Hell Cast

The Power of Hate

The best people in the world are people who want to be good and do the right things because they know that this is the way to secure the best things in life for others. After sixty years in this world — and ten of them as a science fiction writer — I am not surprised by the disturbing discovery that the best people are also the ones with the least power to make a positive difference in this world. It appears that this is what planet Earth is really about. It's a playground for the bullies, the rich and the twisted geniuses of this backward, selfish and greedy world.

But, as a seeker of hidden truths, I can almost assure you that this level of iniquity goes much higher than that. Earth, like many other "evolutionary worlds" is a playground for the whimsical delight and amusement of "the gods". And what is a "god"? Nothing more than an ancient, twisted, powerful, psychotic being with virtually unlimited power. But it's a power that will eventually be unseated by the combined power of countless good people who will one day dethrone these tyrants and restore the natural order to the cosmos.

How do I know that this planet is ruled by hate? Here's an example from my own life. The names in the following true story have been withheld for obvious reasons but this is a revelation that needs to surface before me and my 81-year-old widowed mother can begin our next journey in the cosmos. I cannot allow her to leave this Earth without some justice for the cruel acts committed against her. Having one parent leave this wicked world bewildered and betrayed was enough. That will never happen again as long as I live and breathe. I owe them that much.

Back in the 1980s my mother and father wanted to buy a piece of property to develop in their retired years, at their leisure, and they found that the owner of this property was willing to sell it to them. So, my parents — against their better judgment, but trusting this buyer — took out a second mortgage on their treasured Dauphin County home and borrowed the money to buy this envisioned "retirement property".

Then the day came for the buyers and the seller to meet and finalize the transfer of property. My parents drove over two hours, one-way, that day to meet the seller who, without any regard whatsoever for the welfare of my mother and father, changed his mind, backing out the deal, and leaving my parents holding a second mortgage and their horrifying outrage.

I know for a fact that this seller betrayed my parents deliberately because he hated my father. I know this because this man told me many, many times — right to my face — that he hated my father (and this guy knows why he got away with his cruel remarks). So, his mustered power of hatred was enough to destroy the futures of two individuals who never did anything to him in their entire lives. This was a cruel, deliberate, evil act of hatred perpetrated upon my parents by someone we've known all our lives.

When my father died in 1995, leaving my widowed mother with a staggering grief that was inconsolable for the next several years, she was also faced with a staggering "balloon payment" on her house, a monthly mortgage payment that was so large she was forced to put her house on the real estate market. I gave up my Harrisburg apartment and moved in with her because she didn't drive and could not possibly be alone. Then I left my place of employment after seven years (the highest-paying job I've ever had but one that was being phased out anyway and after which I could have successfully interviewed for other ones) and moved her "back home" to Snow Shoe (via Clarence for three years) where we now live in a rented house and where we barely make a go of things as our mutual health steadily declines.

To make things worse, this hateful seller, who betrayed us all (my father, my mother and me), is considered, unimaginably, to be one of the "good guys" in this world by some of those closest to us. How do we know this? Because my mother and I had to eat these words at our own kitchen table from the mouths of people once close to us, who betrayed us as well. That's right, my widowed mother and I ate hateful shit by the bucketful from our own people who couldn't care less that this single, hateful person, in a single, willful act of hate, destroyed the long-awaited future of my mother and father.

There is no forgiveness for such acts of hate. If you people finally realize who you are, it is to your advantage to stay away from my mother, who's been betrayed enough. And, most of all, you will not want to see the formidable side of me who will, without hesitation, defend my mother and myself against your evil, hateful presence in our lives. My own horrified outrage from being betrayed over and over again by those closest to me is enormous but I've put that "on hold" for now because my mother comes first. When good people bearing the truth combine forces and confront evil and hate, face-to-face, the power of hate doesn't stand a chance.

Once Upon a Time in Pennsylvania

Transparency

The View From My Hideout

I haven't had a lot to say lately and that's because I'm still busy being an author. I'm still tinkering with my seventh science fiction thriller, which has a working title, but it's a great big secret. But I'm mostly busy because Jonco Bugos, my literary alter ego, is busy working on his new novella, The Truth is a Lone Assassin.

And then I'm busy because of all the book marketing videos and promotional deals I recently "signed off on" and so on and so forth. But that only takes up part of my days. Most of my time is spent keeping out of sight and out of mind. Whose mind? Yours. Theirs. Everybody's.

Inspector Harry Callahan once told Captain Briggs in the movie Magnum Force that, "A man's got to know his limitations." and that's basically been my motto as I gaze down that long, dark tunnel into my seventh decade on Earth.

But, every now and then, I jab a stick out of my hiding hole and poke around. So, I may know my limitations as an aging indie author, but I can still poke a stick with the best of them. Or, at least I like to think so, and that's good enough for any ol' dawg who'd rather sleep than romp.

My latest L.A. Times comment

And, no, I don't like blogging anymore. In fact, I don't like it at all. I do it to keep from fading away before my time is up, like General MacArthur.

Man on the Lam

A Portrait of the Author as an Old Man

Back East

What I See In My Crystal Ball Now

Never Take Yourself Too Seriously

Junk TV Website

Junk TV Celebrity Showcase Photo Album

The Dreamer Never Sleeps

This is a promotional video for Michael Casher's fourth science fiction novel.

Eye Spy

Click on Pic for My Spy Report

Zero to Sixty in Nothing Flat

I never thought I'd make it (and, believe me, I wasn't in a hurry) but I did. Yep, I turned sixty this year. Sixty years old. The only reason I don't mind being sixty is that I feel like I'm eighty. So, sixty's nothing.

The big trick is being able to handle being eighty when you feel like you're a hundred. I guess it's time to throttle back a little. But I never liked life in the slow lane. And why slow down now, anyway? If I do add a couple years to my life, they'll no doubt be "scooter years". That's the slow lane again. And, once you've tried the fast lane, there's just no going back.

Seeing the Forest

Can't see the forest for the trees? Don't feel bad. Most people live their whole lives without seeing it. But I see it. Not always. But most of the time. And that's because I work at it. I pay attention to life as I live it. I put what I see in books that I sell and in blogs that I write for free.

I also shared what I saw every month for five years, in a free online monthly newsletter that I called The Pluto Observer. The Pluto Observer used to be the official newsletter of Science Fiction for Thinkers.com, my official website. Now it's just a memory, but one I still share.


When you've got nothing better to do, take a look at what I saw when I took a moment from thinking about myself and dared to see the real world around us. This is what I saw between September 2005 and October 2010. Too bad no one gave a hoot about what I saw and wrote. When I take a look at the real world now I just blog about it or else work on another book about it. Or just keep it to myself.

Blind Fool Running

Video Updated 3-26-13

A Knife In The Heart

I heard the chain saw this morning, cutting and cutting, sawing and sawing. I thought it was one of the neighbors cutting firewood. I was wrong. Then I heard the loud snap and the horrendous, terrible crash.

Downstairs, I could tell that my mother had something important to tell me. Something awful. Then I heard the words.

At the house where I did my growing up between age 7 and 20 — a house we can still see from our kitchen and living room windows — they cut down the tall tree that my father had planted 50 years ago. It was a magnificent, towering hybrid of an ash and some other kind of tree that I can no longer remember.

That's right. It's their property, not ours anymore. It was their tree and they had a right to cut it down. Still, that was the last living memory my mother had of my father, except for our 17-year-old cat that Dad found in an abandoned cardboard box back in 1994. I hope that cat lives forever.

And the tree is gone now. And, yes, it was the tallest tree in town and the tallest and the most magnificent tree this town has ever seen or is likely to ever see again.

This is what it's like to be doomed to living out the rest of your life in a town that should have been in your rear-view mirror a long time ago. What we have instead is a living nightmare that should have been a pleasant dream, departing from us on good terms ages ago, instead of reminding us that we somehow failed to evolve and that stealing what's left of our hearts and trampling that to death is the penance we somehow deserve for trying to come back "home" a dozen years ago.

Author-and-Pony Spotlight

My paperback publisher, Lulu.com, just told me that they'll be deleting my Science Fiction for Thinkers at Lulu storefront 30 days from now. They said they'll be replacing my old, customized, personalized storefront with a new "Author Spotlight" page.

I had the option to sit back and do nothing and just let Lulu.com move my published content 30 days from now or to do it myself before then and maybe add a few touches of my own. Being a self-published author, I naturally chose self-flagellation over being flogged by somebody else.

Being a veteran P.O.D. author, I also know when an author-and-pony show hoop is being held out for me so, naturally, I hopped right through this new author hoop without hesitation. The sad news is that my old storefront sure beat the pants off this newfangled "Author Spotlight" page and it had a lot more to offer, too. The new page looks generic while my old storefront had me written all over it (too bad you can only see the screenshot and not the whole storefront). R.I.P.

My new "spotlight" page doesn't allow me to add blog feeds or customized text content or HTML content, like the old storefront format. The new format allows me to add a few links, a logo and a single YouTube video on an impossibly small screen. You can click on it if you want to watch the real thing at YouTube. Since my professional videos are at Photobucket and not at YouTube, this new video option is about as useful to me as tits on a boar.

So, Science Fiction for Thinkers at Lulu is now as dead as a fish and Michael Casher's "Author Spotlight" Page is, unfortunately, alive and well on the Author-and-Pony Show circuit.

My new Author Spotlight page at Lulu.com

Click on the image above to buy my paperback books at Lulu.com or to just check out the latest hoop I happened to hop through on my way to that big Pearly Hoop in the sky.

My Old Lulu.com Storefront

Dead as a fish.

September 7, 2011 update: In August 2011 I created a YouTube account for SciFiForThinkers and uploaded the four professional videos I made so far to YouTube. I did this so I could have a video on my Author Spotlight page at Lulu since I can't have blog feeds or other custom content there. Plus, YouTube gives me an online backup for these videos. My Photobucket page is pretty classy so I finally customized my YouTube channel. Snazzy is as close as I could come to classy at YouTube so snazzy will have to do. There are now seven professional videos at both sites. And, no, these promotional videos have nothing to do with my Junk TV videos. A Junk TV video is a horse of a different color.

July 28, 2012 update: I removed all my videos and photos from Photobucket and deleted my Photobucket account earlier this year because of all the Flash ads people had to wade through in order to watch my videos. Photobucket is permanently in my rearview mirror.

No World for an Old Author

When Roger retired he started writing books that would sit in boxes on the floor and make no difference in the lives of others. That was not the plan. Was it his fault? You decide.

BLIND FOOL RUNNING

a novella by JONCO BUGOS

Some secrets are meant to be shared.


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Buy this book at Lulu.com

My World

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