“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: HONG KONGER’S ARE EVIL?

THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: HONG KONGER’S ARE EVIL?

 Airplane trip on Cathay Pacific from EWR to Hong Kong and no Betsy lager beer or fancy ice cream for me. I end up queasy with a full bladder in some huge area with suitcases and crates. I pee all over myself and vomit in my crate. No food. No water. And some nasty man kicking my crate and cursing at me saying I am headed to China to be a Hot Dog Hot Pot served over rice and gravy to “some stupid tourists”!

“You idiot spoiled white dog” and he kicks the crate and urinates all over me! What a bastard as according to Cathay Pacific “pet transit policies all pets in cargo are treated according to Hong Kong compassion and kindness and are watered and fed prior to connecting flights.”

Is this Hong Kong or hell?

Unbeknownst to me there is a saviour in Hong Kong which will be revealed to me later as so many facts are in police reports.

I am loaded on another Cathay Pacific flight to Singapore.

“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: FROM NORTH BERGEN WALMART SUPERCENTRE TO EWR

THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: FROM NORTH BERGEN WALMART SUPERCENTRE TO EWR

After a very long drive to North Bergen, New Jersey we arrived. Me and some twenty dogs. We had a pee break in Aurora, New York and our drivers gave all of us some kibble while they had a few $10 martinis and a burger at some pub in this quiet town.

At the North Bergen Walmart Super Centre I had an opportunity to communicate with my fellow canine “hostages”. We were not on some group tour to the beauties of New Jersey. WE WERE KIDNAPPED!

Muttnapped for what purpose? Rumour had it we had “buyers” awaiting us. These buyers were paying big money a beautiful Irish Red Setter said. Who would take me to a buyer? My home is with Bob and Fay in Toronto! There were no Top Dog shows in the Walmart’s of New Jersey. A ruse. A trick. A sham. This is not going terribly well.

Our group was split up.

And wouldn’t you know it was Madame Fong from the Family Noodle Restaurant on Spadina Avenue in Toronto that picked me up in a Carmel Car Service limousine that had a bad kimchee smell to it. We were off to EWR Fong said. What is EWR?

Fong slipped me a tasty piece of beef bulgogi, and I remember nothing after that sodium and Xanax laced treat except being loaded in a dog crate on a Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong. Will I be sniffing for landmines in Cambodia?

RKS Literature: Worsening Hunger (George Orwell)

“On the second day I thought of pawning my overcoat, but it seemed too far to walk to the pawnshop, and I spent the day in bed, reading the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. It was all that I felt equal to, without food. Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition, more like the after effects of influenza than anything else. It is as though one had been turned into a jellyfish, or as though all one’s blood had been pumped out and lukewarm water substituted. Complete inertia is my chief memory of hunger; that, and being obliged to spit very frequently, and the spittle being curiously white and flocculent, like cuckoo-spit. I do not know the reason for this, but everyone who has gone hungry several days has noticed it.”

George Orwell, “Down and Out in Paris and London”, 1933.

RKS Japanese Literature: The Last Stages of Ritual Suicide (seppuku) of Lieutenant Takeyama Shinji (Yukio Mishima)

“Was this seppuku? He was thinking. It was a sensation of utter chaos, as if the sky had fallen on his head and the world was reeling drunkenly. His will power and courage, which had seemed so robust before he made the incision, had now dwindled to something like a singe hair-like thread of steel and he was assailed by the uneasy feeling that he must advance along this thread, clinging to it with desperation. His clenched fist had gone moist. Looking down, he saw that both his hand and cloth about the blade were drenched in blood. His loincloth, too, was dyed a deep red. It struck him as incredible that, amid this terrible agony, things which could still be seen and things that existed still existed.”

Yukio Mishima, “Patriotism”.

“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: WITH TOP DOGS TO NUDE JERSEY WALMART PARKING LOTS

THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: WITH TOP DOGS TO NUDE JERSEY WALMART PARKING LOTS

The Singapore Times Exclusive: In a Toronto Opium Den on my Way to North Bergen, Nude Jersey

Madame Fong was a 335-pound trans he him her or they..not sure. From the back door it was down to a basement opium den. Rock n roll stars, winery owners, real estate magnates, a few Catholic priests, some folks with checkered scarves perhaps Palestinian CISIS plants from the University of Toronto and hockey players prostate with pipes up their snouts lamenting a failure to make the NHL playoffs. I was tied up next to a famous Toronto Maple Leafs hockey player who I had seen advertising milk on the telly and a soccer player who had hawked peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I do love peanut butter but it sticks to my mouth. Bob had said if only milk wouldn’t give you worms it would go down well with peanut butter.

I had to pee real bad and almost being potty trained to the max I gave a heads up gotta pee bark but unlike Bob and Fay no one picked up on the hint so I peed on the floor.

Speaking of Bob and Fay…isn’t time they picked me up, poor puppy that I am? And take me home?  

Later on a bowl of rice and chopped chicken with a bowl of jasmine tea was placed before me which I lustily consumed and immediately feel asleep. Bastards had drugged me.

I woke up to a voice questioning a nearby person why the truck was headed to the United States. “We are The Top Dogs Touring Company” the voice said, “We are heading to the North Bergen, New Jersey Walmart Supercentre for our first show on our Top Dogs New Jersey Tour. We have 12 shows in New Jersey and one in French River Delaware.”

What is going on here? Where in the hell is North Bergen and what is Nude Jersey?

RKS Literature: The Almost Pleasure of Being Down and Out (George Orwell)

“And there is another feeling that is a great consolation in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up has experienced it. It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, as knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs-and well here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.”

George Orwell, “Down and Out in Paris and London”, 1933.

RKS Japanese Literature: A Soldiery Lecture by Lieutenant Takeyama Shinji to His Wife Reiko (Yukio Mishima)

“They refrained from taking a honeymoon trip, these being times of national emergency. The couple spent their wedding night at this house. Before going to bed Shinji knelt formally on the matted floor with his sword laid at his knees and bestowed on his wife a soldierly lecture. A woman who had become the wife of a soldier should know and resolutely accept that her husband’s death could come at any moment. It could be tomorrow. It could be the day after. But no matter when it came-he asked-was she steadfast in her resolve to accept it? Reiko rose to her feet, pulled out a drawer of the cabinet and took out what was the most prized of her new possessions, the dagger her mother had given her. Returning to her place, she laid the dagger without a word on the mat before her just as the husband had laid his sword. A silent understanding was achieved at once, and the lieutenant never again sought to test his wife’s resolve.”

Yukio Mishima, “Patriotism”.

RKS Japanese Literature: Used Bathwater from the Prison (Nagai Kafū)

“And on sultry summer evenings, peering through sparse reed blinds, I have had a clear view of the secrets of these people’s households. How well I recall passing by here on afternoons where the prisoner’s used bathwater would gush down the drainage ditches below the tenement’s windows, raising clouds of foul-smelling steam. It must be the same even now. Most shocking of all were the local housewives with scabrous babies on their backs, seizing the opportunity to make use of the hot water on cold, clear days, to wash things in the ditches as they chattered away with mouthfuls of crooked teeth, or in the summertime scattering the stinking water on the road.”

Nagai Kafū, “Behind the Prison”.

RKS Japanese Literature: The Pure Art of Conversation Lost on People Like This (Nagai Kafū)

“Now the argument centres on him until the evening dishes line up beneath the dusky lamp-boiled beans, pickled vegetables, a stew of fish bones and scallions, and a rice tub smeared with dirty fingerprints. Gathered around their flimsy table, the family talk about uncle so-and-so, who showed up wanting to know the cost of Mother’s medicine in the spring. They talk about how the wife’s father lost his job. They talk about their everyday expenses. The family’s mouths were formed for only two purposes: to eat food and complain endlessly about the hardships of life. Whether they are impoverished or not it amounts to the same thing. The pure art of conversation for its own sake is lost on people like this. They have no need for language for anything other than seeking advice, complaining, harping on the same old stories and quarrelling.”

Nagai Kafū, “Behind the Prison”.

RKS PORTUGUESE WINE: Ravasqueira Encantado Red

A blend of Syrah, Touriga Franca and Alicante Bouschet.

Grown in clay-limestone soils with rocky influence of granite and schist.

The vinification of the Syrah and Touriga Franca was in open stainless steel lagares and the Alicante Bouschet in stainless steel fermenting tanks.

The blend was aged 8 months in new French oak barrels.

The winemakers were David Baverstock and Vaco Rosa Santos.

Aroma: Intense black cherry and blackberry with the new French oak giving the wine vanilla and toast.

Palate: Massive black fruit with and concentrated and long finish with a nip of white pepper. Rich, full bodied with a sweet middle palate.

Personality: Full bodied blessed with black fruit.

Food Match: Chicken Cacciatore.

Cellarbility: Consume by 2027-year end.

Price: $18 CDN.

RKS PORTUGUESE WINE RATING: 91/100. Wine Align 88.

Tasted 1May2026.

(Ravasqueira 2024 Encantado, VR Alentejano, Ravasqueira Vinhos, Arraiolos, Portugal. 750 mL, 14%).