The Legendary Blood Fiddle.

Louis Shalako photo.

Louis Shalako

This is the legendary Blood Fiddle, which belonged to my friend's grandfather. The story is, he went to the Sarnia rez, bought himself a deaf and dumb girl for about sixteen dollars and made her his wife. They had five daughters and sometime during WW II, he started a band. Years later, she died of cancer, somehow bleeding all over the place and one of the children used the blood to paint the front of the fiddle...

I forget the grandfather's name, but she still has the band going, and she's working on some new songs. She sang a bit of one to me and she definitely has a good voice.

They're not real big, are they.

On this particular instrument, the outer strings are not rigged, as it appears the bridge is broken. The lady says she spent some money, as the thing 'was in pieces' and I guess she knew some guy.

Yeah, we talk once in a while.

At some point, she brought out a real violin. This was in fine condition. For the first time in my life, I held a violin in my hands. The strings were pretty loose, and I put my finger on a line painted on there and began stroking the bow, across, back and forth, just listening to the tone of the thing.

It sounded a lot like a violin.

When I was five or six years old, I asked my parents for a violin, and of course they just laughed.

End

On Cell-Phones. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

My brother was telling me that I got to sign up for some $35.00/month cell-phone deal.

It's a two-year contract and then you got yourself a free phone. It costs another $50.00 to get it unlocked and then you can get any service you want. I have a free phone here. The sound is very low and I haven't bothered to hack around in there to try and fix it, not without a manual. So far, I haven't even bothered to put a $10.00 pre-paid card on it.

Whatever money was on there, automatically ran out at the end of last month…which is, admittedly, a pain in the ass. Somebody lost ten bucks there, that is for sure.

...sure glad it wasn't me.

Here's the thing: I can get a $90.00 touchscreen, (dual sim), unlocked. Order it online and it's here in a few days. I can put ten bucks on it, or twenty, which is good for a month, or even get a $250.00 card which is good for a year. Then I can ditch the old landline phone, which is costing me roughly $35.00/month, or $420.00/year and I can't even take it anywhere.

I'm not disputing that a phone is a good thing to have when your car is old and you work some ways out of town. Sooner or later, that car must break down. They always do, don’t they?

It’s a long walk otherwise.

I'm big and ugly and hitchhiking can be a problem for guys like me...oh, and when I'm hitchhiking, it's always an emergency, isn't it?

There are a couple of things I hate about cell-phones. The only time anyone ever called me, I was driving down the road at a hundred kilometres an hour with some big truck on my ass and distracted driving is illegal—and dangerous. Unless it’s hands-free, it’s a bad idea to try and answer it. And by the time I pulled over, of course, the phone wasn’t ringing anymore.

You had to try and figure out who that was and call them back. As often as not, it was my mother.

“So, Mom. What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing, Honey. I was just wondering how you were…”

Argh.

How am I doing? I’m sitting by the side of the road, having another useless conversation.

I’ve only got a ten-buck card on here for emergencies, and this is costing me money—

You know what I hate even worse? It’s the way people keep changing the plan at the last minute. They do that to me now, when I’m sitting here for hours beside my landline phone. At least I’m home, where I can take a shit or make a pot of soup if I need it. If we agreed to meet at ten-thirty for a coffee, or for any kind of business or personal thing, for fuck’s sakes, don’t call me up at the last minute and tell me you’re running late and would I mind if we put this off for another hour or so. I've sat here all fucking day, sometimes, waiting for a care package from my Mother.

Not that I'm not grateful.

I'm grateful for the food, no question about that.

But.

***

The thing to do is to make the appointment, and then turn off the phone. If they don't show up within ten minutes, fire up the car and go home...

Screw that.

Fact is, I resent it like hell. That’s because I’m sitting out in front of the place now.

I’ve got to shit, I haven’t had anything to eat all fucking day, and somehow, now I’m at your beck and call. I can always come back, right? You want me to cruise around town for an hour, burning up my precious gas and maybe, just maybe, you'll be done dropping off the dog at the parlour and checking out the latest in vinyl wallcoverings at the big-box builder's supply by then.

Fuck.

Ten minutes is a long time.

I’ve had a few cell-phones, trust me on that one.

Nice as they are, I am absolutely not in a hurry to run out and get one.

And yet the fact is, I probably do need one.

End

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Thank you for reading.

On Bread.

My neighbour was here earlier, and she asked me for some vegetable soup and tuna, because she knows I go to the food bank and I got a lot of it. Yeah, whatever. I sure as fuck ain’t going to eat it.

Much to my surprise, she started reading the labels as soon as I dug a few tins out of the cupboard. I was drunk, what can I say…the only thing she really forgot was the freshness date. That’s her mistake, and thanks for the cheap thrills.

We’ll see if she dies or what.

Apparently, a tin of vegetable soup will provide one-third of your daily allowance of monosodium glutamate. There’s some tomato juice and potatoes in there as well. This is in addition to a few other chemicals. The tuna, will provide you with x-amount of the same thing, and the great thing here is that there is no sugar in tuna. Lots of iron though, or am I thinking of convection-oven braised turnips. You’re better off to get that somewhere else. 

Like, in the beans or the creamed corn or something. The Kraft Dinner….the Spaghetti Noodle-Os. The peameal bacon, slimy as fuck from day one from the food bank. Lots of enzymes and shit in that. Free radicals and non-saturated fats.

Right? If that don’t clear up the old microbiome, I don’t know what will. As long as you don’t poop too often. You need time to absorb it.

Now, if you have cereal in the morning, that will give you two-thirds of your daily allowance of sugar and fifteen percent of your daily dairy intake. I’m sure you can do the math for yourself.

Assuming a large coffee on the way to work, a cup of tea, a bottle of water in the car and a glass of orange juice and an apple Danish on your break, you’ve now received eighty percent of your daily sugar intake but only 0.17 percent of your daily intake of vitamin-K and E-type anti-oxidants. You’ve got a whopping forty-nine-point-three percent of your daily vitamin-C. 

Not too much vitamin A and B, (or G) but what the hell. What the hell.

Trying to figure all this out will drive you crazy, and that’s why we’re here to help.

Okay, so it’s lunch now and you’ve had two slices of bread and a thin scrape of margarine. 

You’ve had a slice of bologna and a Kool-Aid drink box, cherry-flavoured.

You had an apple on the freaking bus.

You’ve had a slice of orange and a breath-mint, not to mention the strawberry douche last night. This is point-oh-one-three of your daily intake of sugar, nineteen percent (total, for the day) percent of your daily intake of whole grains and rice. Following me so far? It’s absorbed through the subcutaneous membranes, so watch out.

So now it’s time for that Snickers bar in the bottom drawer…ah, caught you there.

You’re busted.

Right?

Yeah, we know who you are now—you’re fucking confused, and you can’t deny it.

And yet you’re still hungry—can’t stop eating, which is what the government would advise.

It gets better—trust me on that one, it gets better. But this is why the government forces all them poor, dastardly retailers to put nutritional advice on the packaging, the purpose of which is to confuse the living fucking hell out of you. They don’t want you to know what you are eating, and that’s just the truth of it. Because that pork sandwich is all over the place, that Twinkie is going to kill you, and it’s all just a big waste of health-care dollars. So be sure and try to eat right, study the fuck out of that shit, and it will all save the taxpayers a whole shit-load of money in the long run. In the end, ladies and gentlemen.

In the end…

Now, if you’re smart, you’d eat 175 grams of salmon, one poached egg and a serving of hummus, and nine tablespoons of cinnamon a day, (one milligram of which would be good on an apple Danish), along with 4.2 micro-milligrams of turmeric and 40 mega-micrograms of ginseng. On the other hand, the quart of whiskey ain’t going to kill you, three packs of native smokes and a gram or two of crystal ain’t going to hurt you none at this point. We do like our sin taxes around here…

All that fucking stress, right…???

It’s just our government trying to look after us.

Now you know you’re really living.

You know what’s really good? Crushed garlic, keeps away vampires and everything. And radish juice. That works too.

So you’re all bellied up and feeling pretty good about things.

You really got something at this point.

I won’t say a word about the Ramen and the pasta.

Still,

…on this diet, you’re better off dead.

(Don’t read that shit, Lous. – ed.)

Now, this bread, which I made myself, has less than 0.0013 % salt and maybe double that in sugar. There ain’t no preservatives. No poly-absorbic fucktate. It’s probably the best damn bread you are ever going to eat.

What’s in there is flour, water, yeast, sugar, salt and cooking oil. That’s it, nothing more.

End