Over the next several posts, I’m going to share with you the time-tested laws of attraction from the archives of the bewitching Madame Lola Montez. Lola was a highly paid courtesan and the mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria in the early 19th century. She compiled a book, The Arts and Secrets of Beauty, in which she not only described her personal recipes and beauty rituals, but she included fifty rules for men to follow if they want to become more appealing to the ladies. So pull up a seat, gents, and get ready to learn how to party like it’s 1848.

Rule One: Women prefer vain, frivolous men to those that possess intelligence. To make a woman fall helplessly in love with you, you should spend most of your time primping, and the rest of it acting as foolish as possible. Lola quotes Tennyson to make her point: “Oiled and curled like an Assyrian bull, smelling of musk and insolence.” The reason this works is because smart and accomplished women don’t have a good sense of their own power, and they are likewise unable to recognize it in others. Plus, foppish, shallow men are generally more entertaining than their bookish counterparts. Well, it certainly works for Tom Cruise, and the entire male cast of Grease.

Stay tuned for Rule Two, coming in a few days! In the meantime, go wax your chest.

This is from http://www.armywormwine.com. I saw the URL on some guy’s ball cap and I had to look it up before I’d believe it.

Information on RNR Estate Winery and Army Worm Wine

The forest tent caterpillar (Malacosoma disstria) prefers hardwoods like sugar maples and oaks. The term “tent” caterpillar is a little misleading as these insects don’t construct large tent-nests in the crooks of trees. Instead, they spin pad-like structures on trunks and on branches where they go to rest and to molt.

While most Northlanders consider their presence unsightly, their defoliation rarely kills host trees unless the trees are already diseased or under stress due to climatic or other environmental factors.

Forest tent caterpillar larvae emerge from egg masses in mid-May to early June (about the same time most leaves begin to open) when older larvae become restless and move around trees and other vegetation to find food. Significant damage to nearby plants can also occur at this time. The caterpillars feed actively on aspen, popple, birch and other broadleaf trees for five to six weeks.

In mid-season the females lay masses of 150 to 350 shiny brown eggs. After consuming almost every leaf in sight, the army worms then cocoon and emerge as moths in late July. Their cycle reoccurs once per decade and lasts 2-3 years, usually with the second year being the most densely populated.

I got the idea for army worm wine from a co-worker who told me that his grandfather used to make it “back in the old days.” As far as the process goes, I simply treated them as a combination of a fruit and a flower, after all, they eat leaves. Other ingredients include sugar, water, champagne yeast (from Canada), yeast nutrient, pectic enzymes, acid blend and campden tablets. This wine was made in Duluth, Minnesota in small batches using highly sterile equipment. It registers approximately 11% alcohol on the vino-meter.