“High spirited husbands were the easiest to manage. These mean, soft chaps, that you would think butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, were the ones to make woman thoroughly miserable.”
Joseph Conrad, “Tomorrow” , 1902.
Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom: TINKER BOLTS BUT NOT ME!
TINKER BOLTS BUT NOT ME!
Bob and I headed out for our last walk a couple of days ago at 23:15. An SUV pulls up to us and a women rolls down the window and unlike one of those crime shows no gun was shoved in Bob’s face but rather a mobile phone with a picture of a dog by the name of Tinker who had bolted in the hood. Bob said we did not see Tinker. The lady responded that if we found Tinker we were to call the phone numbers on his tag.
Bob and Fay have encountered four bolters in their years here in Toronto. All worked out well. A second of distraction is all it takes! We extended our walk for a couple of blocks Bob gently calling out “Tinker” but to no avail.
Yesterday afternoon I slipped out of the house undetected for about thirty seconds and Bob came after me immediately ordering me to sit in a stern voice, picked me up and brought me back home muttering how in earth did I escape. Why on earth would I bolt! Good food, lots of toys, belly rubs, treats and walks galore.
RKS Literature: Mrs. Hosea Hussey’s Nantucket Clam Chowder (Herman Melville)
“However, a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the apparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh sweet friends! hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazelnuts, the whole enriched with butter, and salted pork cut up into little flakes and plentifully seasoned with pepper. Chowder for breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper, till you began to look for fish bones coming through your clothes.”
Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.
RKS Literature: Who are these People from Nantucket? (Herman Melville)
“The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships, to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business, which a Noah’s flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than a moon would be to an Earthsman.”
Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.
RKS Literature: Christians Both Wicked and Miserable (Herman Melville)
“But, alas! The practices of whaleman soon convinced him that even Christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely more so, than all his father’s heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor: and seeing what the sailors did there, and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in that place, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it’s a wicked world in all meridians; I’ll die a pagan.”
Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.
RKS 2026 Wines of Portugal: Churchill’s Grafite 2021 From the Douro
40% Touriga Nacional, 30% Tinta Roriz and 30% Tinta Francesca which 30% was aged for 12 months in both new and used French oak the remainder kept in stainless steel vats.
Aroma: Superhero black fruit particularly blackberry with pomegranate, blueberry, dark chocolate and just a hint of stewed rhubarb and blackball candy. Hint of some juiciness to come?
Palate: Absolutely no annoyance or distraction. Pure and solid black fruit. Rather Port like without the 19.5% alcohol. Perfect harmony with acids and tannins to the extent they are inextricably part of the wine not identifiable components. A smidge of juiciness.
Personality: I am a terrific Douro ambassador but not politically correct as I am unabashedly superior to so many non-Douro red wines. Solid. True. Honest. Douro typical.
Food Match: Venison or wild boar.
Cellarbility: Not meant for cellaring but enjoy up to 2027-year end.
Price: $22 CDN.
RKS Wines of Portugal Rating: 90/100. Wine Align 88.
(Grafite Tinto Douro 2021, Douro DOC, Churchill Graham, V.N. Gaia, Portugal, 750 mL, 13.5%).
RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds):”Reflections on THE CONVENTION”
Reflections on THE CONVENTION
Could be in Singapore, Hong Kong or even North Bergen, New Jersey!
Identical airwaves
Sandwiched between “networking breaks”
Not even blushingly
Inept bilingually
Majestically Christinically present
36,000 starving Ethiopians
Beg sickly, Bibles hidden
Struggling with the desire to brandish
Meanwhile the political arena presents chinless wonders
Cheered on by funeral supply salesmen
With mistresses in mink ex-wives in trailer parks
All guzzling pilsner
Dancing with the wrong WASP beat
And bare breasted skeletons sway
Emaciated and ready to collapse without the $19.99 diet drink
The sun gleams off the bones white as miracle toothpaste
Here in our own tropical destitution
The cat ravaged pigeon limps at 30 below
The cancer riddled janitor
Tosses in his urine-soaked bed
The woman twitches uncontrollably people attempting not to gawk
And the Bible failed them
SO EXPORT IT!
And you tell me now is the opportune time to be an optimist
Well
At least the cockroaches agree with a grin
And you don’t require a microscope to view
Robert K. Stephen
RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): “Vladimir Pooping”
Vladimir Pooping
The little low ranked KGB Vlad the butcher of Bucha
Murdered rivals and opposition silenced through tasty plutonium tea
Or
“falling out of windows”
Pussy Riot isn’t in your good books
For you and your oligarch crooks
No confusion on your part with the idolatry Stalin or Catherine the Great
Transforms corruption into convenient Ukrainian hate
You talentless wiggling swine
Innate weakness bolstered by your threats of nuclear end of time
Your ass and feet postered like in a Turkish toilet
Your shit plops down
Finally looking promising you’ll be adorned with the Tsar crown
You vicious little Rogaine deprived clown
Robert K. Stephen
RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): “Optical Illusion Oasis”
Optical Illusion Oasis
People sitting under the great Canadian fright
Drinking heavily in the village of neon light
Pretensions of affairs being outta sight
Really nothing more than a herd of the uptight
Things actually aren’t really alright
Such a pathetic sight
Strongest on a Saturday night
People with nothing to do
Except playing cool fools
Floundering in the human cesspool
Death should be superior
Come join me tomorrow
For you’re in fact already dead
What can you do in life I tell you
Like the pieces of gum
The black suited monsters
Crush without pity on the way to the paper colonies
Refusing the cries of the crushed innocent are needless superfluous
Come join me in the land of the insane
Everyday does not end in a futile game
Soulless butchered minds craving dead maggots
That’s what we are
No schools of respectability
Only dens of perverse sadistic crazed nobility
Souls of the living cry to join us
Yes
I’m Lucifer but which hell is better
Yours or mine
You’ll find out in due course of time
Robert K. Stephen
RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): “Piggies and politics”
Piggies and politics
Look at all the little piggies
Guzzling off the through
Left piggies
Centre piggies
Right piggies
But all the same
Echoes of belches
Similar but of the same intensity
What the hell
They all wallow in the same slop
A fecal paradise
And but a few enter the slaughterhouse at re-election time
The rest
Devise menus for the apathetic innocent
Robert K. Stephen
A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity 