A whole generation has grown up with computers and cable, VCRs and voicemail. It's not surprising that a brand-new culture has blossomed--with its own jargon, its own style, and its own definition of fun. This is a full-color treasury of brain candy, eyeball kicks, and reality hacking projects, with tips on everything from joyriding on the information superhighway to running your car on kitchen grease.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
In the wrong hands, this book would receive a dousing of gasoline and a quick flick of the Bic. In the right hands, this is a delightfully subversive manual for a lifetime of fun.
This is the do-it-yourself handbook for enjoying our media-saturated world by tinkering with how it works. Pulls together the kookiest and most engaging ideas from the Internet, great suggestions on "culture jamming" (a practice of co-opting the resources, messages, and brain-washing machinery of existing media, pioneered by Adbusters magazine), and generally jam-packed with loads of fun ideas and funny material.
Notable contributors include Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, R.U. Sirius, Richard Kadrey, and that most prolific of all authors, Anonymous.
(Editor's note: In some ways, the Happy Mutant philosophy is the cyberspawn of the behavioral shenanigans of the Dadaists, Surrealists, or the lesser-known but more interesting Situationists. )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Do you laugh at authority, enjoy silly putty, get a kick outta kitsch, appreciate goofy pranks, take pride in being a do-it-yourselfer? Do your knees get weak over Water Wiennies, Sea Monkeys, Crazy Straws, or Esquivel? If you answered "yes" to a few or more of these then you are probably a happy mutant and this book is for you.
It's great. You'll find tips on building hacking, how to do "your" work while appearing to be doing "their" work, turning the tables on telemarketers, creating your own personal anti-marketing strategy, getting your zine seen, and The Urban Absurdist Survival Kit which offers official looking signs you can copy and stick around to confuse and amuse. It also includes character profiles of idiots you are likely to run into on the net, conveniently printed up as cards to cut out and keep handy for quick identification. Plus, articles on Ivan Stang, Roger Corman, Jim Ludtke, and Patch Adams (oooh, even scarier than Robin Williams).
Get your giggles off while undermining the Man. But, this book isn't all just fun and games, it contains a degree of seriousness, yet it is also serious fun. *The Happy Mutant Handbook* possesses teeth but when it nips it aims for the funny bone.
Buy this book, read it, play with it, give it a hug. You two kids could become really good friends.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By Willow
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Everything from prank calls, odd types of hacking, and Wham-o products to strange but simple foods, comix, and the Happy Mutant Hall of Fame, the Happy Mutant Handbook has most everything that the other 10% of the human population, who aren't Normals, could want to know. There are lots of fun little pranks that can always be used. One is standing in an elevator and giggling the entire time you're reading the phone book. It's quite entertaining and your able to read it again and again, each time knowing that there are actually other people like you out there. If there weren't this book wouldn't exist. So worship it and read it.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Mass Market Paperback
What appears to be, at first, a critique on pop culture, is instead a guidebook to subverting the dominant paradigm. Make your own diesel fuel. Start a newsletter. Adapt technology for more "creative" uses. Create your own conspiracy. This is one of the few books that actually make you want to go out and do something after you read it (or in my case, WHILE you read it). Highly, highly recomended. This might become the STEAL THIS BOOK of the 90's!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of my favorites.....
Back when paper zines were cool.....
An eclectic, entertaining, interesting and thought provoking collection of people, organisations and ideas expressed as only a... Read more
An eclectic, entertaining, interesting and thought provoking collection of people, organisations and ideas expressed as only a... Read more
Published on October 6, 2006 by Declan Murphy
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book changed my life, literally.
When I first read it, I had never before heard of the Cacophony Society, bOING bOING magazine, the Billboard Liberation Front or Burning Man, and I had no idea what "culture... Read more
Published on January 26, 2006 by squalorholla
5.0 out of 5 stars
This the best example of a fun self help ever writen!!
Because of the happy mutant handbook I know now that being weird is the best thing in the world!! It has made me look at the world in a whole new way. Read more
Published on March 11, 1999
5.0 out of 5 stars
this book changed my life!
I don't know why it took me so long to discover this gem...especially since I worked in a bookstore for the past three years. Read more
Published on March 29, 1998 by poppyred@ix.netcom.com
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book WILL get you into trouble
There is a ton of fun in here if you really are the type of person that this book was written for. And if you are that type of person, you will have the time of your life with the... Read more
Published on December 4, 1997 by jamesensor@mindless.com
5.0 out of 5 stars
So How Would Mannequins Look With Mustaches?
This book has warped my brain. Well, warped it more than it wasalready. When walking to work the morning after I finished it, I foundmyself wondering how the mannequins in the... Read more
Published on April 8, 1997
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nick bwut klarnee kwongo FLOO! Chumble chumble chumble.
No one seemd to get it. We would rampage the streets frightening the impressionable, and disturbing the normal. We all thought that we were loose cannons without a name. Read more
Published on February 20, 1997
5.0 out of 5 stars
The most craziest, most fun information I ever absorbed.
This book is the best book I have read in a long time.
If you find yourself constinly bored with the normal rat
race of life then these activities can provide a much... Read more
If you find yourself constinly bored with the normal rat
race of life then these activities can provide a much... Read more
Published on November 23, 1996
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Fan-bloody-Tastic handbook for all you weird people
I would classify this book as a extremly humorus, entertaining,
and all around cool handbook with information about all kinds
of hacking, bugging people, and just having... Read more
and all around cool handbook with information about all kinds
of hacking, bugging people, and just having... Read more
Published on November 17, 1996
4.0 out of 5 stars
a handbook for weirdness
The Happy Mutant Handbook describes some really bizarre
things, and people. If you've ever wanted to encourage your
own weirdness, you might find some ideas here. Read more
things, and people. If you've ever wanted to encourage your
own weirdness, you might find some ideas here. Read more
Published on November 13, 1996
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