“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: ONE SMALL STEP FOR RORY A HUGE LEAP FOR MANKIND: HEALING POST TRAUMATIC WESTIE STRESS DISORDER (PTWSD)

ONE SMALL STEP FOR RORY A HUGE LEAP FOR MANKIND: HEALING POST TRAUMATIC WESTIE STRESS DISORDER (PTWSD)

I might have revised the title of this chapter to read “ONE SMALL STEP FOR MANKIND A HUGE LEAP FOR RORY”.

You may recall in an early chapter I told you readers about being chased around the garden close to midnight in minus 18-degree weather. Bob was wearing a coat over his pyjamas with the snow outside up to his knees. I was having the time of my life. Bob was calling “Rory come!” As I was having so much fun playing chase I decided to hide behind a bush to make the game more exciting! The gentle “Come” became a bit more intense and angrier so I decided make a break for it but was nabbed by Bob by the scruff of my neck and blasted with a few “BAD DOG” exhortations. The game continued for the next few days in the cold winter freeze and Bob put a leash on me prior to placing me outside. He could grab the leash easily and haul me in like a fish on the line. The chase lost its excitement. With a hundred practices with the Come Command I did it! I came! I slink like a cheetah on the hunt and when proximate to Bob I jump in the air towards him. Not as much fun as the chase but preferable to angry exhortations!

Bob says his stressful and traumatic midnight romps in frigidity caused him PTWSD substantially raising his blood pressure, whatever that means. Bottom line I receive much praise and some warm hugs and a treat for following the Come Command. I am not perfect as to Come Command adherence, but I sense Bob, Mankind and Rory are all the better for it. Puppyhood is so easy…..sometimes.

RKS Literature: A Friend of Marlon Brando Comments on His Choice of Friends (Truman Capote)

“….the kind of people he didn’t like-and the kind he did, both-stemmed from his insecurities. His inferiority feelings. Very few of his friends were his equals- anybody he’d have to compete with if you know what I mean. Mostly they were strays, idolizers, characters who were dependent on him one way or another. The same with the girls he took out. Plain sort of somebody’s secretary type girls-nice enough but nothing that’s going to start a stampede of competitors”.

Truman Capote, “The Duke in His Domain”, 1957.

“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: PERFECTING BEGGING SKILLS

PERFECTING BEGGING SKILLS

If you truly believed in Canine Lives Matter you would not demean our “persuasive food transference” skills by referring to them as begging.

Don’t you ever stop to wonder we beg to make you feel benevolent! You are exercising kindness and compassion towards a “dumb animal”. Who is the dumb animal in this case!!!!

Many of us puppies are new to the food persuasion game. I used to bark obnoxiously with limited success. Sort of like a human accosting passerby’s with hands out moaning some phrase attempting to invoke pity.

No, I have found sitting quietly close to my mark with wide open eyes maintain total silence is highly effective. Like being part of the senior management team of a corporation. Success is blending in with humans not barking for a raise like middle management. Play the game and your profit sharing might include tasty morsels of bacon, chicken (watch out for those bones) or steak. Meat is king for dogs but we’ll settle for just about anything.

Look at this way I am not a poor street urchin and you are not Mother Tereza. I am on “your team” so treat me as such and toss me a morsel! And for God’s sake don’t make me resort to obnoxious and crude begging techniques.

RKS Literature: The Flamboyant Pleasure of a Country Bumpkin (Yoshida Kenkō)

“The man of quality never appears entranced by anything; he savours things with a casual air. Country bumpkins, however, take flamboyant pleasure in everything. They will wiggle their way in through the crowd and stand there aimlessly gaping up at the blossoms, sit under the trees drinking sake and indulging in linked verse making together and, finally, oafishly break off branches of a blossom to carry away. They will dip their hands and feet into clear spring water, get down to stand in unsullied snow and leave their footprints everywhere, and in short throw themselves into everything with uninhibited glee.”

Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?

RKS Literature: Truman Capote Defines a “Movie Star” (Truman Capote)

“Defined practically, a movie star is any performer who can account for a box office profit regardless of the quality of the enterprise in which he appears; the breed is so scarce that there are fewer than ten actors today who qualify for the title. Brando is one of them; as a box office draw, male division, he is perhaps outranked only by Willam Holden.”

Truman Capote, “The Duke in His Domain”, 1957.

RKS Literature: Marlon Brando on Analysis (Truman Capote)

“Have you ever been analyzed. I was afraid of it at first. Afraid it might destroy the impulses that make me creative, an artist. A sensitive person receives fifty impressions where somebody else may only get seven. Sensitive people are so vulnerable; they’re so easily brutalized and hurt just because they are sensitive. The more sensitive you are, the more certain you are to be brutalized, develop scabs. Never evolve. Never allow yourself to feel anything, because you always feel too much. Analysis helps. It helped me. But still, the last eight, nine years I’ve been pretty mixed up, a mess pretty much….”

Truman Capote, “The Duke in His Domain”, 1957.

RKS Literature: What Types of People Should Not Be Your Friends? (Yoshida Kenkō)

“There are seven types of people one should not have as a friend. The first is an exalted and high-ranking person. The second, somebody young. The third, anyone strong and in perfect health. The fourth a man who loves to drink. The fifth, a brave and daring warrior. The sixth a liar. The seventh, an avaricious man.

The three to choose as friends are-one who gives gifts, a doctor and a wise man.”

Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?

RKS Literature: Should One Be Concerned with Red Tongue Days Marked on the Calendar? (Yoshida Kenkō)

“The Ying Yang masters do not concern themselves with those days of the calendar marked ‘Red Tongue Days’. Nor did people of old treat the day as unpropitious. It seems someone more recently has declared it unlucky, and now everyone has begun to avoid it, believing that things undertaken on this day will miscarry. This idea-that whatever is said or done on this day will fail, that objects gained on the day will be lost and plans made will go awry-is ridiculous. If you count the number of failures that happen on an auspicious day, there you will find there are just as many. It is people that create good fortune and misfortune, not the calendar. “

Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?

RKS 2026 International Film: “The Blue Trail” (O Último Azul)

A Brazilian/Mexican/Chilean/Netherland production helmed by director Gabriel Mascaro presenting a dystopian panorama of humour and satire which is a gentle, silent and highly effective jab at ageism and massaged- “media managed” governmental oppression in society.

A Brazil where at age 75 you are “honoured” as “national living heritages” with your residence marked by a laurel and awarded a medal by the Brazilian state.

Brazil wishes to avoid its seniors suffering “a life of loneliness” and ensuring its younger workforce can concentrate on its work not having to worry about its elders. At 75 bearers of such age are forcibly transported to retirement “colonies”.

Less than discrete allusions to the Holocaust one might surmise the laurel on residences equating to the Star of David markings used in Nazi Germany and retirement “colonies” to concentration camps? We never see what a “colony” is but breadcrumb hints on the film’s trail may lead to a “Final Solution” conclusion.

Attempts at evading the mandatory “colonies” result in apprehension and removal in a small, motorized cage referred to as a “wrinkle wagon”.

Tereza (Denise Weinberg) is a 77-year-old awaiting transportation to a “colony” refusing the “honour” embarking on an evasive wild Amazonian adventure. There are blue drool snails depositing psychedelic slime, dishonest ultra light plane pilots, “nuns” plying the Amazon River selling virtual bibles and a fighting fish gambling joint named the Peixe Dourado (Golden Fish).

While there are those that trip out on blue snail drool Tereza is on an incredible road trip along the Amazon so beautifully photographed.

Influences here of “The African Queen”, “Easy Rider”, “Holy Days”, “Cool Hand Luke” and “Apocalypse Now”. I make the references and I’ll let you figure out why!

Is there a memorable highlight? Hard to answer as there are many but the trippy fighting fish adventure at the Peixe Dourado is a massive one that is right up there with the Honda and Hopper “Easy Rider” LSD sequence at the New Orleans graveyard.

You have the choice to be serious, morose, toss and turn at night contemplating a dismal future and pertinent societal happenings on the Brazilian Amazon or you can tuck that negative stuff in the back of your mind and enjoy with a huge smile on your face Tereza’s incredible journey.

There is such a phenomenon as a “fun” dystopian film!

Watch the tailer here https://vimeo.com/1161942532

Theatrical run commences in Canada 3April2026.

RKS 2026 International Film Rating 93/100.

RKS Literature: Perfect Regularity as Tasteless (Yoshida Kenkō)

“In all things, perfect regularity is tasteless. Something not quite finished is very appealing, a gesture towards the future. Someone told me that even in the construction of the Imperial Palace, some part is always left uncompleted.”

Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?