BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE FANTASY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

This is another book that Tezcatlipoca wanted me to read. The title caught my eye, since I’m in the fantasy business myself. Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, A 500-Year History. Hmm. Could this Kurt Andersen guy have something here? It called to me from the library shelves, but do I have the time? 

Then I saw it super-cheap at Goodwill. Okay, okay, I can take a hint, you don’t have to send a nagual with a copy in its fangs to my door . . .

The good news is the American Dream is Alive and well, so sorry about that Hunter S. Thompson. The bad news is, it’s not what most people think it is.

It goes back over 500 years. When the Europeans “discovered” the so-called New World and decided that it was uninhabited even though people lived there. If you don’t consider them human, it looked empty. New. Ripe for the taking and filling up with . . . DREAMS!

The Founding Fathers had a fantasy of a world without kings, and their 13 colonies weren’t big enough, so they took most of the northern continent. People from all over liked the idea that you could be free to believe anything you want. The fantasy-industrial complex was born. 

From that perspective, American history makes sense. It’s the one thing that all American dreamers, from hippies to Puritans, have in common. Fantasyland is possibly the best American history book ever.

There are problems with this. One is that this diversity of dreams leads to conflict—a lot of these beliefs-systems want to destroy all others. Your utopia is always someone else dystopia—and when you believe in something that doesn’t jibe with reality, sooner or later, something’s gotta give.

Our technology allows you to fine-tune your input so you seem to be living the dream of your choice, and everything else is just Fake News. People are also capable of believing anything. But as Philip K. Dick said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it doesn’t go away.”

I’ve said that in elections we vote for the future we’d prefer. Politicians are the sales force of the fantasy-industrial complex. They are just as delusional as the voters/consumers. 

And a side-effect is that nowadays people will believe anything. Especially if it appeals to your hopes and desires. What you want to hear is always hard to reject.

Yes, I’m talking about Trump, and so does Anderson.

A country running on fantasy is doomed. Like it or not, policies—like the best fantasies—need to be rooted in reality. As a science fiction writer, I know that well. We need a reality-based America, society, civilization. 

I’m not saying that we should stop pursuing dreams–that is, after all, what really makes America great—but we need to keep in touch with reality. I’m reminded of an Islamic saying, “Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel.”

Meanwhile the fantasy-industrial complex keeps grinding out product, we’re stuck in a world of clashing fantasies, and reality isn’t going away.

Do you know where your camel is?

CHICANONAUTICA SENDS DISPATCHES FROM THE XICANXFUTURISM/CIBERBANDIDX FRONT

 

It's all about what's happening now in Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga.

Something's up with hurricanes:

 Class has been canceled:

 The midterms are coming:

 And the more things change the more they stay the same:

WEIRD CLOULDSCAPES AND DEFIANT FLOWERS

Almost as important as staying hydrated, remembering that 100 degrees and below are still hot. 

Yeah, you made it through 117, and this doesn’t feel bad, but there you go on your merry way under the blazing sun and suddenly you're sprawled in the dirt waiting for a helicopter to take you away.

I know, it’s supposed to be Fall, but this is the Metro Phoenix Area, and the climate is a-changing. Summer is hanging on.

There are clouds. Weird clouds. 

Bubbling up around the jagged edges of the Valley of the Sun. Erupting with molten colors in both sunrise and sunset.

Which is it? Is the Earth spinning in the right direction? Is time flowing in the right direction? Going too fast, or slowing down to the Heat Death of the Universe?

And what’s with all these flowers? 

Colors from the clouds splattering down.

Sage purple long after Springtime. 

And a surviving fragment of my beloved Cereus Peruvianus Monstrose splooting forth a night-blooming flower.

The radiation dishevels them.

Another cactus casts a fierce shadow with a silent scream.

The proverbial dry heat has gone humid. 

Gotta love it all.

CHICANONAUTICA SMELLS CARLOS CASTANEDA'S VERY WEIRD SHIT

 

 

Chicanonautica reviews Ru Marshall's American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Castaneda, at La Bloga.

An amazing book:

Castaneda's books weren't true:

His life wasn't what he said:

 What are magical passes?

LOUISIANA HIPPOS AND ROWDY WRANGLERS

It’s a trickster universe. Sarah Gailey’s River of Teeth popped into my life, first when I was checking in new books at the library, but thought I was too busy, then when I saw something about the 1910 American Hippo Bill on Facebook the day before a copy of it came in through book drop. Tezcatlipoca must have wanted me to read that book.

So I checked it out and read it and was I ever impressed!

A rip-snorting action adventure in a very different alternate universe. Gailey pushed the importing of hippos to the Mississippi back to 1857 to put it more in the time period of the traditional “western” genre and if that wasn't enough, it’s packed with badass characters that are more diverse and gender fluid than Zane Grey or Louis L’Amour would have even tried. This is what I mean when I grumble about taking back the western (and the West) from its white supremacist/colonial practitioners.

(Check out “Lupita’s Hand” and “Pancho Villa’s Flying Circus” in my collection Guerrilla Mural of a Siren’s Song.)

Yeah, the domestication of (some) hippos would take a lot longer, if it is possible at all. In Africa, they are seen as dangerous predators rather than cute, cuddly cartoon critters. But it does make for a good story and the hippos come out as characters rather than props.

There were some things that I’m surprised weren’t explored in the book.

Like the whole reason that the hippos are imported is for meat. They're supposed to be good eatin’. I once saw a video where one was “accidentally” killed and people gathered around talking about how sad it was while breaking out butcher knives and setting up barbecues. How would this affect Louisiana cooking traditions? Hippo steaks, burgers, and even tacos—remember, Texas/Mexico is right next door.

And speaking of culture, would bringing in hunters who were experienced with hippos further Africanize the South? What would the Texas beef industry think about the competition? Think of the interstate range wars!

I was thinking that it would make a great movie when I ran across a new movie called Hungry—about killer hippos in Louisiana! Looks more like a horror/thriller than an alternate universe western and the hippos look like plastic, but is this becoming a thing?

But wait! Gailey has more of these hippo books. It’s a series. A franchise.

Maybe we’ll see a miniseries . . .

Maybe Trump will think it’s a good idea and send troops to Africa for a hippo roundup/war?

Then what? McDonald’s Hippoburgers? Southern Fried hippo nuggets? I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Hippo?

As a certain badass hermaphrodite once said, “A tasty world.”

CHICANONAUTICA MAKES ANCIENT CHICANO SCI-FI WISDOM NEW AND IMPROVED

Chicanonautica gets new and improved, over at La Bloga.

As in ancient:

  Chicano:

Sci-Fi:

Wisdom:

AIR-CONDITIONED DELIRIUM

It’s so hot a cactus exploded in my front yard. Now it looks like an empty alien egg sac, rotting in the heat, giving off an awful stench as whatever creature--or brood--it spawned wanders the neighborhood in search of sustenance. 

Thank Ehecatl for air-conditioning!

He’s the material aspect of Quetzalcoatl, the god of wind, air. Moving air. The gadgetry that cools and moves the air are his children. Some offerings or sacrifices, or at least some recognition, are in order.

Right now in Phoenix, the air is horrible. Not just the usual pollution, but lots of dust. The haboobs, storms so big that they fill the sky leave everything coated in dust. Ultra fine, in all the colors of dirt. Just try breathing it.

August in Arizona. We try to avoid going outdoors. We scurry from one air-conditioned environment to another, be they buildings or vehicles. It might as well be a Mars colony.

Knocks me into the world of my Paco Cohen, Mariachi of Mars novel.

What is a spacesuit, but a portable, one person air-conditioning unit? Maybe next year Amazon will be delivering them.

And I’ll be riding the bus for a while, due to the usual mechanical breakdowns. Air-conditioned environments on wheels. Sometimes it actually works.

The library where I work is in a postmodern ghost town next to I-17. A few businesses struggle to stay alive amid the abandoned buildings around the desert of grey rubble left where the Metrocenter mall was torn down, and there’s no sign of any work being done on the walkable village that a faceless corporate entity is supposed to be building. Occasional personages that look like extras from a Mad Max movie, some with bent spines, hobbling with walkers, wander the new urban wasteland. 

This is what the Wild West has become in 2026–surreal with overtones of the post-apocalyptic. I could be scouting locations for a science fiction movie, but not the Surrealistic Burrito Western of My Dreams. This would be a different movie, darker, but not in the visual sense. It's the mood. The visions I have are flooded with light–the deadly light of this dangerous summer, heavy on the invisible light that makes scorpions glow in the dark. 

Not noir, but ultraviolet. I just checked—it’s 112 degrees. 

Maybe it broke a record, I don’t care. We’re doing it so often than it's no big deal. 

When I scan headlines on Google News I get a horror fix and turn away. It’s like a random page torn from a William Burroughs novel, without the wit and gruesome fun.  Are we having the biggest, stupidest war of all time yet? 

Once back inside a properly air-conditioned environment I feel like making an offering to Ehecatl. In the old days, he accepted things like copal incense, obsidian, bird bones, and maguey thorns, conch shells, and monkey or duckbill effigies. None of those are handy. He also accepted blood offerings, but that’s too messy and would violate blood-born pathogen regulations. And just mentioning human sacrifice could have repercussions.

Maybe I should just give my thanks.

Also thank him for retrieving those bones from the Lord of the Dead, grinding them and breathing life into them, creating the current human race.

As a certain Nobel-prize winning rock star once said, “The answer my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.”

CHICANONAUTICA SEZ, "¡TONK YOU, ICE!"

 

We got tonk and ICE in Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga.

Couldn't find any video on the new tonk usage,but ICE is making the news:

And Tonk is also a new video game:

Maybe we need some honky along with all that tonk:

Be careful out there, because the boys may be getting new toys:

THE DREAMER, THE SCIENTIST, AND CARLOS CASTANEDA

I’m in the middle of Ru Marshall’s American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Castaneda and it’s got my brain buzzing. I’m going to have a lot to say when I finish. Meanwhile, here’s a close call I had with Castaneda’s universe that's too much to plug into a book review:

It was back in the Nineties. I was getting over being depressed by my career crashing and burning. My wife, Emily Devenport, and I were cleaning houses for a living. It amused me to muck around in the dirty corners of the disintegrating yuppie lifestyle.

Through some friends we met a woman I shall call the Dreamer. She thought that the X-Files were some kind of documentary. “When is he going to reveal what he really knows?” She’d say with wide-eyed wonder.

She was also a wannabe writer. The only problem was she couldn’t bring herself to write. When she did, the process was painful and she complained a lot. She seemed to think that we could help her.

She was also a big Castaneda fan. I’m pretty sure she moved to Arizona hoping it would help with her spiritual journey. She met a guy I shall call the Scientist in a Castaneda chatroom.

He really was a scientist. Worked for the City of Phoenix, analyzing the water supply. They were just friends, but the Dreamer was hoping for more.

She hoped a lot.

When Castaneda held one of his magical passes workshops, they had to go.

Emily and I landed the gig of cleaning and taking care of the Scientist’s house. He wanted the Sixties to “just die” but was also a hardcore Deadhead. A minimalist, he didn’t have much furniture, and only one chair. I don’t think he had a TV. And there were also two cats.

The retreat, workshop, whatever, sounded like a cult initiation to me. They controlled when and how much the participants could sleep and eat, had them do a lot of the “magical passes” that were calisthenic-type exercises. Brainwashing 101. Guaranteed to have an impact on bookish intellectuals who spend most of their lives sitting. 

Eventually, the witches would bring Carlos (they were all on a first-name basis by then) out to babble for hours.

At one point a young “Hispanic” man wearing a wolf-teeth necklace broke in, calling Carlos a phony, and declared that HE was the “New Nagual.” The kid was ushered out.

Carlos shrugged him off: “It must be nice to be so sure of things.”

Then the witches warned the participants not to take the drugs that Carlos wrote about. Just keep doing the magical passes. If they achieve something, the witches would know and contact them.

Though she didn’t say so, the Dreamer seemed to be disappointed, but then disappointment was her reaction to most things. She wanted power in the don Juan sense. But what did that mean?

When she wasn’t around, the Scientist said that she probably thought she would suddenly be able to lose 200 pounds overnight and fly.

He, on the other hand, thought it was a good time. “A yuppie lark.” (It wasn't cheap.) A break in the routine before getting back to the water analysis. He didn’t need no stinking power.

The Dreamer eventually moved to Oregon. I heard that she died about a decade ago. Did the witches ever come a-knocking? 

For all I know the Scientist is still analyzing the water.

Does anybody know what power is? Did the witches ever knock on anybody’s door?

 

CHICANONAUTICA GRUMBLES IN AN EXTREME HEAT WARNING

 

Chicanonautica is all about the heat, over at La Bloga.

The heat's on all over America:

In Arizona, we've got a monsoon with massive haboobs:

Dehydration is an issue:

 And we're cooking: