Happy Holidays!

Michael Casher is taking a break from blogging until after the new year. He wishes everyone a safe and happy holiday season.

The Scary Old Man

It’s what every middle-aged man fears as he approaches age 55, that one-way gate in what still ought to be mid-life that you are forced to pass through and surrender any weapons or treasures left over from youth. Like head hair, hairless ear lobes, arched feet, flat stomach and a mouth full of teeth. Oh, yeah, I forgot: your dignity.

But many of us aging youngsters still wouldn’t complain about entering The Senior Citizen Gate if our very presence on sidewalks and in stores didn’t strike fear in the hearts and minds of women and children. That's every man’s biggest fear about growing old. That life will push the boy that still lives inside him through that high-mileage gate at 55 and make him emerge on the other side as a tubby ogre struggling to walk a straight line despite the many aches and pains he's forced to endure.

Suddenly, that old father and young great-uncle in the tan corduroy jeans, two-tone long-sleeve pullover, ball cap and brown Hush Puppies looks like Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers all rolled into one. Only older, a lot older. As old as Satan.

The only upside of this story of senior citizen paranoia is that, once in a while, a formidable and savvy college coed merely points you out to her girlfriend and they both laugh. They don’t see the bogeyman. They see what looks like a deflating hot air balloon decorated with a ball cap and brown suede shoes, looking for a place to land.

But, what the hell. After a middle-aged man passes through “the old codger gate”, being mistaken for nothing but a lot of hot air can easily be misconstrued as a compliment.

In the Shadows

Where an independent science fiction author spends most of his waking hours.

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Here we go again.

Today is my 56th birthday. Once a senior citizen, always a senior citizen.

Actually, I don't really give a hoot. The only birthday I ever dreaded in my entire life was my 30th, like most other young people.

After that I thought, What the hell, the first 100 years is only a drop in the big bucket anyway.

The Pluto Observer

This month marks the 2nd Anniversary of The Pluto Observer, "a one-page monthly newsletter from the planet Pluto" that I began writing in September 2005. It's a free at Science Fiction for Thinkers, my official website.

Sometimes I have a lot of fun writing this so-called newsletter and sometimes it's a real drag, to use a worn-out Baby Boomer cliché. But, I'll continue offering this kind of commentary as long as the fingers of my alter ego and star reporter, Jonco Bugos, can keep moving over the keyboard.

Some issues offer actual articles about current events and some are strictly for fun. And that's the beauty of being an independent author. No editor can say to me, "don't write that" or "this crap gets cut" or "hell, you're just a stupid hick who can't even write". Only The Great Publishing Wizards of Big Apple City will tell you that kind of stuff. And that's because they've lived all their lives without setting foot in "fly-over" country (that's the USA between Manhattan Island and Los Angeles) and this is their biggest fatal flaw.

The Rest of the Story

One of the reasons I became a writer was the fact that I had an unshakable desire to tell the world through fiction that the wrong people have been running the world for eons and that they still are.

And just who are these people?

Why, they're the stupidest, meanest, greediest and most perverse people on Earth. But why they're in control is only half the story. The rest of the story is that most people don't want to know or don't care if they do know.

This is the part of the story that's all about us.

Free Admission

The best things in life are free.

One day a few years ago my mother and I drove up to Smethport, Pennsylvania just to see the town and to enjoy the Allegheny Plateau scenery along the way. Smethport is an interesting little town with lots of well-maintained Victorian mansions near a beautiful little lake. It’s also the McKean County seat and there’s a magnificent stone courthouse across the main street from Smethport’s unique business district that lies almost exclusively on one side of the main drag.

We were eating lunch in the old part of the Smethport Diner, the part that faces the street, when four senior citizen men walked in the front door and just stopped dead in their tracks, right in the middle of the floor. They were well-groomed and fairly well-dressed so I didn’t suspect that any kind of robbery or nastiness was forthcoming. They briefly surveyed the few diners and then they broke into song.

The song was Zippity Do Dah and they rendered it with a barbershop-quartet precision that took us both by surprise and transported me back to a yesteryear that I had only read about in books. Mom put down her cheeseburger and watched while she listened in surprised fascination. I set the spoon back into my chili bowl and gave them my full attention, enjoying every moment of their impromptu summer serenade. I felt like I 'd been transported back in time to the Swanee River on a lazy, hot summer afternoon where I might be enjoying a picnic lunch of corn on the cob and southern fried chicken.

Then the senior quartet finished singing and a hearty round of applause erupted. Mom and I joined in the applause and, before I could reach for my wallet to extract a couple of bucks in case a hat was passed around, the four gentlemen disappeared into the back of the diner for an encore performance in front of the diners there.

On the way back home to Centre County we saw a mother black bear playing with her cub in the state forest along the side of the road. It sure was a nice trip and great day that I’ll always cherish, one that will always make me think that yes, indeed, the best things in life are free.

Tripping Over a Rainbow

Yesterday UPS delivered the new business cards I ordered online. I'd been looking forward to their arrival all week with eager anticipation. These are my new, snazzy, Science Fiction for Thinkers.com business cards in full color that replace the old michaelcasher.com business cards that I now use for writing grocery lists on the back of and for marking pages in books.

It hadn't rained around here for weeks but it managed to rain for only two minutes after the UPS driver set the little box of new business cards on the wooden bench outside my kitchen door. When I spotted the box there I picked it up and noticed that it was wet.

The cards look beautiful and classy but the sudden rain storm from seemingly out of nowhere will always haunt me.

Looking Over My Shoulder

I don't do it as much as I used to but, every now and then, I still find myself looking over my shoulder to see who or what might be following me.

It could be some cobweb from the past, maybe, that I didn't quite clear away completely and that's been on my back all along, trying its best to turn into a monkey that will one day ride me down and break me. Or someone from my past, a long time persona non grata who either doesn't know it or damn well knows it but who is determined to take me down one day, mostly out of spite. Or a true enemy — and I have made many — who wants to take me out of the game altogether. Sometimes I think it's just an ill wind, pretending to be the lucky wind at my back, hoping I will not know the difference.

I'm certainly glad I don't look over my shoulder all that much anymore. Looking ahead is a lot more fun. And you don't get that nasty crick in your neck from trying to see the world around you through hindsight.

Old Dog, New Tricks

The michaelcasher.com dog-and-pony show folded up its tent this month and hit the pike.

The new show in town is sciencefictionforthinkers.com. Science Fiction for Thinkers is now the official website of science fiction author Michael Casher.

But the old michaelcasher.com is not a dead domain. It's still mine. I just trained it to point at sciencefictionforthinkers.com and to do nothing else.

Who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

My Life in 25 Words or Less

The books I wrote and the one I’m writing now, this place, those two geese, that cat, being there for Mom.

This is my life.

Stupid Movie Shit

Hollywood movies made since 1990 contains these three stupid scenes:

1) Gratuitous Sex Scene – This is a scene where twenty-somethings loose their tops, drop their drawers, suck face and provide eye candy for a dating audience.

2) Strip Club Scene – This is a scene where stupid twenty-something males drool over bimbos who aren’t wearing any tops or drawers or both and who wouldn't give these dorks the time of day out on the street.

3) Men Peeing Scene – This is a scene in a men’s room with men relieving themselves at urinals for people who like that kind of reality in a movie. Cops being chewed out by their precinct Captains, drugs dealers moving product, confidential informants being shaken down, etc. etc. Why anybody on God’s green earth wants to see this is totally beyond me.

My solution to this "stupid movie shit" problem is this:

Have each Hollywood movie open with a gratuitous sex scene in a restroom that is part of a strip club. Show this scene while the opening credits are rolling. No one can read them anyway these days, the letters are so damn small. This way, you’ll kill all three birds with one stone.

Homeless Dragons

I'm going to take a lot of heat for this but, after five years as a science fiction author, this has simply got to be said.

Pictured here is one of the biggest enemies of any science fiction writer. This creature belongs in the realm of Fantasy and not Sci-Fi.

Enough said.

turning readers into better people

When the owner and editor of the now-defunct ezine SelfPublisher News interviewed me via email for the October 2005 article on me (an article entitled "Mutiny on the Luminer" on page 11 of that ezine), I told him that my goal was to write books that "would make readers want to be better people". But he never quoted me on that.

But, come to think of it, that's exactly what I've done. Six times over.

Recalling "Meet Phil Donahue Day"

Back in the late 1970s I was living in downtown Atlanta and someone gave me a couple of free tickets to see Phil Donahue. Like most men, I was not a Phil Donahue fan, but I wanted to be in a TV audience. I puzzled over the ticket, wondering why the show wasn't at the television network's local affiliate. It was at Atlanta's Civic Auditorium instead. But I went anyway. By myself.

The Civic Auditorium in Atlanta was the biggest auditorium I'd ever seen before. The seating area was easily the size of a WalMart Super Center. The place was packed, mostly with women. I scooted down in my seat so no one could see me.

Finally, out came Philmeister and the women went wild. You'd have sworn that Jesus Christ had just made his second appearance on Earth. But, hell, there weren't any TV cameras. Phil Donahue looked about as big as a gnat on that huge stage.

Phil sucked up to the women in the audience right off the bat by announcing that the most beautiful women in America lived in the state of Georgia. I would have laughed at his lame attempt to milk praise from the audience except for one thing: he was right. I'd never been west of the Mississippi River but, east of that, Georgia had the highest percentage of beautiful women per capita I'd ever seen. Nine out of every ten women in Georgia was a peach. Still, I could see where his "PR Show" was going. At one point, he jumped down off the stage to shake hands. I thought he'd be mobbed to death by salivating liberal females before he managed to hop back up there. Would have served him right.

At that point, I left. When I got outside, I looked a little closer at the remaining ticket. The event was called "Meet Phil Donahue Day". It was kind of a reception, I guess, for people who weren't important enough to get a seat in the TV audience when he taped his show earlier. I tore up the ticket and tossed it into the nearest trash receptacle.

After that day I never watched the Phil Donahue Show again. And I always inspected my tickets very carefully after that. And I never accepted another free one.

Moving Van Cliburn's Piano

The closest I ever came to show business in my entire life was helping to move a concert grand piano that Van Cliburn would be playing that night. Penn State University owned the piano and the concert was scheduled for Recreation Hall on Penn State's main campus. It must have been around 1975 or thereabouts. Bryce Jordan Center didn't exist then and Eisenhower Auditorium must have been booked up, I can't really recall.

It took about a dozen guys, one large box truck with a lift gate, a lot of heavily-padded tarps, rolls of nylon strapping with ratchets, several carpeted dollies, a couple Johnson Bars, assorted hand tools and about a half a day to transfer that magnificent instrument from Schwab Auditorium to Rec Hall.

At Schwab Auditorium we had to lay the monstrosity on its side and then remove the legs and reverse that process at Rec Hall. After three or four hours of grunting, swearing, name-calling and finger-pointing the job was done but, in the end, we were all "friends" again. Apparently, we didn't do any damage to that beautiful concert grand and that's probably because we handled it like it was the Ark of the Covenant.

Hell, I wish I had gotten to see Van Cliburn play that damn thing that night.