Tomorrow's Plan, Already Showing Signs of Being All Fucked Up.

Louis Shalako

When I got up this morning, I had a plan. You see, my previous plan had been cancelled.

That was because my brother needed a ride, or rather, two rides. One there, and one back, much later in the day.

It is true that he has done it for me, like when my own car was at the shop for example.

(My previous plan involved a few hours at work, and then going to the Salivation Army food bank in the afternoon. This did not happen.)

And of course he called me at eight o’clock this morning, and then cancelled the plan for the day. He was going to take his car to the high school, and let the auto-shop kids work on it, (for free) but he would have had to pay for parts. He doesn’t have the forty bucks, not this close to ODSP payday. It’s a simple little job, a new thermostat and a radiator flush—good experience for the students, but he simply can’t afford it this close to the end of the month. 

One must assume the vehicle needs it as well, and that he wasn’t doing it just for fun.

Normally, I would be at work at eight a.m. Normally, I would work three or four hours, make a few bucks, and then go and get something to eat…

As it is, I have eaten something twice today. This wasn’t junk food, it was good stuff. Ah, I just had baked salmon, mashed potatoes and microwaved leftover beans. Which I maybe overdid just a bit, as beans really shouldn’t be that crunchy. I can’t recall what I had for lunch, although there were definitely frozen peas and mashed potatoes involved…what in the hell did I eat for lunch, ladies and gentlemen…???

We’d almost have to call in the forensic scientists to go through the garbage, in order to answer that question.

(He had a beef meat-pie, taken out of the fake paper-plastic bowl, and baked in tinfoil, and it all came out in one piece when he flipped it over onto his one and only plate. – ed.)

I guess I fucked around, getting things ready to do taxes. The neighbour came around, she was here for a while. I watched a documentary, can’t even recall what it was. Now I’m watching some crummy old war movie, one I have seen a dozen times before.

Yeah, it’s great, some old war movie. Where Eagles Dare. They’re holed up in a mountain cabin in Bavaria. Major Smith, he goes back to get the code books (which he already has in his pocket), ah, off of some dead body, (this is so he can rendezvous with the Mary Ure character) and then when he transmits, it’s like he’s speaking plain English, in the clear—

No one questions him on this, like “So why did you need the code-books, asshole…???”

Snork.

And yet they’re all highly-trained operatives.

My plan for tomorrow involves going to work, nice and early in the morning. Oh, yeah—remind me not to answer the phone anytime soon.

Let’s hope my fucking car works, let’s hope that right rear tire holds air, let’s hope I don’t crash and burn somewhere along the way, let us hope we don’t get hit by a meteorite, let’s hope we don’t go stark, raving mad, or go dashing about town perpetrating a slew of low-level, sexual misdemeanors.

Because that would just be wrong, ladies and gentlemen.

I hate like hell to waste my time.

Interestingly, my Smashwords royalties came in only one day—I just clicked on that Paypal notification, yesterday, the day they came out. Sometimes the unexpected is a good thing.

If nothing else, I get to eat again on another day.

END

This is where yesterday's plan for today went wrong.

Oh, goodness gracious, look at all these books and stories by Louis Shalako.

Image. Hunter S. Thomspon, gonzo journalist. Public domain.

 

Thank you for reading.

The Road to Hell. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

Recently, a radio personality here in the local market said something interesting. He said that suicides are not reported as such out of respect for friends and family of the deceased. That’s fair enough, bearing in mind all funerals are announced, and that pretty much everyone who isn’t completely destitute gets some kind of obituary. The general public doesn’t necessarily need to know the cause of death, although there are often mentions of ‘a courageous battle against cancer’ and the like.

But I have been curious for a long time, as to just what percentage of clients of the Ontario Disability Support Program, or Ontario Works, (welfare), commit suicide in any given year. 

The most cynical answer is politics, it is public opinion. It is also a little bit about how such things work.

This figure is completely bogus, okay? I made it up: but let us say that there are roughly 750,000 ODSP clients in the province of Ontario, and let’s say there are a further 125,000 on Ontario Works benefits. (That part's real enough. - ed.)

If a half of one percent of that group, or those groups, committed suicide in any given year, this could now be compared to other social, demographic groups.

And the fact is, it would probably compare unfavourably.

That is to say, it would be more—

And knowing that, we could investigate the causes, and apply some remedy.

One would think.

We don’t know for sure—we don’t have those statistics. But surely gut instinct, as well as reason, tells us that the rate for people on these programs would be measurably higher than the suicide rate among plumbers, sport fishermen, snake charmers, mountain climbers, or any number of groups in higher economic brackets.

Surely this would be a political hot potato by any ethical standard.

Surely the opposition parties, both right and left of the currently ruling Liberals, here in Ontario, would make much of such a thing.

Maybe that would be just. Maybe that’s just—

But, in fairness to the Liberals, no preceding government has ever attempted to gather those statistics, for if they had, surely this would be a matter for the public record. And, (and this is gut instinct again), certainly no upcoming government would ever undertake to record, and to gather, and make use of those statistics, because they know the only answer is money.

And all they have are thoughts and prayers.

The road to hell has always been paved with good intentions.

Whoops. Almost forgot my point. But somebody somewhere, a cop, a doctor, a coroner, knew whether it was a suicide.

This information is available ladies and gentlemen.

They just don't want to know.

For obvious reasons.

END

Image. Daily Mail.

Thank you for reading.

Burnout.

 

Sitting at that desk all day long.

Louis Shalako

Lately there’s this sense of boredom, a bit of depression and what sure seems like burnout.

I’ve worked pretty hard over the last six years, since publishing my first two novels. Now I have five pen-names, twenty novels and something like a hundred thirty-five ebook titles, with another slew of titles available in paperback.

At some point I just quit blogging for five pen names in rotation. In order to write a bunch of novels, the short stories and submissions sort of fell by the wayside. Every morning, I get up and check the emails. I check the sales account numbers. Then I go on a bunch of websites and read, sometimes for an hour and a half, sometimes two or more hours. I call it ‘the morning repost,’ and I post those stories as many places as I can in order for other people to get the benefit of them.

In the last six years, I worked pretty hard to educate myself as a writer, to build up a platform and to learn at least the basics of everything a person can learn in order to write and publish their own works.

Since January 2015, I wrote six novels of over 60,000 words each. That alone was a ton of work.

It’s difficult to take a day off once you get bitten by the bug, and yet, inevitably, I seem to be slacking off. Finding ideas is not that easy, and lately I haven’t been working at it. I have couple of blank files on the desktop and I haven’t even really thought about them. Publishing # 99 Easy Street as a serial sort of gives me a little something to do, a nice easy job that doesn’t take up too much time.

I have chores left undone, including taxes, price changes, edit and format Easy St., make a cover, all kinds of things really, and it’s like I just don’t care.

Bear in mind, it’s been a long winter if not a particularly harsh one. I’m lucky to get out of here for an hour or two a day. Three or four hours away from the house would be a real good day for me.

I am at this desk pretty much all day, every day, and this has been going on for some time.

At some point, I need to do something different once in a while. This is just what we can’t afford to do after twenty-three years on a very small pension, and after all this time, book sales are not all that impressive.

As somebody once said, if you can quit, then do it—

The trouble is, that if I just gave up on writing, there wouldn’t be much left, and I’d be even more bored than I am now.

END