Brush with a Black Hole

I had a cosmic revelation at the Lounge last night right after last call. The think-a-hol was flowing freely because of this yahoo (see pic) from out of town who started buying drinks for everyone as soon as old Angus, our big-ass bartender who is the ghost of a dead Scottish poet (no not a famous one, a self-published one), bellowed for last call.

Anyway, I pulled out my state-of-the-art cell phone and secretly snapped a digital picture of this nonhuman stranger. Not all living creatures have arms and legs and a face. I photographed this annoying asswipe with the big pocketbook right after I heard him tell Angus that he was the entity responsible for turning a lot of people over to the dark side on Earth. Angus thought the stranger meant that he worked for the devil and that made the little shit laugh like hell.

He told Angus that he was an electrical creature that lived inside everyone at one time or another but that he felt most a home with the "Y" generation on planet Earth and he said that's why teens and twentysomethings there are so fascinated by the dark side of everything, why they wear so much black and "why they worship dark, cookie-cutter bad-asses on clones of sci-fi TV shows" (his words). He also said that's why no one could get a clear picture of him, too. He never stayed in one place long enough for much light to bounce off him into a camera lens.

That's when Angus spilled a drink on him and the little bastard left. On his way out I heard him mumble something about being late for a screenwriters' conference in Vegas. This was my first encounter with a living, breathing black hole and I hope I never run into another one.

One Way

Angus and I get a kick out of this one guy (pictured) who strolls into the Lounge every Friday night for a single malt scotch which he later chases with a Canadian brew and a bag of pork rinds (go figure). We call him One Way but only behind his back.

Every road in the universe apparently leads to this prick's doorstep but he'd be the first to deny it, if confronted. Hell, he'd probably be shocked if someone suggested that his whole life was a one-way street headed his way. The last time One Way was in Think-A-Holic Lounge Angus was in the process of telling me how much he was enjoying the hot summer weather when One Way rudely interrupted him. "Not me, man. I like winter. I don't understand how anybody can enjoy this sweltering July shit." Angus said nothing and went about his business.

A couple of minutes later I ordered some onion rings to go with my cheap draft beer and before Angus could depart for the kitchen One Way remarked, "Y'know, I don't understand how anyone can eat those onion rings and wash them down with that domestic stuff." I usually don't rock the boat and just let One Way have his say and tonight was to be no exception. But then he said, "Me, I'm a single-malt man. And a big fan of Canadian beer. Hell, that's all I drink. That's all I ever want to drink."

I turned to him and said, "Y'know, I don't understand how anyone can drink that overrated sour booze and drag on that over-priced brew like it was mother's milk but then I don't have to understand something to accept it. Or to just leave it alone. Here, let me buy you another round."

One Way looked at me like he'd been slapped in the face. Then he gulped down the rest of his imported beer, stuffed the half-eaten bag of pork rinds into his blazer and left in a big huff.

When Angus returned with my onion rings he asked me what happened to One Way and I replied, "I don't know. I guess he had too much reality for one evening."

Happy Sad

One of the regulars at Think-A-Holic Lounge is another side of independent author Michael Casher, one that is rarely seen in public. His appearances here at the Lounge are rare, but always welcomed. We call him Happy Sad because he's either one or the other. Despite the fact that he writes terrific science fiction novels that combine hard sci-fi, action/adventure, mainstream and romance for a new sci-fi experience that almost defies labeling, he's not very widely read. Yeah, go figure.

When Happy Sad finished his first novel four years ago he was elated and bought rounds for everyone that night. After each successive novel we all noticed that he was less happy and more sad. One night last week Angus and I bought him enough rounds until he came clean with the reason for his long face.

"What's to be happy about?", he confided, "I'm a self-published author who sells his books on the Internet.”

Angus asked the poor guy what was wrong with that and Happy Sad replied, "The problem with being a P.O.D. "indie" author selling my books on the Web is that I'm just a needle in the cyberspace haystack, along with every Tom, Dick and Harriet and any eleven-year-old kid with a story to tell and enough keyboard skills to publish it. We're a penny a dozen."

I argued that his books were, by far, better than most traditionally published sci-fi thrillers.

"Yeah," said Happy Sad, "but that don't mean shit in cyberspace."

All Angus and I could do was let him cry in his beer, nurse his think-a-hol and then sleep it off in the back room. What else could we do? The poor sap was right.

The Dark Side of Thinking

One of the reasons Think-A-Holic Lounge has so few customers in the afternoon isn't because most people are at work during those hours. That might be a good reason anywhere else but the Lounge is not located in real time or real space.

No, the real reason this cosmic watering hole has only a handful of regulars in the afternoon is because of an anomaly that often occurs there and always without warning. It's a powerful vortex that tries to split struggling authors into two people, one of them a failure who gives up writing altogether because of abysmal book sales and the other a wide-eyed fool who continues to court and even suck up to the publishing gnomes of Bad Apple City who have been known to chew up new authors and spit them out without even tasting them.

I got caught in the vortex, myself, last night just before last call (see pic). As you can see, I was way over my limit of think-a-hol and deluded into believing that I was Michael Casher — the real McCoy — and not merely Jonco Bugos, his reflection and alter ego. Anyway, I got caught in this powerful vortex last night and, even though it nearly split me in two, it couldn't even begin to wipe the shit-eating grin off my face. Over the years I gradually became immune to its effects and, in fact, each time it tries to split me in two, it only squeezes another book out of me.