This post lays out all the MTV background, gives links how it came about.

So that's that! I'll be heavily engaging a citizen journalist/filmmaker role in this coming year. In addition to this vlogger gig that will be taking up most of my time (cuz baby, if ya gonna do it, do it right), I may be co-writing a column in a Mexican newspaper. Still waiting to hear back about that, though I'm told it looks pretty good.

Finally, I will be finishing up a few graphic design jobs that I had hoped to finish in December, but you know—the GMO taco, again. I see them out of the way by January's end, Febrero at the latest.

The posts that once gave (and occasionally still do give) this blog such a distinctive feel—daily posts for a while that took about eight to ten hours each (or at least for the first post of the day), as well as a regular offering of grafiks that take a fair amount of time all on their own—will at least for the time being, be absent. (In fact, you don't need me to point out that they've been fading more and more since last summer, when I began to get more business in the world o' grafikal illusion-making).

I come from a world of books. I don't mean genetically. Or geographically. I mean words were magical objects to me when younger. It's hard for me to think of them as disposable, even when (in this realm) links rot and sites crash and pages move. When I think of writing, I still live a bit in the world where words are well-edited, often well-illustrated, and have literary merit. In that they are made by an artisan, a gifted and practiced hand; that they take a shape not just anyone could make. (Don't miss my meaning: I don't mean that these are the only people I think should be writing on the Internet! This is just how I train myself, how I think of it, how I happen to aim, when I write.)

This is how I've aspired to make words since my youth. In a way so that you can read them a year later, and don't need to understand that day's current events and don't need to have to follow too many links to be affected. That is not necessarily a "Web" or "Web 2.0" perception as I have learned it! Of course there is crossover and not just in this blog. (Some of mis blogmigos to be found on the sidebars of this blog's front page write pieces of equal literary merit.) But I think we can agree that the shape I describe is more from the "book" world. To this day, when I write a piece, a long piece that took a lot of thought and energy, I don't expect to have a huge hash-out in the thread that follows. I don't mind if people talk, and I don't mind talking after (unlike certain WaPo Ombudsmen you'll see me in most of my threads), but for the most part, I feel the post is a complete (though admittedly imperfect) world. I feel the post does its speaking in the body of the post, and I never have felt obligated to endlessly bat it around.

Hey. I even edit (sometimes a year later) to refine the language and flow...and don't feel the need to mark each edit an "update." Pretty old school, eh? Pretty fucking ballsy. Pretty damn blasphemous, actually. Here, at the Unapologetic Mexican, where todo el día is a new edition, baby!

Anyway, I can't dance here since the cabaret license was revoked, so let me keep moving.

I only came to blogs and blog communities in 2000, I think. This world where you just throw some words in a box and let it fade into yesterday without tooooo further thought. (This is a cat who still has every loveletter that his nineteen year old love wrote him, and copies of the snarky replies he sent to the phone company in 1994 when they began sending red notices instead of yellow ones.)

Blogs, eh? They are such an odd meeting of purposes. Diary and bulletin board and stack of notes and book and performance art all in one. No wonder we can't agree on what these things are for! But I laugh with them, oh knowing ephemeral hand of blogness. Thank you for the reminder.

So...that's the way I approach writing. Too much love! And even when I begin at four am, I'm still writing at noon or so! A full "day" writing! And it's not really enough. And it's not for any result. It's always been because I've loved it, needed to do it, needed to say it, needed to learn what I was writing down.

I guess this is sort of my way of tipping the sombrero to the work I've done here that won't be appearing much anymore. At least for the foreseeable future. Anything can happen. And I know I am not alone in the amount of work I pour into the maw of this beast. There are some very talented and energetic writers out here (did someone just clink a glass? how did i get into this dinner jacket?)

In the place of those long posts (or the regularity of the shorter ones that are more of a regular staple these days) will be my vlogs, and probably much shorter written posts. Nothing will be lost. All the energía de Nezua will still be cominatcha, but in a different shape, is all.

Speaking of shapes, for myself, I'm happy. It will get me moving a bit more. Too much work being done sitting on the ASS as far I'm concerned here. And well...I always need to change what I'm doing or wearing after too long. It feels right, this shift. I don't know where it will end. I don't even know that the MTV gig will last til November, or past this trip. Nothing is guaranteed on any level.

Still, this shift feels like a change that would have taken place in one shape or another.

As you'll see from some of my past entries (and the further back you go, the more you'll see it) I've done a lot of learning. Changing. Figuring things out. Well, you may not know it in all cases, but I do. I can see each point, I can see what I am engaging, and how much I've learned since. I can't promise I'd agree with everything I've written here at this point. No, hell with that. I can promise I disagree with a portion of it. I've always felt a bit odd about how blogs seem to offer some static definition of a self, while they are a really a log of changes. I know this is one reason why I personally make new ones every couple years (I've had a few since I began). And none of them have ever been one where I am consistent or constantly correct. That is not what I am about. I am about growing and changing. I fall asleep when the blood stand still. Give me fire, and motion, and banging on big empty hulls by dawn light. And then an empty path.

Pues, this is going on much longer than I planned. And is sounding like some kind of ...goodbye speech. Jeez. I'm all sad now with coffee. Let me get going because I need one day at least away from this glittering shark to prepare for the flight. Get my cookies in order.

As a tribute to the vast amount of time I used to have to write on this thing and to the sheer volume of heart and sweat I've poured into this blog, as well as showing people who are new to this page what kind of work built this thang and to give you some reading to do in the near-week I'm gone AND as a way of saying adios to the Old Blog That We Were, I now list some links of past posts that I feel are...worth at least momentarily remembering and grouping from the larger and comprehensive Archive page.

• Mel Rolls His Drunken Orb Toward Mexico Oh, when I first read up on Mel Gibson's treatment of my ancestors, I was truly grossed out. An early UMX satire, this was the post that yanked the eyes of publisher Laura Molina my way.

• Mexicans Stand Up For What is Right. - Back in the beginning of the blog, when I began offering my own reshaping of the memes out here, those ugly anti-Mexican ones that have been around all my life.

• Mi Familia [3] - Juanita, Beto, Chente - An early Mi Familia entry. This entry reunited parts of my familia that had been looking for each other for many years. Much happened off the page, after the comments you see there. I feel huge beyond my tiny self in having been allowed to play this part to reconnect some of my familia with no such intent. I just wrote it as I wrote the rest of this blog. To grow. To learn. To do something to satisfy something in me left lacking.

• Mi Familia [4] -The Grand American Dream and El Barco de la Ilusión - Another entry in the Mi Familia series. But these were new and strong and needed when I did them. It was a raw and important part of this blog's lifespan, I feel.

• Ask Nezua 1: How Do I Get Rid of The Mexicans? - This was maybe when I first began replying with humor to the onslaught of hostility that awaits you when you present as I do, online. Or...just having a blog with a pro-Mexican bent.

This is the first post in a series where I satirically respond to Google searches I find in my stats. Oh, the depravity.

• I Pack the Meat That Todo el Mundo Eat - This was a reflection of the meatpacking plant raids, not when they began, but maybe when they began ratcheting up. The post sounds very fun and removed. That doesn't mean I was happy about it.

This was one of the early ones I crossposted at Jesus' General.

• Mexico Profundo and A New Way Forward - This is one of the most thorough entries I have on the EZLN, if you need a primer.

• hurling ideas of redemption - Another "primer" post on the EZLN.

• Gonzales Fears the Power of the Blog - A fun fototshop rip on Gonzo. Back in the days before he humiliated himself right out of office and was trying to justify his terrortaktix based on blog conversation.

• Definition of Terms (Chapter 1) Hoo boy. Weren't these the days? Who here remembers? The old timers, that's for sure. Back when we was raising hell out here for realz. I didn't look, but I'd bet the Technorati blog reactions were pretty high on this post.

I'm gonna look pretty silly if I'm wrong. Hey! No fear! I'll look pretty silly either way. As long as I'm not swordfighting naked. It gets no sillier than that.

• Nezua Reveals (Finally) the Mexican Cock. - Let's keep going with the sword theme. This is a response to the bajillion googlers a year who keep coming back here hunting for the Elusive. Mexican. COCK.

Revel, and be awed!

• A Scabby, Rotted, Pale, Flaccid Dick Oof. And the unfortunate segment of our particular segue. Anyway, here's DICK cheney, as illustrated by Nezua. The most virile of Nezuas, that is.

In fact, let's cleanse that terrifying image of The Cheneybeast from our minds with this fine Nike Ad:

Okay, better.

Now, onward. Put away the swords, though.

• At the Movies with Nezua [Grave of the Fireflies] - I just like this review. The pictures are nice and big, the movie is (without any help from me or my blog) extremely poignant, and the post talks just enough, I think, to communicate the film.

• Nezua's 2006 Colonizers of the Year Award Hooboy. Did I say that already? Well, let me say it again. This post raised a shitstorm. I wrote it at Jesus' General, too. Back when I honestly had no idea of that huge reaction this would cause online. I've done a lot of learning how people think about humor and race and power and race and money and race, and all things related to race...this was a post that taught me a little. After the threadwars began, I felt like Mickey Mouse watching brooms take over the place.

• You forge of your self a dull weapon [Support the Truth II] Now that its been just a tiiiiny while, I think I will look back on all the posts I did like this and say "wow, you lived during a big war...and this is you chewing it up and spitting it back out." Or something sexier. But I think this is just me trying to make sense of this huge, terrible thing that happens over and over again on this planeta.

Part 2 of the "Support the Truth" series.

• We Are the People Whose Come Here to Play - Let me say it one time. OH. MY. GOD. One of the best Yootoobes ever! Let go, baby. Let go. And dig the vibe of a disturbingly and unjustifiably poignant pop masterpiece.

• Let's Have Nexus - Oh, the original! The Número Uno of the Let's Have Nexus series. And THAT's all I need to say. That's just how historic it is.

• The Right of Peaceful Assembly. Gone.- Another milestone. Remember that this blog's start is the May Day marches of 2006.

This was the May Day Marches the year after.

Police descended on my people, my proud people, with faces like sadists and rubber bullets and marching in lines with batons. Beat down the Press and fired indiscriminately into crowds with women and children and who knows who else. It sort of freaked me out. Nah, it outraged me. Plain and simple.

• The True Front of Progressivism - This was written in reaction to what I saw as silence in the Mainstream Liberal Blogosphere (What some call the "whitosphere") to the police actions on marching humans written about in the last linked post.

This is where I came to the hard question in myself: Are WHITEPROGRESSIVES truly "progressive" in their care and agenda? Or just practicing Witentity Pollatix?

This post was responsible for a few people deciding that Nezua is full of shit and out to start trouble and doing circular firing squad stuff. None of those people have ever said anything to my face. But I've been told. I am not concerned with their feelings. I've spoken personally to Dave, and beyond that, I'm not the slightest bit troubled. I feel I said what I had to.

• Where is the Kindness? [Let's Have Nexus II] - This was where I wondered how far the academic, theory-driven fighting could take us online, and where it could hurt us.

• The Path is Always Sound [Nexus III] - Where I decided I wanted no more of it.

• The Context of Corruption; A Backdrop of Oppression - Long post with lots of links on some background of Mexican violence and uprising in the last year. Posted at Feministe, also, to try and offer information where it might not be found normally.

• Indig Nation [Nez Crashes YearlyKos Pt. 3] - This was one of the reports I made after going to Ykos 07 (the last "YearlyKos" as such) as one of the "Chicago 17." Grappling a lot with issues of ethnicity and identity and how these things travel in the blogosphere and our online communities. Reacting to the mainstream blogosphere's reaction of the Chicago 17. I was quite disappointed.

• Laptop Revolutionary [Nez Crashes YearlyKos Pt. 6] - This is another Ykos report. Dealing with the White/NotWhite idea a bit more.

• Like Mango on the Edge of a Knife - Something sweet to break all of it up a little.

• The Latino Challenge to Black America: Q &A With Earl Ofari Hutchinson - That's it. Q and A with EOH.

• On the Radio With Nezua! Entries - My Radio Pacifica film reviews.

• "I Am the Masses of my People and I Refuse to be Absorbed" - This is simply the poem Yo Soy Joaquín. An important poem from el movimiento chicano, late sixties. A book I had in my house years ago, back when I was not even interested in it. Later, it proved to be very important to me. In fact, even earlier. This was the poem I was named after. Twice. Once by my father, and once by myself.

I am Joaquín, lost in a world of confusion, caught up in the whirl of a gringo society, confused by the rules, scorned by attitudes, suppressed by manipulation, and destroyed by modern society. My fathers have lost the economic battle and won the struggle of cultural survival.

And now! I must choose between the paradox of
victory of the spirit, despite physical hunger,
or to exist in the grasp of American social neurosis,
sterilization of the soul and a full stomach.

Yes, I have come a long way to nowhere,
unwillingly dragged by that monstrous, technical,
industrial giant called Progress and Anglo success....

I look at myself.
I watch my brothers.
I shed tears of sorrow. I sow seeds of hate.
I withdraw to the safety within the circle of life --
MY OWN PEOPLE

I am Cuauhtémoc, proud and noble,
leader of men, king of an empire civilized
beyond the dreams of the gachupín Cortés,
who also is the blood, the image of myself.

I am the Maya prince.

I am Nezahualcóyotl, great leader of the Chichimecas.

I am the sword and flame of Cortes the despot

And I am the eagle and serpent of the Aztec civilization.

—Yo Soy Joaquín, Rodolfo Corky Gonzales

• Alarming Insights - Sunday Comix - It makes fun...but if you pay close attention, you'll see that this is one of the tensions that I address over and over in my writing.

• The White Lens - The White Lens series. This is where it began. Because this is where I began meeting some arguments and questions and ideas that, by now, are old hat, but then were troubling. As I said, I've been learning and thinking and feeling it out the entire life of this blog. I could probably link most of this series, but here is the first one. If you like where it is going, you may want to check the category out.

• The Haunted Land, Pt. VII - Why no immigration council will want me as spokesman this year. The idea of The Haunted Land can be found defined in the Glosario.

• The Fable of Greebey Vather, Time Traveler Extraordinaire - Maybe the last post I'll make for a while that takes a day or two. One of my favorite kind to make, though. Allegorical, metaphorical, fun, fictioney.

• The Magical, Mysterious, Golden, Corn Cake - Also Crossposted at JG's. This is an earlier incarnation of the Greebey Vather type of fictioney allegorical post.

• Journeys of Hopee - This was part of the My Road to the Fifth Sun series, which I used to study history, Chicano history. These were very long, time-consuming, involved posts featuring chapters that I TYPED OUT BY HAND from a book! Oh, man.

• Please don't let on that you knew me when - Perhaps when blogswampia began catching a whiff of my grafikality. Zeitgeisty and gruesome-ish image that capped off the era of Saddam all by itself.

• At the Movies With Nezua: Falling Down - This one probably exemplifies the kind of post that doesn't really work as a regular "blog" entry, that took three days (three full days), but that deeply satisfies me to make. And that I won't be making in 2008, as I see it.

• The Glosario. How could I leave off without giving this badboy its own listing? Not an entry but a page of definitions. I find people linking to this I have never met, and new gente all the time. It makes me feel very proud. To have provided a virtual reference page. I think to myself that it is one of the contributions that makes me feel good to have begun running my mouth out here in the first place. Never saw it coming. Just realized at a certain point that the same tired techniques are used over and over and over when people holding privileged positions (me, in some instances, as well) don't want to consider the feelings and experience of those less powerful or privileged. If I ever expand this, it will be to broaden the racial theme to one of power and privilege. Even so, it is a great statement and compliment that people use it that way regardless.

And that's that. If I do not survive the flight, let this post stand as an end to this blog and a fine and glorious spray of lemony mist flying bright and acidic in the too often prevailing winds of stoicism and apathy! (hmmm "winds of apathy" thats so inappropriate as a metaphor its hilarious) And if I do—which I greatly prefer—I'll see you next week with a whole new attitude. Well, no. Not a new attitude at all. But new gear! Yes!

Which of course, is an important prerequisite to attitude.

Hasta luego, amigos. Peace the fuck out.