Article: Senor Salsa

* The Next Big Thing, "The Cost of Freedom": http://costoffreedombook.blogspot.com

This just in, latest endorsement, to go along with Thom Hartmann, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, Harry Belfonte.

"Cost of Freedom is a powerful cry for peace - the only state in which freedom is possible. War, its threat and preparation, together with the further impoverishment of the people they promise, are the greatest enemies of freedom. Even more, this anthology proves that people and poets across America have, like Thoreau, refused to be outfaced by irrational things. Here is a chorus of the American people, matching the prophets of the past, whose voices are also present, singing peace will come through universal love and respect for the precious rights and dignity of every child, woman and man but only when the factually informed participation and perseverance of the people make war unthinkable. Your poets will then be the acknowledged legislators of peace on earth. Thanks for your powerful anthology and its repeated insistence on impeachment of Bush, Cheney, et al., which I hope will reach and motivate millions of people."
- Ramsey Clark

Recent Palecek interviews and links:

Radio Active Lunch, Vassar College:
http://radioactivelunch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=1

WORT radio, Madison, Wisc.:
http://216.153.251.197/parchive/mp3/wort_070605_120401apatue.mp3

SHANE LACHANCE, short film based on "The American Dream"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SYOxmONO2g

Is This Heaven?

by Mike Palecek

Que paso?

I am sitting here in Gregg's Hometown Foods.

Store Detective, looking for terrorists, securing the homeland on the front lines.

As always, just trying to do my part to ensure the freedom of my fellow Americans.

I am looking for Mexicans who might be illegally alive, who do not have the proper stamp on the papers in their pocket, and thus deserve to be separated from their weeping children and sent to wherever we want to send them in a hot, crowded white INS van.

If you can see me from where you are seated you know that I am also sitting, on the floor, in the corner between the white milk and the tortillas, at the far end of the Mexican Foods Aisle.

It is my charge to find any Islamiscists, Hispanunists, or other terror-type individuals.

I am also to tackle anyone I suspect of being from Nebraska. Gregg says.

I am undercover, as per usual.

I am wearing a big, wide sombrero. My head is drooping to my knees. But I am not sleeping. Sometimes I am sleeping. Sometimes snoring. I get a beeper.

I am wearing a new, white T-shirt with blood-red letters: Pinche Puta Store Detective.

Pretty cool.

Go about your day.

I got this.

seeya

- Mike

_________________________________________

Palecek Books:
To see book covers, more information: www.mikepalecek.com

Killing George Bush: I like KGB because it tells the forgotten story of prisoners and conspiracy theorists and people slaughtered by Bush Sr. in Panama and women and children in jail visiting rooms and other stuff.

"Well-written and imaginative."

- Danny Schechter, one of the first CNN producers

Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Publish America (December 2001)
ISBN-10: 1588516989
ISBN-13: 978-1588516985

Joe Coffee's Revolution: I like Joe Coffee because it tells the truth about the Democratic Party and about farmer revolutionaries and farm kitchen tables.

"Palecek's greatest talent lies in his ability to depict the ordinariness of life. After a few chapters of Palecek's tender attention to the characters' small lives, readers will feel the same itch for revolution that the characters give into."

- Meta Hogan, Voice Of Olympia [Olympia, WA]

Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Badger Books LLC (April 2003)
ISBN-10: 1878569945
ISBN-13: 978-1878569943

Twins: I like Twins because it talks about a prison burning and about the Twin Cities, which I love, and about robbing Twin Cities banks to give the money to the poor on Hennepin Ave.

*Review by Michael Wilt, Nimble Spirit Review: http://www.nimblespirit.com/html/twins_review.html

Paperback: 332 pages
Publisher: Badger Books LLC (October 2003)
ISBN-10: 193254206X
ISBN-13: 978-1932542066

The Last Liberal Outlaw: I like Outlaw because it talks about a reporter in a small town doing what a reporter in a small town should do, pay attention to the commas and oppose the construction of the prison near town.

"Palecek is at his best when writing about small-town America ... We haven't had a writer like this since Kurt Vonnegut was at his peak."

- Chuck Gregory, All Books and Records, Fort Lauderdale, FL

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: New Leaf Books (September 15, 2004)
ISBN-10: 1930076029
ISBN-13: 978-1930076020

The Truth: I like The Truth because it was written in the run-up to the current war and was written in a rage against pre-war stupidity in Iowa. I tried to stop the war with this book. I tried to expose the lies, stuff a dish towel in Tom Brokaw's mouth to keep him from lying.

"As a professional writer and editor I want to strongly second all the positive comments for this book. In addition to its fine message, its layout and Mike's real deftness with plotting make it a great reading experience, like few books I know."

- Phil Hey, Professor of English & Writing, Briar Cliff University, Sioux City, Iowa

Paperback
Publisher: New Hampshire Writers Collective
ISBN-10: 1930149263
ISBN-13: 978-1930149267

Looking For Bigfoot: I like Bigfoot because I think there is a Bigfoot and I think Bush did 9/11 and I think the CIA killed the Kennedy's, and I like baseball, a lot.

Paperback
Publisher: Howling Dog Pr (November 30, 2005)
ISBN-10: 1882863607
ISBN-13: 978-1882863600

"Mike Palecek poses powerful questions. He has constructed a masterpiece in this novel. It deserves to be read. It's exhilarating and terrifying. It's realer than real."

- January Magazine

Terror Nation: I like Terror Nation because I think it would be cool to be a small town sports reporter who was put into the local mental institution for writing anti-Bush letters to the editor. And a dream of mine would be to cover Iowa sports or coach baseball and have that be good enough.

"If you haven't heard of Mike Palecek, you should have."

- Karris Golden, Waterloo-Cedar Falls [IA] Courier

"Palecek is ... a natural - or highly practiced - writer. With his rolling rhythms, everything he writes, even Charlie Johnson's brutal confinement, goes down easy."

- Russ Wellen, Intervention Magazine

Paperback: 496 pages
Publisher: Mainstay Press (April 4, 2006)
ISBN-10: 0977459055
ISBN-13: 978-0977459056

The American Dream: I like The American Dream because it's like punching America in the nose, it's like punching George W. Bush in the nose and Karl Rove in the nose. And I think those two pussies need to be punched in the nose. And it punches those ministers with American flags and dead children on their altar, and it punches my neighbor right square in the kisser for mowing his lawn and worrying about his damn lawn while we are killing children in Iraq.

Paperback
174 Pages
Publisher: CWG Press
ISBN: 0978818601
139780978818609

"Palecek is fearless, skewering religious extremism, political right wing fundamentalism, gung-ho patriotism and the use of fear to play upon the innocent...and ignorant. And it works. I finished the book in one night...but it's been in my brain ever since, like a song that won't go away...haunting."

- Marie Jones, Book Ideas