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Some wonderful driver ran over the relay box in the neihhbor’s yard. So no Internet today. Since posting from my phone is difficult with arthritic fingers, I will simply show you a photo of the toy I bought to make myself feel better.

The most important part of a novel is how it ends. It is the ending of the story that does the most to establish the theme, make the points the author wants to make, or gives you the all-important feeling that the story is complete.

I have written nine good novels and ended the story nine times. I have reason to believe they are good books. Two of them were contest finalists. I have gotten no bad reviews (of the minimal number of times someone besides me has actually read one of these books). And even experienced editors have told me that my books are competent and good enough to be potential best sellers. But, of course, they have little chance of ever reaching a wider audience. I am an Indie author and have either published through pay-to-publish publishing companies or the free Amazon/Kindle publishing services. The way the story of me being a published author will end, though, is not a story of success and wealth and critical acclaim. I am dissolving into abject poverty and fatal ill health. I will not last to see my books hit the big time. And when I croak and become worm food, my books will be forgotten and mostly ignored, even by my family who look at it as a pie-in-the-sky dream rather than reality. Reality, unfortunately, really sucks.

The fact is, all the greatest and most worthwhile people that ever lived have suffered terribly and they were forced to endure much. Greed, villainy, injustice, inequality, bullying, rape, murder, and income taxes prevail in an unbalanced and unjust world. If Guy McPherson in the opening video is to be believed (if you haven’t already watched it, I suggest you don’t. Hearing that message from a credible climate scientist like him is very depressing.) then greedy, rich, and powerful people made the decision to murder us all decades ago, and there is nothing we can do about it.

So, here is how my story ends; I will continue to tell stories and write essays like this one until the very end. And, for me, that will come any day now. It is the only thing worth doing for me at this point in my life. I also hope that you will take heed of my example and endeavor to be the author of your own story’s end. And I am not suggesting you commit suicide or hole up in a bunker somewhere. I suggest you spend every day as if it is your last one on Earth. Cherish your loved ones. Do what pleases you to do. And, most of all, be the author of how your own story ends… plotted out with grace, theme, and meaning. A tribute to how you lived. And maybe you will be able to tell me sometime in the next life about what a colossal fool I was when I wrote this essay.

It has come down to that time of year again, when taxes are coming due in a month and a half or less. And you know what they say, “You can avoid practically anything but death and taxes.” Sometimes I wish “they” would just shut the hell up about it.

My tax situation is perilous still. I am on a fixed-income pension, bankrupt, and having marriage problems because my wife is frustrated that she can’t squeeze any more money out of my worthless old hide.

The problem stems from the Trump tax-cut of 2017. In order to give his rich Filthyrichican cronies thousands of dollars back in a single tax year, he made the horrible bill retro-active. And, of course, they had to cut loopholes in the tax law, which obviously had to include the reduced tax rate that pension earners traditionally pay. When he multiplied the under-withholding thing times 12 months, he ended up costing me $1,400 that I did not have to spend. I had to pay it off in installments, give up some of the grocery budget, and kiss off the chance of ever going on insulin just because I have the welfare-queen trait of being diabetic.

So, I got it paid off in December of 2018. The IRS said be sure I call my representative in the Texas Teacher Retirement System, because this was their fault. Which I did. An adjustment was made to my withholding back in February of 2018. So, now, at tax time, my tax estimate is that I will owe $1,300 again this year. My TRS representative assured me that this was not their fault. They say they interpreted the new tax tables to the best of their abilities. It is apparently the IRS’s fault. And I made an estimate of what I will need to withhold for the next tax year and changed it all again, hoping at the very least they don’t double what I owe next year, which they most certainly will. And next time it will be my fault.

I added death to the title of this rant because that is a very real possibility when you consider that I will have to go back to Uber driving for pennies on the hour to avoid financial collapse. And I had stopped Uber driving because, after the accident last August, I have not felt well enough to do it blood-sugar-wise. I may finally pass out at the wheel and kill myself and any possible passengers too. At least, if that happens, my wife will finally have to pay a tax bill out of her own funds. She might miss out on a trip to Europe or something.

Now I must get busy and earn some money and take this hard experience as a source of comedy. It has to be worth a few yuks, right?