Know How to Deflect Trouble to Someone Else
Having a shield against ill will is a great trick of rulers. To have someone else who can be criticized for mistakes and chastised by gossipmongers is a sign of superior skill, not lack of competence as malice thinks. Have a fall guy, therefore, someone who, at the expense of their own ambition, can be a target for your misfortunes.
Baltasar Graciáno, How to Use Your Enemies,1647.
Did Someone Allegedly and Regrettably Get Horny With Stormy?
Someone I once knew well said all men think with their dick
What a sexist prick!
Like Adam and Eve private parts must be covered up
Or best said “settled” to supress the muck
Politicians must be careful with the dalliances they pick
As getting horny with Stormy they might be burning candles at both ends of the wick
It’s bad enough the 6Jan insurrection
But an alleged fling and improper papering is bad for the political complexion
And an indiscrete erection is a grand danger for re-election
Unless of course it is a Vermonters plot
Fuelled by CNN rot
Robert K. Stephen
Don’t Expose Your Sore Finger
….or everything will knock against it. Don’t complain about your sore points, for malice always attacks where our weaknesses hurt the most. Getting annoyed will only serve to spur on someone else’s enjoyment. The ill intentioned are always searching for a pretext to get your back up. Their dart like insinuations aim to discover where you hurt, and they’ll try a thousand different ways until they hit upon your most sensitive point.
Baltasar Graciáno, How to Use Your Enemies,1647.
Tempranillo and Canada are obviously bad bedfellows? You are mistaken. An increasing amount is being found in bottles of red wine from the Canadian province of British Columbia. Three cheers for that!
The Trumpster has referred to Canada as the land of the igloo people. Well for “Eskimos” Trump may have read in his geography classes (if he went to school at all) Canada makes some great grape juice!
The last British Columbian Tempranillo I scored was an Inniskillin Discovery Series 2020 Tempranillo and it limped in at a 73/100.
How does the Maison Smith Montpetit 2022 Tempranillo fare?
A scant 100 cases were produced from 6 barrels. Aged in neutral French oak for 12 months.
Maison Smith Montpetit is located in the heart of the Similkameen Valley of British Columbia an organic epicentre.
Aroma: Density is perhaps the word that comes to mind. Thick and ponderous blueberry and blackberry with a tweak of Vermont black licorice and Serbian hazelnut wafer cookies.
Palate: Adjectives of bold and powerful in the glass because of carefully built structure and not the 14.5% alcohol. Broad based tannins with gentle acidity. Loads of blackberry. Long finish with slow fade.
Personality: I am a typical Maison Smith Montpetit wine which will impress with its purity and power. As with so many great Euro wines from Tempranillo grapes in Portugal and Spain consume me with food. This makes me more Old World than New World whatever that may mean!
Food: Douro duck casserole or grilled baby lamb.
Cellarbility: Slight improvement into 2027 but will hold stable until 2029.
Price: $40 CDN.
RKS 2026 British Columbia Wine Rating: 92/100. Gismondi 91.
(Maison Smith Montpetit Bottega & Vineyards 2022 Tempranillo, British Columbia VQA, Cawston, British Columbia, 750 mL, 14.5%).
Live According to the Common Practice
You shouldn’t reason and debate in an old-fashioned way and your taste should be up-to-the-minute.
Telling the truth and keeping your word are unknown today and seem like things from the past. Good men, although always loved, seem relics of better times, and so even if there happen to be any, they’re not emulated because they’re not in fashion. The misfortune of your century, virtue is taken as unusual and malice as the norm.
Baltasar Gracián, How to Use Your Enemies, 1647.
18October2025: Bangkok: Hooky
Given the day’s afternoon activity consisted of yet another cruise and meal along the Chao Phraya River and commenced with a 08:00 departure one might say a long breakfast with other tour hooky people and two pots of jasmine tea overlooking the river was preferable. What a breakfast…as usual with papaya, mango, dumpling soup and Pad Thai on my buffet plate. Breakfasts so far at the Peninsula Bangkok and Singapore Shangri-La have been something to write home about.
Horror of horrors with my watch battery dying so instead of walking to the Icon Siam Mall to buy a battery I rode the Peninsula Bangkok water shuttle a beautifully restored ship with a captain that looked like a captain with his naval outfit.
A three-minute trip and a huge Diwali celebration at the Icon Siam pier. Cheap souvenirs, textiles, food and music. Finally found a jeweller hidden away to be and for $10 CDN a new watch battery.
Being a seafaring man, I took the return shuttle to what I thought to be the Peninsula but a return to the wrong hotel as we sailed on past the Peninsula Bangkok. Twenty minutes upriver past glitz and poverty. Dilapidated corrugated steel dwellings, rusty boats, clubs and restaurants. The crew were rough n ready types and the captain looked like a boat operator and not a captain. A slight smell of diesel fumes. The arrival hotel was where we had launched our welcome cruise two days ago so a quick trip to the WC. Jasmine tea is my favourite however the two pots caused immediacy on the bladder if you know what I mean. The return ferry which I had to wait for a few minutes dropped me back at Icon Siam Mall, so I walked home in nasty heat and humidity. I dropped into the 7-11 for a cold beer but no beer can be sold until after 17:00 and as it was just 16:00 I settled for a large mango juice and returned to the hotel. A sense of public morality with a city known for its decadence of which I witnessed none of. The Thai I encountered are polite, modest and welcoming if you behave and dress appropriately. There is a certain discrete disapproving look the Thai give to scantily dressed tourists which speaks forcefully about the Thai national character.
Get Used to the Bad Temperaments of Those You Deal With
..like getting used to ugly faces. This is advisable in situations of dependency. There are horrible people you can neither live with nor live without. It’s a necessary skill, therefore to get used to them, as to ugliness, so you’re not surprised each time their harshness manifests itself. At first they’ll frighten you, but gradually your initial horror will disappear and caution will anticipate or tolerate the unpleasantness.
Baltasar Gracián, How to Use Your Enemies, 1647.
RORY Laments He is No Tramp! Puppy Pasta Lunges
My lamentation about not being a tramp has nothing to do with morality. It refers to Tramp on the Disney film “Lady and the Tramp”.
Do you recall that scene in the alley behind the restaurant when Tramp eloquently slurps up a string of pasta? Bob was boiling up a pot of pasta for dinner tonight (unfortunately not mine but his) and when I barked my “tribute” Bob dangled a linguine noodle in front of my eyes and what a mess as I just about took off his finger in a “pasta lunge”. How clumsy of me and Bob said I should take it easy and concentrate on elegance not savagery. He tried it again without much success and a piece stuck on the back of my noggin which Bob discovered an hour later after it congealed. What an embarrassment. Bob said that Dylan the Westie was an expert and noted, “You should have seen him with bucatini!!!! No worries Rory lots of practice awaits as after all….you are still a puppy!”
A Rory Puppyism; Silence is Golden!
SILENCE IS GOLDEN: I am free to “explore” my surroundings in peace and quiet without observant and often disapproving human commentary. This may include “accidents”, chewing what puppies aren’t supposed to chew and jumping on the sofa. Silence rarely is infinite as suspicions are aroused quickly when I disappear. Bob and Fay refer to my puppyism as poppycock as to them SILENCE IS TROUBLE. My puppydom is replete with contradictions!
“I’m an admirer of names, though the Christian fashions fall far below savage customs in this particular. The biggest coward I ever knew as called Lyon; and his wife, Patience, would scold you out of hearing in less time than a hunted deer would run a rod. With an Indian tis’ a matter of conscience; what he calls himself he generally is-not that Chingachgook, which signifies Big Serpent, is really a snake, big or little; but that he understands the windings and turnings of human natur’, and is silent, and strikes his enemies when they least expect him.”
James Fenimore Cooper, “The Last of the Mohicans”, 1826.
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