After I get back from my SoCal trip for my mom's 90th birthday day, Emily and I will be going off on our annual, belated anniversary jaunt—it’s our 35th!—to get away from all the New Year’s fireworks. I’m not being metaphorical, it sounds like a war zone, and smells like one for days after.
So, this is going to be a disjointed assemblage of statements about entering 2025, illustrated with random SoCal photos.
Not that I’m trying to be some kinda avant-garde, but if the soleless shoe fits . . . Besides, things I do just come out that way. I can’t help it, and there’s no known cure, so please give to the Save Ernest Hogan Fund.
And doesn’t 2025 sound sci-fi as all hell? One of the advantages of being an aging sf (that’s what we called it back in my day when the troops were in Nam and Nixon was the president) fan is that the news keeps sounding like a collaboration between Philip K. Dick, the Firesign Theater, J.G. Ballard, and William S. Burroughs that Harlan Ellison would have been afraid to put in The Last Dangerous Visions. It freaks a lot of folks out, but I find it entertaining.
Speaking of The Last Dangerous Visions, I got me a copy. I plan on reading it slowly and sending out dispatches as I go. Stay tuned.
I started work on my “Once Upon a Time in a Mass Deportation” story but decided to put it on hold for a while. I could easily finish it now, but the way things are developing—Iike all these mysterious drones all over the country--I feel I should wait, take notes, watch some Jodorowsky, Buñuel, and Godard,and get ready to turn my imagination loose like a bull into the ring.
We don’t need neat little stories that are easy to follow, from a safe distance. We need savage brutes so we can jump on their backs, hang on for dear life, and see what bizarre territory they take us to. Give us wild rides, or nothing at all!
I just agreed to do more Palabras del Pueblo classes and will be sending my unpublished stories out to try to get them published and make more money.
All while trying to find time to amuse myself. I need to stay amused. And my tastes are unconventional.
Good thing all I’ll have to do is look out the window to see all kinds of weird shit going down.
Some of it will be on fire. Hope none lands on me. But you can never be sure about these things.
And I refuse to be depressed!
