Showing posts with label mac tonnies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mac tonnies. Show all posts

Monday, April 4, 2016

Mac Tonnies audio clips

author and blogger, Mac Tonnies
Presented here is a 16 minutes of clips with my friend Mac Tonnies. These were part of a 2010 appearance on Whitley Strieber's DREAMLAND, where I spoke about my friendship with Mac. More on that linked HERE.



I need to thank Tim Binnall from Binnall of America for his permission to use these clips. This was the first time I heard Mac's voice, and that highly recommended 2007 interview is listed here, PART 1 and PART 2.
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Saturday, February 6, 2016

What Sparks My Imagination by Mac Tonnies

Click on the image above for better viewing
This is a 3rd grade writing assignment composed by Mac Tonnies. He would have been eight years old at the time. This scan was sent to me by Mac's mother. It might take some squinting, but it is worth the effort. His teacher, quite correctly, wrote: "Great job!" in red pen.

written essay
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Friday, May 30, 2014

crumbly, but good...

unparalleled brilliance
I love this so much it hurts.

Mac Tonnies posted this on his blog in about 2008. Since then I've probably watched this funny little clip a thousand times. I'll probably watch it a thousand more times, and I'll revel in each and every viewing.

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Saturday, May 4, 2013

Mac Tonnies hosts a Canadian documentary from 2008


Mac Tonnies from 2008

Mac Tonnies was the on-camera host for a 2008 VisionTV production titled Life from Other Planets. This was part of a Canadian documentary series for CBC called The Supernatural Investigators. This episode was directed by Michael MacDonald.

This is a tidy little bit of investigative film-making. But for me, what shines through is Mac's screen presence. It breaks my heart to see his face and hear his voice. His soft spoken and thoughtful composure was obviously disarming to each of the people he was talking with.

Mac on the road during the production
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Saturday, October 27, 2012

Posthuman Blues now available as a book

cyber text in a paper format

Paul Kimball from Redstar Books has just announced the publication of the first volume of a series of books. It's a collection of Mac Tonnies' blog posts from his Post Human Blues blog. This thing is 382 pages long, and there is gunna be multiple volumes coming out in the near future.

I am going to lobby that a volume is dedicated to transcriptions from some of his audio interviews. I think Mac was at his best when he was just verbally riffing on the this weirdness.

Posthuman Blues by Mac Tonnies
volume one 2003 - 2004
available thru Redstar Books 
(or thru creepy the creepy corporate giant; amazon
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Last night I dreamed I was an android. Someone told me, very casually. I wasn't particularly surprised, but the revelation left me with a vague sense of existential unease. Speaking of dreams: that's one very good reason for creating a blog that I hadn't thought of moments before, when it just seemed like a Cool Thing To Do. A dynamic medium like this welcomes dreams...in 30 years, we'll be carrying around personal dream recorders and thrusting them into the faces of friends saying "Watch this!" But everyone will be too engaged in their own half-forgotten Technicolor reveries to pay much attention.

Mac Tonnies
from January 26, 2003 (the first week of his blog)
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Also: Paul Kimball talks about Mac, this book and lots more with Greg Bishop on a recent Radio Misterioso podcast (linked HERE).
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Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Mac Tonnies' blog, Posthuman Blues, is forever safe

Mac Tonnies

After Mac died one question everyone who knew him asked was this: What is going to happen to his blog? Nobody knew his password, so the fate of his blog was unknown.

There was a fellow going by CapnMarrrrk (Mark Platner) who was a regular commenter on Mac Tonnies’ blog, POST HUMAN BLUES, and he has saved Mac’s blog.

Thanks to Platner there is now a

Mark has been busy capturing Mac's Posthuman Blues blog in its entirety - yes, in its entirety. This is a beautiful act of dedication. Mac's work (and Mark's) now has a permanent and dedicated home, untouched by the hands of time (and the excrement of spam).

I actually attempted this at one point and I gave up, the effort seemed monumental. I am indebted to Mark Platner. Thank you, honestly and truly, thank you.

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
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Friday, May 11, 2012

did Mac Tonnies visit a UFO contactee?

In answer to the headline, I don't think so. But...

I am posting a forwarded email from Rob MacGregor (of Synchro-Secrets). This is correspondence he received from Charles, the French Canadian who shared the extremely disturbing events surrounding his UFO sighting and follow-up experiences. This was posted as a detailed first-person report (linked HERE).

Charles from Quebec wrote: 
Rob - l want to tell you something strange that happened to me this past Thursday evenings around 21:15.
This guy's photo is in the Hidden Experience blog... and I saw someone looking exactly like him acting very strange walking towards my car with sunglasses at night with very white skin... he or she did not walk like a human or somehow he or she was handicapped... he or she came over my windshield and stared at me while making strange noises like screaming... ever since then, I am scared of seeing him again...

Image included in the email from Charles.


More was posted on the Synchro-Secrets site, linked HERE.

The photo in question was of Mac Tonnies, it's seen in the left side-bar. This was an image that (I think) he took himself. This photo makes him seem a little more dramatic than he actually was. He was, well, cuter than that.

Mac had a wonderfully charismatic demeanor, so I don't think he would materialize as any kind of frightening ghost. If it was a ghost of Mac, I am quite certain it would be a very nice ghost.

All that said, a tall pale bald man with chiseled cheek bones is certainly a striking image, and not uncommon in these kinds of paranormal reports.

I'll also add that in this photo, the shadow from Mac's glasses creates an eerie mothman or Phoenix form. This was noted in a previous post (linked HERE).

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Saturday, March 31, 2012

tube girls

art.

I have started yet another blog, titled SCI-FI WOMEN IN TUBES. This new blog features ONLY images of curvy women encased in glass tubes, and there are a LOT of 'em. All these images are from the Golden Age of the pulp magazine illustration. This was a favorite theme of the late Mac Tonnies. He seemed absolutely delighted that such a pattern even existed in these long ago images.

For best results, view in MOSAIC (a new blogger setting).

I am eager to find more, if anyone out there can add to this list of nutty imagery, please lemme know!
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Saturday, March 17, 2012

Mac Tonnies gets noted in a series of podcasts

Mac Tonnies gets referenced twice this week in on-line podcasts. His work comes up in William Henry's series REVELATIONS, and also in Jeff Ritzmann's and Jeremy Vaeni's podcast PARATOPIA.

On the Wednesday March 14th (2012) episode of Revelations, William Henry interviews Jay Weidner about his research into the Archons. Weidner references Mac's book The Cryptoterrestrials and shares his belief that the Archons represent a non-human presence that has shared the earth along side of us, matching some of Mac's theorizing in his posthumous book.

But, the text in the page that hosts the podcast makes some troublesome claims:

The Archons, Masters of the World

If Archons exist, who and what are they? Like Mac Tonnies and Bill Schneider, Jay Weidner is getting close to understanding this mystery, and how to identify the ones that may live among us. Just after announcing that he was close to being able to identify them, Mac died in his sleep at the age of 34. Bill Schneider has also died.

But Jay is still with us, and in this interview he tells us all he knows about the Archons. As the Nag Hammadi text warns, the Archons walk among us. They like violence and destruction. They are hungry for our suffering.

Who are they? What do they look like? WHY do they hate us so, these ancient and terrible beings who legend says live among us? Jay is far down the dangerous road of understanding the secrets of the Archons, and how to break their power over the deeply hypnotized human species...

There is an implication that I want to address in this blurb. It strongly insinuates that Mac died because he was researching the Archons. I feel this simply isn't true, I have his book The Cryptoterrestrials as a PDF, and it was easy to search. He never uses the word "Archon" in this text. I spoke to him at length about the content of this book and he wasn't truly wed to the core ideas, he wrote it as a sort of thought experiment.

The implication that Mac's death was caused by these mythic beings strikes me as exploitative.

Mac's death was a tragedy, and as far as I, or anyone in the family could tell, there wasn't anything criminal (or paranormal) involved in his passing. He had a pre-existing heart condition and he died peacefully in his own bed.

Now, despite these flaws, I quite liked the audio interview, and I recommend it highly. Jay Weidner and William Henry make for a lively interview on subjects I find fascinating.

My overall concern here isn't to be nit-picky. We (and I include myself in this) are all peering into the unknown, and there is a very real need to be as accurate and level-headed when sharing our research.

But more than that, I am concerned that Mac's work and identity remain accurate in the public's mind.

There was another incorrect point in the text that accompanied the podcast, it stated that Mac had actually seen an Archon like entity, and his sighting was the basis for the cover. I emailed both William Henry and Jay Weidner and pointed out the mistakes in the text. William replied, thanked me and corrected the sentence in question about the origin of the cover.

Jay Weidner replied too, recognized the mistakes and then he presented me with a question; I wonder what Mac would think about the Archons? I feel like I can guess, I suspect he would have been greatly intrigued by Jay Weidner's ideas. If he disagreed with anything Weidner said, he would have engaged his claims in a spirited way. Mac was, more than anything, a lively and open-minded conversationalist. Weidner is now using the term The Cryptoterrestrials in his lectures as a way to articulate a non-human presence among us, and I'm all for adding this new vocabulary to our language.

This episode of REVELATIONS is free to the public for just a few weeks, after that time you'll need to be a paying member to access this and a wealth of other audio interviews.

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Also in the podcast realm this week, Jeff Ritzmann and Jeremy Vaeni conclude their weekly PARATOPIA interview with a somewhat sensitive after-chat. They tell of a UFO sighting in Baltimore from October 25th, 2009 just a few days after Mac Tonnies' death. They had spoken about some of the details of this sighting publicly shortly after the event. But they add more details now, two and a half years later.

The sighting involved a bright light in the nighttime sky that would repeatedly blink on and off without any pattern. Mac had been on Ritzmann's mind in the previous days and he asked: "Mac, if that's you, can you wink the thing on again?" And instantly the unknown light in the sky seemed to respond by winking back on. Ritzmann isn't exactly sure why he made that comment, he says that something just correlated in that instant.

Both the hosts review this event in great detail, and they do NOT think that Mac was aboard any UFO above Baltimore. They speculate that the phenomenon was reacting to their emotions and mindset in that moment in a decidedly trickster like retort.

You need to be a paying member to listen to the after-chat to hear their re-telling of this sighting. Or, you can pay a one-time $1.25 fee for the single episode.
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Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Mac Tonnies, philosophy and high school classrooms


Mac Tonnies' mother just sent me a link to a fascinating article (linked HERE).

It's a heart-warming synchro-magical experience written by Sarah Multiverse, a friend of Mac's. Here's a quote from the article:
The guest teacher explained to me that Mac’s story raised a number of issues that students loved discussing. In particular, it could be used to discuss all sorts of metaphysical issues such as the nature of life and the nature of reality, as well as more concrete topics such as the nature of friendship...
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Tuesday, February 7, 2012

audio interviews with Mac Tonnies


This is a clip of the late Mac Tonnies, where he sums it all up in a mere 33 seconds.

There is a remarkable selection of on-line podcasts featuring my friend Mac. The young author Mac Tonnies had quite a web presence, that and a beautiful voice. I did some searching, and here are a list of 13 different audio interviews available on-line. If anyone knows of more, please let me know and I'll add them here.

I rated these with *stars*, a simple 1 thru 5 system. Don't read too much into these numbers, all are essential listening.
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A short message from a friend ***
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Mac not talking about UFOs
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Friday, February 3, 2012

Mac Tonnies on C2C from 2009

Mac Tonnies

Three weeks before he died, Mac was a guest on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. He was a breath of fresh air on a radio show bogged down with the dubious. During his time on the air, he clearly and engagingly explained his take on a wide variety of subjects. As always, he spoke with remarkable clarity. The entire show (I think) is posted below.

one-click audio download HERE
one hour / 48 minutes

He was a welcome guest on a wide variety of esoteric podcasts, but his performance on C2C was particularly impressive. He beautifully conveys his insights to a very mainstream audience. He had a way of articulating EXACTLY what I felt in my bones. He said it better and clearer than I ever could. A great intro to anyone unfamiliar with his work. If you listen, you'll be treated to a remarkable set of ideas.

This show was aired the night of September 28th, 2009.
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Saturday, January 28, 2012

Mac Tonnies "interviews" Whitley Strieber

Mac on a road trip production for a documentary with the CBC

During one late night phone call, Mac Tonnies told me about a back and forth series of questions he asked Whitley Strieber. Years ago, in a long ago era of the internet, Whitley briefly maintained a simple on-line bulletin board system. His goal was to provide a forum to answer questions from his readers. Mac used this forum to connect with Whitley; this must have been sometime in the early 90's.

I just found the interview on Mac's website, it's still on-line, and it makes for bittersweet reading. The interview is posted HERE and it is in a readable print-ready PDF format below.

If I remember the conversation correctly, Mac sent in questions over a period of time (perhaps weeks), and then collected his questions and replies from the forum and ganged them all into one document, and this document created an "interview" of sorts. I clearly remember him explaining to me how impressed he was with the thoughtful quality and seriousness in the way Whitley answered those questions.

Mac wrote of Whitley: "I was impressed with the quickness and sincerity of his replies."
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Mac Interviews Whitley

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Mac Tonnies two years gone

Some of Mac Tonnies’ best friends and people who continue to be influenced by him got together on RADIO MYSTERIOSO on October 23rd to reminisce about his life, personality and work. Mac died in his sleep two years ago on the night of October 18th. He was a reluctant iconoclast and advanced thinker and theorist. He was respected as a fortean and transhumanist. He was also a friend.

Aaron Gulyas, Tony Morrill, Nick Redfern, Paul Kimball and Mike Clelland joined Greg Bishop for over two hours as we discussed how we were influenced by Mac and what his legacy might be. We all still miss him terribly and our thoughts go out to his family and other friends.
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Monday, August 15, 2011

Mac Tonnies, Anya Briggs and owls

Mac Tonnies, my pal.

On September 28th 2009, Mac Tonnies was the featured guest on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. He was a breath of fresh air on a radio show bogged down with the dubious. As always, he spoke with remarkable clarity.

Less than a month later, he was found dead in his apartment in Kansas City.

His performance on Coast to Coast was a triumph, he was delightfully engaging on the most popular show of it’s kind. It felt like he was just about to jump to a new level of success, and this was something he truly deserved. I can’t help but be struck by sad thoughts of what might have been.

During the 3rd hour of the show, he spoke about a friend of his who has been seeing owls. He says that this friend was self-aware enough to examine these sightings and make sure they weren’t some sort of screen memory. Mac was talking about me!

On October 1st, Mac and I had this short email exchange.
I wrote: Mac - My owl stories made it to Coast to Coast?!?!?

Mac replied: Yep. But I didn't have time to finish the story or even tell it properly.
When I read Mac’s reply I wasn’t sure what he meant, it was just cryptic enough that I was left confused. What was it in the story that he couldn’t finish? Sadly, I would never have the chance to ask him.

Anya Briggs, psychic, medium and intuitive.
Fast forward to the spring of 2011, during a phone call with Anya Briggs the topic of Mac Tonnies came up, and how I felt he was cajoling me from the other side to pursue the graphic novel. Anya is a powerful psychic and she suddenly blurts out, he’s here!

She starts frantically sharing what Mac is telling her, and then she laughs in her own voice and says, “Oh I really like this guy!”

This has happened more than once during phone calls with Anya, and each time I end up getting sort of intimidated by the intensity of the whole thing. But I suddenly remembered that unanswered question, and I asked Mac through Anya.

I said, “Mac, when you were on Coast to Coast, you told a little bit of one of my owl stories, but later you emailed me that you didn’t have time to finish the story. I never knew what you meant. What were you going to say?

And without skipping a beat, Anya replied: “I was going to say that owls might be a kind of window into your world, and that some other force could be using those great big eyes as a tool to see into your reality. Their eyes are like a video camera, and they are being used as a direct link, someone was watching you.”

That bit of dialog is paraphrased from memory, but it’s pretty close.

I knew instantly that Anya shared exactly what Mac would have said. This was something that Mac and I had talked about during one of our late night multi-hour chat sessions. And this idea arose from a comment I got on a blog posting from none other than Whitley Streiber. He replying to a very curious owl story, the forth post on this blog (March 4th 2009). I wore about seeing three owls, on two occasions, both times with a friend named Kristy.

I was shocked to see Whitley’s comment, and it was followed up by a comment from Mac where he explained that it was he who told Whitley about the owl post. Mac and Whitley would occasionally exchange twitter messages. It was that same night where Whitley had shared his thoughts on owls, this happened during a subscribers chat forum on the UNKNOWN COUNTRY site.

I had been wondering for well over a year what Mac was hinting at when he said, “I didn't have time to finish the [owl] story,” on Coast to Coast. And when Anya communicated Mac’s answer to my question, it made perfect sense. Through some sort of magical technology, alien entities were watching me and Kristy through those great big eyes! Could it be true?

This is exactly the kind of esoteric detail that absolutely delighted Mac.

Comments from two of the most inspiring thinkers that have graced this planet. And the number 17 for Chris Knowles.

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Sunday, August 7, 2011

Radio Mysterioso interview


Greg Bishop just posted an interview we did on March 7th of 2010, it's on his RADIO MYSERIOSO site.

My memory of those two hours were a blur, but I did remember that at the end Greg thanked me and said: "This was one of the most fun interviews I've done in a long while."

We started out with a report from and commentary on the Laughlin UFO conference. I had just returned from the 2010 meeting with a mixed bag of impressions and memories. While at the conference, I attended an abductee support meeting, which gets described in detail.

We also spoke about conversations with our late friend Mac Tonnies. His analogy of a cat chasing a laser pointer and the comparison of humans seeing UFOs occupied us for a good while. This led to a conversation about Mac’s last book The Cryptoterrestrials and how it might affect UFO research.

We went on to talk about the experience of the paranormal and how it changes lives.

Direct link to the interview HERE.

Monday, March 21, 2011

very cute owl image

Close up image of the return address label from Mac Tonnies' mother.

While at the post office today, I received a book from Mac Tonnies' personal library. It was sent to me by Mac's mother, and I am deeply touched by the sentiment. The book is The Life and Times of R. Crumb, it's a collection of essays by his contemporaries. And the envelope came complete with a cute owl image.

When I got home (minutes ago) I had an email from Mac's mom waiting for me in my inbox. It tells of a documentary film maker who is working to put together a collection of stories about Mac, where people who knew him would share their memories. Basically, a collection of essays by his contemporaries.

My final email to Mac was from a bookstore in Moab Utah. I had just purchased, at Mac's recommendation, a big book by R. Crumb and I sent him a little note to tell him that I now owned the book. It was the entire Book of Genesis from the bible in a comic book format.

Mac and I were both huge fans of R. Crumb, and I made sure to embrace that inky scratchy look as I worked on the illustrations for his book THE CRYPTOTERRESTRIALS. I told him that was how I wanted the drawings to look, lots of black ink in an overtly Crumb-like style, he enthusiastically agreed.
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Wednesday, March 9, 2011

one year ago today

28 short eared owls on a fence in Missouri. Very eerie photo by Faren Fite, double click on the image for a HI-rez view.
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It was one year ago today that I recieved Mac Tonnies' book in the mail.

This was the same day I was sent a link to a series of still photos featuring a very unusual cluster of owls on a fence in Misourri. These two seemingly unrelated events were the opening salvo in an onslought of overt weirdness that almost drove me into madness.

These were the seeds to a series of postings all under the rather bland label: MAP.

Just so y'know, there will be a day when I follow up on this mysterious jumble of tangled clues, more for me than any reader of this blog.
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Below is a short note I found in my files, written to myself almost a year ago:

On the afternoon of March 12th I was trying to deal with the google maps program and create some more exacting lines. During this somewhat compulsive work, the phone rang, and it was Mac Tonnies’ mother. It was a very touching conversation, she called to thank me for the illustrations in the book. We spoke for almost an hour, and she shared a lot about her son. After saying goodbye, I was absolutely filled with gratitude.
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Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Jacques Vallee & Mac Tonnies share their insights



The video above is from a recent conference in Riyadh Saudi Arabia. This was a meeting of the world's elite called the Global Competitiveness Forum 2011. It's interesting to contemplate that there was a level-headed discussion about UFO contact at a forum attended by the planets most influential power brokers. The implications might be that these evil controllers wanna be a few chess moves ahead of the unwashed minions concerning these unknown things in the sky.

Also speaking on the same topic were Stanton Friedman, Nick Pope and Michio Kaku. (similar videos linked by clicking on each name)
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Below is a clip of the late Mac Tonnies, where he sums up the same set of issues in a mere 33 seconds.

the world is a lesser place without him
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Monday, January 24, 2011

dove, angel or mothman?

curious Rorschach Test as seen in a simple portrait photo.

The image of Mac Tonnies in the side-bar at the left has generated a little bit of chatter by the readers. Does the shadow of his glasses look like something? I used photoshop to help visually isolate the shadow, as seen on the right (above).

Christopher Knowles (ever the mythologyst) chimed in by simply stating: A Phoenix.

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