The Happy Mutant Handbook

by Gareth Branwyn, Carla Sinclair, Mark Frauenfelder

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1573225029
• ISBN13: 9781573225021
• Release Date: November 1995
• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Length: 205 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 8.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

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 jamming" was. But my eyes were opened, and my life has gone all *kinds* of strange and wonderful new directions, all because of the resources in this incredible little book. It's a damn shame it's out of print, but it's howling for a sequel. How about it, Carla?

Looney Anarchy with a Side of Jello-O

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.

This book is pretty darn good

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.

Too Much Fun Is Never Enough

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!

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. Now we have names. We are Happy Mutants. We delight in the wonderful weirdness, and dark back-coners of culture. This new wonderful book (no assembly required) will allow your inherent whimsey rise to the surface and awaken a bizarrity that you never knew existed. The new hobbies, activites, and general attitudes presented within will tickle your uvula, and leave you standing in the humidifying mist of the Gods