justified. My friend, the author of a nonfiction book dealing with spiritual matters, countered that one can achieve subjective validation that consciousness is more than epiphenomenal. In other words, some aspect of our awareness persists after biological death – but, so far at least, it's impossible to prove this to anyone who hasn't experienced his own sense of cosmic rapport. Fair enough. 

So how to experience consciousness as an abiding energy (if such it is) and not merely as the output of millions of synchronized synapses? Drugs, perhaps – although I've been warned that the "tripping" experience is confused and noisy, leading to false positives and replete with neurological static. Meditation seems a better, safer route. Still, how does one know that a moment's spiritual insight is anything more than an experience cooked up by the brain as a way of appeasing our incredibly deep-seated fear of death and obliteration? Not having experienced any deep insight into the nature of consciousness, I have no choice but to remain agnostic."

Meanwhile, I'll continue listening to the podcast - it's great to hear Mac's voice again. (And, a special thanks to Greg Bishop for this cool offering from Radio Misterioso's vaults - a link will appear shortly on the sidebar of this blog!)

UPDATE 8/18/12: Paul has just announced a Doing Time film adaption!

Voice(s) of America...(and elsewhere)

As a kind of postscript to yesterday's news is this related tidbit.  If you remember, Mac's - and consequently our - story became the basis for Rob Walker's NY Times article "Cyberspace When You're Dead" last year. As it so happens, this issue has been addressed again via a short Voice of America radio broadcast created by reporter and journalist extraordinaire, Adam Phillips.

Adam chatted with some of us recently regarding our endeavors to extend Mac's cyberspace life and the broadcast features  comments from Mac's mom, Dana Tonnies, Mark Plattner and yours truly, discussing issues which should be familiar to y'all by now.

That being said, Voice of America broadcasts are not  aired in the USA, though there is a live stream on their website and a podcast available eventually (I think). However, here's a link to the transcript: "In Death, Who Owns Your Online Afterlife?".

***

Image by Brian Froud

Meanwhile, Adam has a number of interesting podcasts found within his online files, one of which I listened to the other night and throughly enjoyed.

Remember this excerpt from Mac's last book (published posthumously)?

"Finally, I wondered the unthinkable: what if the antics of the" absurd humanoids" documented by Vallee weren't the work of some overarching intelligence? What if they happened just as reported, without the need to invoke externally imposed psychosocial thermostats?

This notion struck me as deliciously ironic. It suggested that the encounters with nonhumans that haunt our folklore were real, not necessarily projections preying on our gullibility. Could "fairies" and" elves" -and all their mythical successors-be distorted representations of an actual species?

While curiously appealing, the idea seemed totally orthogonal to science. Psychologists maintain that legendary "little people" are beings of the mind, the brain's instinctive attempt to populate the darkness. They're also quick to point out that modern accounts of spindly gray aliens are almost certainly due to fantasy-prone personalities, poorly trained therapists, and hallucinations experienced during episodes of sleep paralysis.

This analysis is attractive on several levels. It neatly does away with the specter of the Other we repeatedly encounter in myths. It also assuages our fears that our world might be fair game for dispassionate ET scientists, with their glittering probes and omnipotent saucers.

Alas, it fails."

- Mac Tonnies, excerpt from pages 18 & 19 of The Cryptoterrestrials: A Meditation on Indigenous Humanoids and the Aliens Among Us

Mac, Jacques Vallee, and others, had a specific interest in faerie lore and it's relation to other paranormal "mythology" - specifically that of  extraterrestrial entities.

Well, Adam Phillips takes us to Ireland, where we can hear first-hand accounts of encounters with Ireland's "Good Neighbors"... those indigenous - and anomalous - entities that comprise the most ancient of all Celtic races - often purported to reside in a parallel Otherworld - the daoine sídhe. If interested, that podcast can be found here.

PosthumanBlues.com

Image by Mike Clelland from The Cryptoterrestrials.

"This is Mac Tonnies' Posthuman Blues Blog as it was captured shortly after his death. We hope future historians, the curious and his friends will read these words and Grok Mac in fullness."

- Capn Marrrrk Plattner via PostHuman Blues.com

Awesome news from Capn Marrrrk Plattner: there is now a Posthuman Blues.com! For those of you who didn't know, Mark has been busy capturing Mac's Posthuman Blues blog in its entirety - yes, in its entirety - for quite some time. Talk about dedicated friends... In any case, Mac work (and Mark's) now has a permanent and dedicated home... untouched by the hands of time (and the excrement of spam).

In a separate intro - Separating the Tears from the Rain - Mark writes:

"Whether he knew it or not, Mac influenced a great many people across many different disciplines, and simply put, we want a memorial for our friend who died way too soon. This version of Posthuman Blues is frozen in time right up to Mac's last post, and the comment thread which details the discovery of his death and aside from his books, it's the closest anyone can come to knowing the essence of Mac Tonnies, a man who was certainly worth knowing. In general, I really dislike saying, "What Mac would have wanted..." type statements, but I was under the impression that he really would have wanted to upload his consciousness into a computer. How awesomely Posthuman is that? Alas, instead of talking with Macbot we have to satisfy ourselves with the salient data points he was willing to share."

Congratulations, Capn Marrrrk!!!

And I think that I speak for us all, when I say thank you.

A One-way Trip to Mars! No, really!

"Human settlement of Mars in 2023

Mars One will establish the first human settlement on Mars in 2023. A habitable settlement will be waiting for the settlers when they land. The settlement will support them while they live and work on Mars the rest of their lives. Every two years after 2023 an additional crew will arrive, such that there is a real living, growing community on Mars. Mars One has created a technical plan for this mission that is as simple as possible. For every component of the mission we have identified at least one potential supplier. Mars One invites you to join us in this next giant leap for mankind!"

- via the Mars One website


***

I don't know how I managed to let this one slip by me, but I couldn't just finish posting about the passing of Ray Bradbury, without posting this as well. Apparently the original video has already gone viral, but here's the updated version.

But, is this for real? A Mars settlement in 10 years? In the last analysis, all I can really think is, "Mac. you should've stuck around..." After all, remember this?

Ray Bradbury (8/22/1920 - 6/5/2012...)

“Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them.” 

― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

***

"I'm not afraid of machines," he told Writer's Digest in 1976. "I don't think the robots are taking over. I think the men who play with toys have taken over. And if we don't take the toys out of their hands, we're fools."

- Ray Bradbury quote found here  (U.S.A. Today, death notice)

***

Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, Live forever! Bradbury later said, "I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped."

- Via the notice on RayBradbury.com

***

"I memorized all of “John Carter” and “Tarzan,” and sat on my grandparents’ front lawn repeating the stories to anyone who would sit and listen. I would go out to that lawn on summer nights and reach up to the red light of Mars and say, “Take me home!” I yearned to fly away and land there in the strange dusts that blew over dead-sea bottoms toward the ancient cities.

While I remained earthbound, I would time-travel, listening to the grownups, who on warm nights gathered outside on the lawns and porches to talk and reminisce. At the end of the Fourth of July, after the uncles had their cigars and philosophical discussions, and the aunts, nephews, and cousins had their ice-cream cones or lemonade, and we’d exhausted all the fireworks, it was the special time, the sad time, the time of beauty. It was the time of the fire balloons."

- Excerpt from Bradbury's New Yorker essay dated June 4, 2012

***

Ray Bradbury passed yesterday at the ripe old age of 91. But if ever there was a human embodiment of immortality, he was surely it. I've posted a video of Bradbury discussing his 

amazing and always timely "Farenheit 451", which can stand as its own tribute to the timeless vitality of this beautiful man, found here, on my Other Blog.

Tears in Rain - the blog

“Is it possible that some of the ‘places’ I routinely visit in my dreams are, in some way, actual locations? Sometimes I experience an overwhelming nostalgia for places I’ve never been. Not all of these places seem entirely Earth-like; nevertheless they can seem suffocatingly familiar. On one hand, these bizarre locales could be electrochemically derived; on the other, they could represent something beyond our ability to properly define. Nodes on some cosmic Internet?”

 – Mac Tonnies, 2004, found here

Photo: Mac Tonnies, 2008

Paul Kimball is blogging again, and has posted some great "Macthoughts" on his latest blog Tears in Rain. The one above reminded me of a conversation Mac and I had about dream locations, and one I had forgotten about. So, thanks for reminding me, Paul!

Meanwhile, he's also just posted a great "Macthought" regarding technology and dug up a Kraftwerk tune you'd might like to hear again. The tune was written just over 30 years ago, but it may as well have been written today.

Triptych #15 - Update

Apparently, I spoke too soon...

Sigh.

Never underestimate the prowess of the "evil spammers".

Triptych #15

I payed a visit to Triptych #15 the other day, expecting to see, perhaps, no more than an increase in number of the "sucker vines of spam", but was pleasantly surprised. Apparently, due to whatever tweaking Google has recently employed regarding blog comments, it seems that the spammers have been in some way confounded and temporarily, at least, are leaving Posthuman Blues alone. I am strangely relieved by this. Finding spam on Mac's last post was comparable to finding dog shit on a loved one's burial plot.

Speaking of which, I also stopped by Pink Tentacle to see if Mac's favorite cephalopod resurfaced. The news is bad. The comment section of the Tentacle's last post is distressingly familiar... but, unlike the case of Triptych #15, no one is coming forward to clarify the issue. I really hope someone does soon...

In other news, Mike Clelland - no, I didn't forget you, Mike - has recently created a new site devoted to those "Tubular Belles" Mac was so fond of (see this PMB post). He has a nice dedication page, found here.

Lastly, the image above - Tech Totem #8 - is a creation by my good pal, and loyal follower of PMB, the art shaman himself, Bob Dodson. It can be found here. His latest creation - a work in progress - is just the coolest little robot ever! Thanks, Bob!

Ah, and what do you know, it's May Day! A most blessed Beltane to you.

Till next time,
Dia

Snow Circles

David Peeples sent me this amazing link today which I was compelled to post here despite my vows to abstain from this type of blogging on PMB. 

Of course, crop circles come to mind... but, rest assured, there's nothing inherently paranormal in the snow circles' creation...(but, then again, define paranormal!) They were, in fact, created by one man wearing snowshoes! No BS. The man's name is Simon Beck, and he and his work can be found here.

Thanks, David!