RKS AMERICAN LITERATURE: The Conspiracy of Married People (Andy Warhol)

“Being married looked so wonderful that life didn’t seem liveable if you weren’t lucky enough to have a husband or wife. To the singles, marriage seemed beautiful, the trappings seemed wonderful, and the sex was automatically implied to be automatically great-no one could ever seem to find words to describe it because you “had to be there” to know how good it was. It was almost like a conspiracy on the part of married people not to let it out it wasn’t necessarily completely wonderful to be married and having sex; they could have taken a load off the single people’s mind if they’d just been candid.”

Andy Warhol, “Fame”, 1975.

RKS AMERICAN LITERATURE: Fantasy Love vs. Reality Love (Andy Warhol)

“Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.”

Andy Warhol, “Fame”, 1975.

RKS British Literature: A Hatred of British Imperialism in India (George Orwell)

“The Indian Empire is despotism-benevolent, no doubt, but still a despotism with theft as its final object. And so to the English of the East, sahiblog, Flory had come to hate them from living in their society, that he was quite incapable of being fair to them. For after all, the poor devils are no worse than anybody else. They lead unenviable lives; it is a poor bargain to spend thirty years, ill-paid, in an alien country, and then come home with a wrecked liver and a pineapple backside from sitting in cane chairs, to settle down as the bore of some second-rate club.”

George Orwell, “Burmese Days”, 1935.

RKS British Literature: A Third-Rate Public School Experience in England (George Orwell)

“From that school he went to a cheap, third-rate public school. It was a poor spurious place. It aped the great public schools with their traditions of High Anglicanism, cricket and Latin verses, and it had a school song called “The Scrum of Life’ in which God figured as the great referee. But it lacked the chief virtue of the great public schools, their atmosphere of literary scholarship. The boys learned as nearly as possible nothing. There was not enough caning to make them swallow the dreary rubbish of the curriculum, and the wretched underpaid masters were not the kind from whom one absorbs wisdom unawares. Flory left the school a barbarous young lout.”

George Orwell, “Burmese Days”, 1935.

“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: I CAN NOW SMELL MY FREEDOM! MADAME FONG HAS MISCALCULATED

The Singapore Times Exclusive: THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: I CAN NOW SMELL MY FREEDOM! MADAME FONG HAS MISCALCULATED

My mission, if one can speak of such, was to cuddle up to Sir Reginald Nicomshire all as dictated by Madame Fong. For what reason I did not know. It all seemed facile. With my good looks, intelligence and other West Highland Terrier attributes and being in the right place at the right time I had Nicomshire eating out of my hand. I certainly was not suffering from self loathing as Nicomshire was a jolly fellow with an obsession for Westies. Actually we were friends! I was not to my knowledge hurting anyone by playing along with the Madame Fong playbook.

But certainly, the Madame Fong dam must be ready to burst.

I mean somebody was bound to rescue me!

Was there no surveillance video from airports in Toronto, Hong Kong or Bangkok with my image. Same could be said for the hotels we stayed at.

My images from the Singapore Westie of the Year contest, PR campaign in Southeast Asia and international news coverage of my battle with that Malay Tiger were SOS messages.

Surely someone had to recognize me. I was a shaved down puppy when I was abducted in Toronto and even Bob and Fay had the utmost difficulty in recognizing me when they arrived to pick me up at the groomers. From a fuzzy and hairy puppy to a lean United States Marine Corps new recruit at boot camp would make recognition difficult.

I had full faith it was only a matter of time before I would be back home with Bob and Fay in Toronto!

You see Westies have not only an olfactory ability but a spiritual ability to smell future events.

RKS AMERICAN LITERATURE: Better to be in the Dark About Love and Sex (Andy Warhol)

“But then I think, maybe it works out just as well that nobody takes you out of the dark about it, because if you really knew the whole story, you wouldn’t have anything to think about or fantasize about for the rest of your life, and you might go crazy having nothing to think about, since life is getting longer, anyway, leaving so much time after puberty to have sex in.”

Andy Warhol, “Fame”, 1975.

RKS British Literature: Almost Always a Mistake to Order That Second Bottle of Wine (George Orwell)

“Gordon wasn’t being witty any longer. It is almost always a mistake to order a second bottle. It is like bathing for a second time on a summer day. However warm the day is, however much you have enjoyed the first bathe, you are always sorry for it if you go in for a second time. The magic had departed from the wine. It seemed to foam and sparkle less, it was merely a clogging sourish liquid which you gulped down half in disgust and half in hopes of getting drunk the quicker.”

 George Orwell, “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”, 1936.

RKS British Literature: Thievery of the British Empire (George Orwell)

“Why of course, the lie that we’re here to uplift our poor black brothers instead of rob them. I suppose it’s a natural enough lie. But it corrupts us in ways you can’t imagine. There’s an everlasting sense of being a sneak and a liar that torments us and drives us to justify ourselves night and day. It’s at the bottom half of our beastliness to the natives. We Anglo-Indians could be almost bearable if we’d only admit that we’re thieves and go on thieving without any humbug.”

George Orwell, “Burmese Days”, 1935.

RKS British Literature: Booze as the Cement of the British Empire (George Orwell)

“There’s a kind of spurious good fellowship between the English and this country. It’s a tradition to booze together and swap meals and pretend to be friends, though we hate each other like poison. Hanging together we call it. It’s a political necessity. Of course, drink is what keeps the machine going. We should all go mad and kill one another in a week if it weren’t for that. There’s a subject for one of your uplift essayists. Booze as the cement of the Empire.”

George Orwell, “Burmese Days”, 1935.

RKS British Literature: A Public Bar in London: Home of Proletarians (George Orwell)

“Gordon shoved open the door of the public bar, Ravelston following. Ravelston persuaded himself that he was fond of pubs, especially low-class pubs. Pubs are genuinely proletarian. In a pub you can meet the working class on equal terms-or that’s the theory anyway. But in practice Ravelston never went into a pub unless he was with somebody like Gordon, and he always felt like a fish out of water when he got there. A foul yet coldish air enveloped them. It was a filthy smoky room, low ceilinged, with a sawdusted floor and plain deal tables ringed by generations of beer-pots. In one corner four monstrous women with breasts the size of melons were sitting drinking porter and talking with bitter intensity about someone called Mrs Croop. The landlady, a tall grim woman with a black fringe, looking like the madame of a brothel, stood behind the bar, her powerful forearms folded, watching a game of darts which was going on between four labourers and a postman.”

 George Orwell, “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”, 1936.