Last-minute Xmas shopping thoughts

by RudyG

You've only got 3 shopping days left and it's almost too late to do anything except run out to the corner Walgreen's and buy something that fulfills your obligation, but will be so lame that everyone will know you ran out to Walgreen's at the last minute. Here's what you can do to make it look like you at least tried and you also get to blame something else (like the post office) for not having a physical present for unwrapping.

BTW, I begged Santa, but my Chicano fantasy book didn't make Gustavo Arellanos' Ask-A-Mexican Christmas shopping list. So what? Use what's below and help me make Gustavo regret he left me off that list.

1. The Closet of Discarded Dreams, a Chicano fantasy novel in paperback

If you're in the Denver Metro area, the first offering is a copy of my book delivered either to you or the recipient. Bargain price of $15 and I'll pay for deliver, autographed. It also comes with a set of Closet drink coasters and a bookmark. Order quick and you can have it by Xmas.

Outside the Denver area, I will pay postage, but it won't get there until after Xmas. In the meantime, you could print out the book cover, stick it in an envelope with a nice note and blame its late arrival on the post office. For all locations, I'll throw in some minimal gift-wrapping. I'll add a personalized note on the title page at no cost.

Contact me at the book website thru the Contact the Author box.

2. Revista Iguana

Nov.-Dec. 2012 issue, with my story El Viaje de Clarisa

If you need a present for an elementary school-aged kid who's bilingual, order a copy of my children's fable in Spanish about a little girl ant whose life is one struggle after another.

About $5 with postage. Contact them for details. It won't arrive in time for Xmas, but you can print out a copy of this cover and claim that it was just released, which is why it's late.

3. The Closet of Discarded Dreams, a Chicano fantasy novel, the EBook format

This one you can get in time for Xmas, if your recipient has or will receive an electronic reader. Plus, it's 25% off, or cheap at $4.47. It will make you look hi-tech savvy and trendy a la chicanada at the same time.

Go here, and at check out, enter coupon code 12PE9NGO4MDS  for 25% off your ebook order.

Formats available: epub (Nook compatible), pdf, mobi (Kindle compatible), lit (Microsoft Reader), and pdb (Palm).

The code is good until 12-31-2012.

4. Crossing the Path of Tellers anthology, with my SW fantasy story Memorabilia

Been looking for that perfect cheap book from Romania? This is it! It's $7.90, eligible for free shipping from Amazon. I haven't read the other stories, but Memorabilia tells the story of a mexicano shaman whose springcleaning of his cabin ends up in a battle with a Navajo water monster and an almost clean adobe. Print out this cover, stick it in the envelope, etc.

Obviously, you could also order other works by La Bloga's authors, of which there are many worthy as presents. In each case, order something, print out the cover, and look a little sheepish--when the envelope is torn open around the Xmas tree--because there's just paper inside. Or you could hold yourself proud that you're better than your brother who's giving everybody something from Walgreen's.

Support the Chicano classic Bless Me, Última

If you haven't read Manuel Ramos's article on the upcoming film version of Rudy Anaya's classic novel, go here. As Ramos says, we need to support Chicano lit in all its forms, especially when it's about to hit the Big Screen!

I can't find info on a release date, so anyone with info, please add that to Comments below.

Tomando / tokeando any holiday season

This is probably your last worry this time of year, but it might be the first thing--besides avoiding Walgreen's--Not to get a DUI, a contemporary American hysteria that Chicanos too suffer from. Below are excerpts from a Lewis Lapham article, Why the War on Drugs Is a War on Human Nature that's worth a read.

Since I'm of the belief that DUI-paranoia is greatly responsible for the death of affordable live music that once blared in our neighborhoods, I present this for informational purposes only. Celebrating American-style historically has not been tea-drinking time. So, if Walgreen's doesn't have everything you need, there's still time to make another stop. Take these words as you will.

"Martin Luther, early father of the Protestant Reformation, in 1530 exhorts the faithful to 'drink, and right freely,' because it is the devil who tells them not to. 'One must always do what Satan forbids. What other cause do you think that I have for drinking so much strong drink, talking so freely, and making merry so often, except that I wish to mock and harass the devil who is wont to mock and harass me.' ”

"The French poet Charles Baudelaire, prodigal son of the Industrial Revolution, is less careful with his time. 'One should always be drunk. That’s the great thing, the only question. Drunk with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please.' ”

"The founders of the republic in Philadelphia in 1787 were in the habit of consuming prodigious quantities of liquor as an expression of their faith in their fellow men--pots of ale or cider at midday, two or more bottles of claret at dinner followed by an amiable passing around the table of the Madeira."

"The lyrics of the Star-Spangled Banner were fitted to the melody of an eighteenth-century British tavern song."

"Alcohol’s job is to replace creation with an illusion that is barren. 'The words a man speaks in the night of drunkenness fade like the darkness itself at the coming of day.' ”

"The policies of zero tolerance equip local and federal law-enforcement with increasingly autocratic powers of coercion and surveillance (the right to invade anybody’s privacy, bend the rules of evidence, search barns, stop motorists, inspect bank records, tap phones) and spread the stain of moral pestilence to ever larger numbers of people assumed to be infected with reefer madness -- anarchists and cheap Chinese labor at the turn of the twentieth century, known homosexuals and suspected Communists in the 1920s, hippies and anti-Vietnam War protestors in the 1960s, nowadays young black men sentenced to long-term imprisonment for possession of a few grams of short-term disembodiment."

Feliz, Merry, Próspero, Happy, y Suerte,

RudyG (sent from my IPhone, camped out in front of Walgreen's waiting for it to open