CHICANONAUTICA FACES THE ARIZONA/AMERICA CONFLICT WITH A COUNTRY SOUNDTRACK

Here I go again, shooting my mouth off in Chicanonautica over at La Bloga about the latest developments in the conflict between my home state and my native land, hoping it doesn't turn into a shooting war.

To lighten things up over here at Mondo Ernesto, I'm reaching out to the Anglo community, and presenting some country music extras. Why not? My grandfather always said he loved, “shit-kicking music.” And to quote my dad, “I'm country – it doesn't matter which side of the border.”

Let's start with an oldie – singing cowboy Gene Autry doing buckaroo Cole Porter's classic of nostalgia for the days when Westerners didn't like the idea of fences ruining their wide-open spaces:

I'd love it if someone translated it into Spanish and recorded it ranchera-style.

Unfortunately, these days things are different along the frontier (it means “border” – somehow crossing a frontier is The American Way, but crossing a border is a crime). Kind of crazy, actually. Getting psycho, as Eddie Noack warned:

I just might end up like this, the way Porter Wagoner said, with an eloquent use of the echo chamber:

And I'll leave you with Johnny Paycheck and this touching tale of folks learning to get along in bar in Texas:

AND THE GREAT PENIS RIP-OFF GOES ON

For those of you younger folks out there, back in the Nineteen-Hundreds, “rip-off” was slang for “steal” . . .

Sometimes I have to remind myself that I am a successful writer. Even though I may look like just another Chicano with a baseball cap and a pickup truck driving back and forth across the Metro Phoenix Area, trying to scrape together a living, I've published novels and short stories. People have said that they liked them. Hell, some of them have gotten kinda, sorta famous.

Or maybe that should be “infamous.”

Especially, one called “The Frankenstein Penis.”

It was back in the Eighties. The Nineteen-Eighties. I had published a few things – art and writing -- but still couldn't make that into any kind of steady income. I still believed in that Holy Grail of making a money off my creative pursuits. As a result, I was broke and desperate.

Then I found out that Hustler was paying five thousand dollars for a short story. What was I doing wasting my time with these penny-ante science fiction magazines? I studied the magazine, and like a true professional, came up with “The Frankenstein Penis” – an exercise in crass commercialism as filtered through my twisted mind.

Hustler rejected it. So did every other sleazy men's mag I sent it to.

Later I found out that Rudy Rucker and Peter Lamborn Wilson were doing an anthology and were asking for, among other things, “All-Meat Science Fiction.” That seemed to describe my story so I submitted it, and it was published in Semiotext(e) SF along with William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Philip José Farmer, Robert Sheckley, Robert Anton Wilson, and many more writers who are still alive.

It instantly was recognized as the most outrageous of a collection of outrageous stories. Look, Ma! I'm avant garde! Factsheet Five, called it “William Burroughs on steroids.”

It was reprinted in Penthouse Hot Talk, illustrated with an H.R. Giger painting.

Fastforward to the late Nineteen-Nineties, when I first went online. I found an unauthorized translation posted that was also published in a Greek Cyberpunk anthology. The people responsible didn't answer my e-mail.

Later there was a Brazilian Portuguese version of Semiotext(e) SF called Futuro Prohibido. Nobody told me about or sent money for this either. So I just kept slaving away at Borders.

Then I found reviews of a student film called “Phal-O-Krat” that had the same plot my story. I e-mailed Nick Lyon, the director. He begged me not to sue him, and said that he was giving me half-ownership in the film. He did sent me a copy of the DVD, Hellchild: The World of Nick Lyon where it was a special feature . No money, but I could add a film to my résumé.

Recently, I mentioned the film to someone who was curious about it, so I looked it up online again and found yet another student film, this one from Brazil, called “Pênis Frankenstein.” It does not mention me in the credits, but the film is essentially a scene-by-scene (with some slight changes) telling of my story.

So not only has one of my stories been filmed, but there is remake!

I wonder if there are any other student films out here? I don't even want to think about porno versions . . .

And, while preparing this post, I found a link to the whole story in English.

Still no, money, but that's how they treat writers in Twenty-First Century. I guess the moral to this sad tale is, write about a monster penis, and the whole word will want to rip it off.

RAW FEED FROM THE BORDERS BANKRUPTCY

I can now say it. Yes, I was a Borders employee.

I've never admitted it here at Mondo Ernesto. I wasn't ashamed of it or anything. It's just that Borders -- on more than one occasion – had me sign a “document” promising that I would not reveal “confidential company information,” and they were especially concerned with this happening on blogs.

This is why I, and my wife Emily, have not mentioned where we worked, and have not evoked the name Borders.

However, as of quite recently, we are no longer Borders employees.

No, we didn't suddenly go insane and quit to pursue our personal interests full-time. The stores where we work were among those that Borders agreed to close as part of its bankruptcy.

It wasn't really a surprise. Working for Borders had become so Kafkaesque I was wondering if the folks at corporate were really giant cockroaches, madder than Captain Ahab chasing Moby Dick. Corporate gobbledegook was more important than profits. They were merrily throwing away millions while harping at us over nickel and dime issues. It was just a matter of time before the train wreck happened. We had gone down to working part time, and were looking for other work.

I was obsessively following Borders on the stock market and reading news stories, looking for clues as to what was going on. It was the most horrifying cliff-hanger I ever got caught up in. First, I thought this was just the antics of a flakey bookstore chain run by ex-hippies and English majors who didn't know any better, but soon it became clear that this is the way a lot of businesses are run these days. And if it continues, the results will . . . well . . . the word “apocalyptic” comes to mind.

I knew the bankruptcy was coming. What I didn't see was how widespread its effect would be.

The morning of the bankruptcy, I woke up, reached for my iTouch, and got into the Stocks app, as had become my habit. There they were, several news stories saying that Borders had finally declared bankruptcy. I leapt over to the desktop and checked Google News, and stories about Borders were popping up faster than a raging virus.

We didn't think both our stores would be closed. Maybe only one of us would be left jobless. Certainly not both of us. I had once joked that maybe Borders would simply decide to pull out of Arizona completely – it seemed funny and unlikely at the time.

Then I found a list of stores to be closed. Both of ours were on it. And a lot of other Arizona stores, too.

I showed it to Em, saying, “I don't know how accurate this is.” You have to be careful in these situations. The first reports are usually wrong.

Other stories didn't match – as usual. An interactive map of the doomed stores had mine, but not Em's.

But eventually it became clear that both of our stores, and most of the Borders in the Metro Phoenix area, were not long for this world.

When Em called her store to ask what was happening, they hadn't even heard the news yet. Corporate didn't even bother to call them.

So – we are no longer Borders employees. For the time being we work for the liquidation company, manning the registers, doing customer service, and reshelving what is left of the merchandise. It's kind of like working in Hell after all the fires have been put out.

Our co-workers are shocked. No one thought that the “reorganization” would be so devastating.

Customers are shocked, too. They weren't plugged into the shitstorm. A chunk of their world – one that they enjoyed – has been torn away.

They keep asking me if I'm all right, and to tell the truth, I am. I have another job lined up. I have stories in Space Horrors and 2020 Visions and my contributors copies of Tales of the Talisman, with my story, “The Great Mars-A-Go-Go Mexican Standoff” and the galleys from Analog for “Death and Dancing in New Las Vegas” arrived this week. I lost track of the number of editors I am communicating with. I'll land on my feet, and go on in the brave new world.

But a lot of other people are hurting.

And now that I'm not a Borders employee, I am free to tell all. It'll make for some passionate blogging, and maybe an ebook.

Besides all the dirt on Borders, I have all these weird, funny adventures as a bookstore clerk that I can now share without fear of accidentally revealing any “confidential company information.” And I think we could all use some laughs.

THE GREAT MARS-A-GO-GO MEXICAN STANDOFF IS AVAILABLE!

This just in! Tales of the Talisman, Volume 6, Issue 3, with my story "The Great Mars-A-Go-Go Mexican Standoff" is available to order! Thrill to this action-packed pulp sci-fi adventure, in which Spike Gershwin, operative of the Trans-Solar Detective Agency, and song-and-dance man, takes on a case gets him knocked around, but shifts the balance of power of the Solar System!

Here's how it begins:

My phone tickled my skull at exactly the wrong time.

My big break had come. I was all decked out in a fully articulated, interactive monster suit, ready to step in and play the lead in the classic musical comedy Gojira because the has-been soap-heart- throb that Cruzarama had cast in the role had actually—I kid you not—broken his leg in an extracurricular performance with a female passenger. Or maybe it had something to do with her husband walking in on them? Anyway, as the understudy, I was called upon to put on the suit and knock ‘em dead singing, dancing, and demolishing our autorebuildable scale-model twentieth-century Tokyo set.

Too bad working as an understudy in Cruzarama’s Mars-A-Go-Go was just my cover.

CHICANONAUTICA GOES BEYOND HIGH AZTECH

My new Chicanonautica at La Bloga remembers my novel High Aztech, wonders if it was prophetic and what the hell’s going on this crazy world right now. Mondo Ernesto features examples of the sort of stuff that makes people say the world is becoming more and more like one of my stories -- which, if you think about it, is a terrifying concept.

But first, let me set the record straight. When I wrote High Aztech, I hadn’t heard of or seen the film México 2000 that predicted not only cell phones and ringtones, but people like the Huichols using them.

And who would have thought that, in the year 2011, the Tamalli Space Charros would be navigating their Tamalli Spaceship through the blizzard-blasted streets of Chicago and serving up piping-hot futuristic versions of preColumbian cuisine -- and stridentist performance art?

Or that out of Los Angeles de SoCal, since 1989, Aztlán Underground would be creating recombocultural music that offers spiritual advice for the new millennium?

Or that out of San Anto, Téjas, Alvaro Itzli Ramirez of Los Nahuatlatos would be getting down with the help of a tattooed Aztecoid princess?

And from Cuidad Méjico, D.F./ Tenochitlán, La Capital Azteca, the largest urban center on the planet, Xipe Totec -- named after the Aztec corn god to whom beautiful young men were flayed alive so priests could dance in their skins -- explodes with the power of a sonic weapon.

I leave you with an ancient precedent for all this: real Aztec sonic mind-control technology. Listen at your own risk, and hang onto your cerebral cortexes . . .

SCIENCE FICTION TO MAKE YOU TO GO “YIKES!”

A video clip from an unidentified source:

Aerial view of mountains in a desert area much like that on both sides of the US/Mexican border. The camera flies over an area of thick vegetation. Zoom in. It is an illegal marijuana farm. Bombs are dropped. The plants burst into flames.

Still burning, they begin to walk.

* * * *

“Helicopters still fill the sky as the sun sets on this Easter Sunday, near the border crossing in Nogales, Arizona. A smoky haze lingers. Tanks patrol debris-filled streets. Overturned, burned-out vehicles block the last of the post-Spring Break/Holy Week traffic that mysteriously erupted into violence yesterday. Bits and pieces of demolished piñatas are everywhere. . .”

“Hijo de la chingada!” said Victor Theremin, science fiction writer and consultant to AI manifestations of the Singularity. He looked up from the screen of his Universal Mobile Interface, and focused on his latest intern.

Izzi practiced martial arts moves in front of one of the giant stone effigies on Rapa Nui, AKA Easter Island. She wore only green body paint. She looked like a giant praying mantis. The idea that she could kill him with her bare hands made their intimacies all the more ecstatic. “Me or whatever you’re watching?”

The above is the beginning of my story Radiation is Groovy, Kill the Pigs from the anthology 2020 Visions edited by Rick Novy. It made one sweet reviewer go “Yikes!” But isn't that what science fiction is supposed to do?

That was what it was for back in my Atomic Age youth. But in the Post-Star Wars world, I often heard people say things like, “I love sci-fi because I always know what's going to happen and it never disturbs me.”

Now we seem to be entering a third age, one that doesn't yet have a name, one that has us all looking over our shoulders and wondering when the next bombshell is going to hit. We're entering uncharted territory, folks -- and it's crashing down out of the sky.

Or as the conquistador Cabeza de Vaca said: “Such is the power of necessity that we should thus hazard a turbulent sea, none of us knowing anything about navigation.”

For me, science fiction has never been about escapism, but about helping you be ready to live in a world of rapid, unexpected change, to face the unknown on a daily basis. It is a survival tool for living in the future. And the future is always closer than you think.

That's how I felt when I was a kid. Godzilla and hordes of atomic monsters helped us grow up knowing that a nuclear war could vaporize us at any moment. Marvel comics taught us that radiation could be a groovy thing. That which blew our minds only served to make us stronger.

Though I do understand needing a break from the nerve-shredding stress-storm. As Victor Theremin said, later in the opening of Radiation is Groovy, Kill the Pigs:

“Even I need quiet and solitude every now and then. It helps me sort through the chaos so I can reconstruct it into something even more amazing.”

Izzi walked over to one of the effigies and started to climb up to its chin. “Science fiction.”

“For lack of a better term.”

THE CRITICS ARE COMING! THE CRITICS ARE COMING!

2020 Visions has been out a while, and the reviews are coming in. Some writer's dread this. I look forward to it like a bullfighter urging the bull to charge. After all, isn't this all about the paso doble with the dangerous universe?

Yeah, I know, sometimes reviewers, or “critics,” (it depends on their pretensions) do things besides declare how brilliant you are -- but remember, no matter what they say, they are providing publicity. Any press is good press, as they said in the low-tech past. As long as they spell your name right and give the information that will help the reader buy your work, they are doing you a favor.

Besides, as a self-promoting writer, it is your right, and in fact your duty, to exploit them.

I've been doing it ever since I used the fact that someone had put down my first published story as an excuse to disrupt an interview with Norman Spinrad on KPFK's Hour 25. It's easy. It's fun.

Examiner.com's Josh Vogt did me a disservice by not mentioning Radiation is Groovy, Kill the Pigs in his review of 2020 Visions. Maybe he's one of those “If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all” guys. Guess I'l have to try to be more offensive in the future.

Josh did day some good things about my wife's story, “If the Sun's at Five O'Clock, It Must be Yellow Daisies.” He did feel the need to warn that is was, “Not for the squeamish, or anyone who gets nervous around insects.” A great quote! Em, honey, ya gotta use that!

I remember the days when science fiction was all about getting upclose and personal with things like Bug Eyed Monsters. What happened? When did the wimps infiltrate the nerds?

Harry Markov in Rise Reviews also praised Em's story – he also devoted a paragraph to Radiation is Groovy, which he enjoyed even though he found it flawed. He's obviously used to following stories at a safe distance rather than hopping on and hanging on for dear life through the wild ride. I will make use of his “It crossed boundaries, went down the rabbit hole and provoked an emotional reaction.” Also: “. . . an insane pacing, and insane plot . . .”

An “emily” via goodreads didn't like Radiation is Groovy at all. It “. . . almost made me give up on the book . . . Yikes.”

I posted the quotes about my story on Facebook right away. Interestingly enough, it was “emily's” putdown that got a reaction: Jetse de Vries, editor of the Shine anthology, and DayBreak Magazine said, “That kind of comment makes me want to read your story!”

Face it, these days anybody can set themselves up as reviewer, or even a “critic.” Use them, abuse them, distort the meaning of their words. They are just another piece of equipment in your writer's toolbox.

KEEP ARIZONA WEIRD!

Arizona has been taking a beating lately. Between immigration laws and mass shootings, people have asked how I can stand to live here. The truth of the matter is, I love it. After all, this is the burning desert that I crossed to find my true love.

My wife sung the state's praises in her blog. Once again, she's inspired me. She concentrated on the state's natural beauty and wonders. I'm gonna be my usual perverse self and concentrate on things unnatural.

Sitting on top of the geological chaos, with botanical madness growing through, as meteorological fury blazes above -- all that inspired Percival Lowell, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, and me to dream of Mars -- there's all kinds of stuff in Arizona that is the result of human beings living in a place that stresses their bodies and does bizarre things to their brains.

Influences of the outside world – I'm talking California and the Midwest (Mexico is Arizona on steroids) – threaten to cover over this weirdness in corporate/Hollywood franchised plastic-flavored blandness. Em and I used to eat at a place called Pancho's that was across the street from La Cucaracha and Ammo For Less. We used to live near an intersection that had a three-story tower of toilets and a pink building with the word TOPLESS in fat, black letters across the front. Sadly, those are gone.

There are still sections of Phoenix where colorful, hand-painted signs blend with murals and graffiti, clusters of stop-lights arc over complex intersections in displays of naked technology, while freight trains chug past mounts of glittering scrap metal.

Atlantis Mariscos is still around even though the night club that twenty years ago had a mural with flying pyramids is long gone.

Getting away from the Metro Phoenix Area and the ancient Hohokam canal system, roadside weirdness abounds, from wild datura jungles, to curious encampments with fences made from discarded car hood and doors. The roadkill gets hard to identify: Sasquatch? Chupacabra?

Route 66 takes you through some true Americana that Norman Rockwell never painted. The land of cowboys, Indians, hot rods, and UFOs beckons. Keep a look out for the chipping, decaying hand-painted billboards advertising businesses that may or may not still exist. There's eccentric architecture from Arcosanti to the Mystery Castle. And ruins from cultures that traded with the Maya.

And there are those who would like to sell it all to developers so they could dynamite down all the hoodooistic mountains, then fill the desert up with tract housing and shopping malls with the same stores from more civilized parts of America, so the immigrants from Back East can feel at home.

Of course, they'll have to do something about the temperature.

Meanwhile, I am happy to live here in Aztlán, the Aztec homeland, as a proud citizen of the Seven Cities of Cibola.

I put my trust in the ancient Thunder God who still rules the Superstition Mountains. I'm sure the messages along the Hieroglyphic Trail assure us that the traditions going back until before the Ice Age will continue.

Besides, how can corporate Americarama compete with the mutant Gila Monsters?

CHICANONAUTICA SEES AN ARIZONA SPECTER

This time Chicanonautica is a special report for La Boga from Arizona, in response to the tragic shootings in Tucson, and offers a glimpse at things not yet explained by modern science. Here at Mondo Ernesto, I'm offering extras to change the mood, and maybe provide some healing.

Question Mark and the Mysterians have some hoodoo that can help, but in all due respect, 96 tears may not be enough:

Next, let us turn to the wisdom of that great Twentieth-Century philosopher, Popeye the Sailor, for his take on conflict resolution:

And finally, this masterpiece of the ridiculous and the sublime, to help us all take that next leap of faith into an uncertain world:

THE GRAVEN IMAGE BUSINESS

My career as a commercial artist began with Mr. Velasco's Haunted Psycho House. He was a Spanish teacher at Edgewood High back in West Covina, and an old-fashioned Mexican American who took the word Chicano as the insult it was originally intended to be. He loved to exploit his students. The Haunted Psycho House was his way of doing it around Halloween.

As the cartoonist for the school paper, I was suggested to him to design the ad to appear in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. Oh boy! My first professional art job! And he promised to pay me ten dollars! I did everything thing according to Mr. Velasco's specifications, including the skeleton with the axe through the skull and the visible fangs on the bats. I was trying to be as pro as I could be.

It was a thrill seeing my art in the local newspaper. But weeks went by, and no sign of that ten dollars that Mr. Velasco promised me. When I approached him in the hallway about it, he said he was busy, in a hurry . . . I began to wonder if I would need to borrow a switchblade to get my money.

Eventually (without a switchblade), I cornered him in his classroom, blocking the door.

“Uh!” He patted his own pockets. “I don't have my receipt book!”

“I need the money now!” There was a science fiction convention that weekend.

He found a piece of scratch paper, hand wrote an impromptu receipt, and had me sign it. Then, he pulled out his wallet, fished out a dogeared, moth-eaten ten dollar bill, and handed it to me.

I felt cheated.

Later I told this story to fellow student. Instead of being sympathetic, he beamed and blurted: “Wow! You got ten whole dollars just for drawin' a pitchur!”

For years afterward, I tried like hell to become a successful commercial artist. I had some minor success with some cartooning and illustration, but found that, in the long run, most clients were a lot like good ol' Mr. Velasco when it came to paying for artwork. Some of them were even worse.

I put it all on a back burner for a couple of decades, and just did surrealistic psychograms for my own amusement -- and to keep my chops.

Recent technological developments have made self-publishing more viable than ever before. I'm getting into that because I have all these books and stories lying around. Being an artist/cartoonist can come in handy – I don't have to hire myself.

Then a friend pointed out that a lot of writers who are getting into epublishing are having a hard time getting cover art and illustrations.

It took a while for it to sink in, but soon I realized that there is a growing, viable market here. And one where I have lots of contacts.

If I could figure out a way to quickly generate usable images, using a method similar to the way I create my blog illustrations, I could sell the rights at reasonable rates.

You like this monster drawing I scanned from my sketchbook? I could put the title of your book and your name right there! You want bats with visible fangs, too? Sure, why not? Why don't we throw in a skeleton with an axe through the skull, too?

Of course, if the authors want me to peruse their entire manuscript, meditate on it, and come up with an elaborate Work of Art, that'll cost more . . . but if I can knock something out in day or so, and get payment comparable to what I get slaving away at an infernal corporate bookstore . . .

There goes my brain, rushing off again. I better get to the laboratory, and do some experiments. Bwoo-hoo-hoo-ha-ha-ha-ha!