Posthuman Blues

I've decided to ease up on the Mars commentary here at Posthuman Blues; I can see how it could be potentially alienating (no pun intended) for readers who expect the "usual" -- not that I profess to know precisely what the "usual" is. I've rambled for a full year about obnoxious bumper-stickers, publishing trends, UFOs, proliferating cellphone use, cybernetics, Dianetics, mind-uploading, and Natalie Portman. There's really no common thread, which happens to be the way I like it. So I've elected to steer clear of becoming a special-interest blogger. Not that there's anything wrong with that; it just seems redundant.

To keep abreast of Mars news, see my Mars site. It's unabashedly all Mars, all the time.

Meanwhile . . .

The FAO Schwartz on the Plaza is going out of business. This is a heartening development, sparing shoppers the seizure-inducing "theme music" that spills from the store's central totem: a twitching plastic monument to prepubescent greed certified to send even the most media-saturated among us clutching at their hair in minutes. (And if that's not enough, there's also an animatronic dinosaur who speaks in "ebonics.") Places like FAO deserve to die prolonged deaths.

Across the street, George Brett's (neighborhood sportsbar meets casual elegance) has opened up, framed in dappled blue neon. Not a place I plan on going. I find quasi-religious worship of sports icons scary as hell. Of course, on the other end of the Plaza there's The Granfalloon, named after a word coined by none other than Kurt Vonnegut. If The Granfalloon actually had a Vonnegut theme I don't think I could stop myself from going, but -- sadly -- it's just another noisy (if nicely designed) place where you're lucky to get a decent seat and nobody knows who Kurt Vonnegut is.