Posthuman Blues Vol Ii

"There's an itch in my mind, but I can only find it occassionally. It's like rummaging through a box of ancient refuse and incomprehensible knick-knacks and suddenly feeling the two-pronged bite of a snake between your fingers; you recoil. shrinking, but your curiosity is irreversibly piqued. You want to empty the box into the light of day regardless of the danger - or maybe even because of it." So writes author Mac Tonnies in the early pages of the second volume of Posthuman Blues, a compilation of his best and most thought-provoking work from the popular weblog of the same name, which he ran from 2003 until his tragic death in 2009. This volume covers the years 2005 and 2006. The result is a pastiche of original fiction, poetry, art, photography, observations about day-to-day life in the American midwest during the first decade of the 21st century, and trenchant commentary on current events and subjects that he found of interest, many of which were related to the paranormal, futurism and posthumanism. It presents a compelling portrait of a thoughtful man and the complex times in which he lived, rendered with intelligence, imagination, and a wickedly absurdist sense of humor.

Posthuman Blues, Vol. I is first volume of the edited version of the popular weblog maintained by author Mac Tonnies from 2003 until his tragic death in 2009. Tonnies' blog was a pastiche of his original fiction, reflections on his day-to-day life, trenchant observations of current events, and thoughts on an eclectic range of material he culled from the Internet. What resulted was a remarkably broad portrait of a thoughtful man and the complex times in which he lived, rendered with intelligence, imagination, and a wickedly absurdist sense of humor.

Posthuman Blues, Vol. I is first volume of the edited version of the popular weblog maintained by author Mac Tonnies from 2003 until his tragic death in 2009. Tonnies' blog was a pastiche of his original fiction, reflections on his day-to-day life, trenchant observations of current events, and thoughts on an eclectic range of material he culled from the Internet. What resulted was a remarkably broad portrait of a thoughtful man and the complex times in which he lived, rendered with intelligence, imagination, and a wickedly absurdist sense of humor.

"You there. Reading this. You don't have to you know. But I have succumbed to the narcotic tentacles of blogging and will be posting a daily mishmash of uncategorical mental rubbish to appease my strange and obscure urges to populate the info-sphere with my creative spoor." So begins this first volume of Posthuman Blues, the edited version of the popular weblog maintained by author Mac Tonnies from 2003 until his tragic death in 2009. Tonnies' blog was a pastiche of his original fiction, reflections on his day-to-day life, trenchant observations of current events, and thoughts on an eclectic range of material that he culled from the Internet. The result was a remarkably broad portrait of a thoughtful man and the complex times in which he lived, rendered with intelligence, imagination, and a wickedly absurdist sense of humor. "Posthuman Blues is of a piece with the Lost Generation of the 1920s and the Beat Generation of the 1950s. Tonnies spoke for his generation with passion, eloquence, and a rare insight." - A. J. Gulyas, author of Extraterrestrials and the American Zeitgeist "This book has the inventiveness and prose of a novel, but it's good, honest observation and speculation. From lambasting fakery to closing in on the true paranormal, Mac Tonnies takes us on a wild trip. Tonnies was mysterious, maybe because he always had an eye and ear for the mystery underlying our strange existence." - John Shirley, author of Gurdjieff: An Introduction to his Life and Ideas and the A Song Called Youth trilogy "Mind-stretching!" - Clifford Pickover, Ph.D.

Premiering on Fox in 2009, Joss Whedon's Dollhouse was an innovative, contentious and short-lived science fiction series whose themes were challenging for viewers from the outset. A vast global corporation operates establishments (Dollhouses) that program individuals with temporary personalities and abilities. The protagonist assumes a different identity each episode--her defining characteristic a lack of individuality. Through this obtuse premise, the show interrogated free will, morality and sex, and in the process its own construction of fantasy and its audience. A decade on, the world is--for better or worse--catching up with Dollhouse's provocative vision. This collection of new essays examines the series' relevance in the context of today's social and political issues and media landscape.

In Posthuman Buddhism and the Digital Self, Les Roberts extends his earlier work on spatial anthropology to consider questions of time, spaciousness and the phenomenology of self. Across the book’s four main chapters – which range from David Bowie’s long-standing interest in Buddhism, to street photography of 1980s Liverpool, to the ambient soundscapes of Derek Jarman’s Blue, or to the slow, contemplative cinema of Tsai Ming-Liang – Roberts lays the groundwork for the concept of ‘dwellspace’ as a means by which to unpick the shifting spatial, temporal and experiential modalities of everyday mediascapes. Understood as a particular disposition towards time, Roberts’s foray into dwellspace proceeds from a Pascalian reflection on the self/non-self in which being content in an empty room vies with the demands of having content in an empty room. Taking the idea of posthuman Buddhism as a heuristic lens, Roberts sets in motion a number of interrelated lines of enquiry that prompt renewed focus on questions of boredom, distraction and reverie and cast into sharper relief the psychosocial and creative affordances of ambience, spaciousness and slowness. The book argues that the colonisation of ‘empty time’ by 24/7 digital capitalism has gone hand-in-hand with the growth of the corporate mindfulness industry, and with it, the co-option, commodification and digitisation of dwellspace. Posthuman Buddhism is thus in part an exploration of the dialectics of dwellspace that orbits around a creative self-praxis rooted in the negation and dissolution of the self, one of the foundational cornerstones of Buddhist theory and practice.

Prisoner of Infinity examines modern-day accounts of UFOs, alien abductions, and psychism to uncover a century-long program of psychological fragmentation, collective indoctrination, and covert cultural, social, and mythic engineering.Whether it is the forces of God, government, aliens from outer (or inner) space, or the incalculable effects of childhood sexual trauma on the human psyche, premature contact with these forces compels us to create "crucial fictions." Such semi-coherent mythic narratives make partial sense out of our experience, but in the process turn us into the unreliable narrators of our own lives.Taking UFOS and the work of "experiencer" Whitley Strieber as its departure point, Prisoner of Infinity explores how beliefs are created and perceptions are managed in the face of the inexplicably complex forces of our existence. While keeping the question of a non-human and/or paranormal element open, the book maps how all-too-human agendas (such as the CIA's MK Ultra program) have co-opted the ancient psychological process of myth-making, giving rise to dissociative, dumbed-down Hollywood versions of reality. The New Age movement, UFOs, alien abductions, psychism, psychedelic mind expansion, Transhumanism, the Space Program - what if they are all productions devised by committee in dark rooms to serve social, political, and economic goals that are largely devoid of true substance or meaning? Through an exacting and enlivening process of social, cultural and psychological examination and excavation, Prisoner of Infinity uncovers the most deeply buried treasure of all. The original, uncredited author of all mystery and meaning: the human soul.

In "The Chaos Conundrum," historian Aaron John Gulyas examines how the paranormal has intersected and influenced our culture in myriad ways, from the conspiracy beliefs of William Cooper and Exopolitics to the challenge that the stories of Gray Barker presented to our concept of self and time. He looks at the maelstrom of personalities, agendas, impressions, data, confusion, and contradictions that can be found in the world of the weird, and demonstrates how they have become an integral part of our lives, whether in the form of flying saucers, hauntings, religious revelations, psychic abilities, or dozens of other guises. Gulyas delves into the stories of the people who have attempted to create order out of the chaos. Along the way he recounts his own journey from enthusiastic believer in the "shadow government" and their underground bases to jaded academic skeptic, and then finally to someone who thinks there might just be something to the paranormal after all... but not what we have been led to expect or believe!