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 . . .