Tag: Humor

Strike a Pose

I took a vacation day off from my vacation today. After three days of being beaten and abused (in the best possible way) I relaxed and did touristy stuff. I did get to enjoy some instruction on wine from a very attractive sommelier wearing a short leather skirt and sporting a slash of dark red lipstick, but I’m going to consider that more a happy bonus than a part of my kinky trip.

The break also gave me chance to catch up on the world and write a post featuring the happy couple below. I generally steer clear of politics on this site. As much as I despise the current US administration, I don’t think readers comes here for my political opinions. However, the moment I saw the pictures below, I knew they’d end up as blog post. For anyone who missed the story, that’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin with his wife Louise Linton. She’d already made a lot of new friends via twitter spat earlier this year,  and this photograph was just her latest PR success story.

The reason I feature it here is because it reminds me of so many images I see on my twitter feed. There’s an attractive lady staring down into the camera, brandishing a stack of bills, and offering a look that mixes sexy, smug and condescension . It’s a fin-domme classic. Normally – on my twitter feed at least – it’s accompanied by comments about everyone being pathetic losers and the need to drain their wallets, but I think with these two that context goes without saying. Louise even accessorized correctly with the fetishistic black leather gloves and skirt. Given Mnuchin is worth a fortune, I doubt she’ll need to start a new career as an online financial domme. But if he’s the first up against the wall in a revolution, she’ll at least have career options to fall back on.

The Worm that Turned

The image below popped up via a retweet on my twitter feed the other day. It’s not the kind of thing I’d usually feature here. It’s more than a little silly. If there is a female led revolution, I doubt it’ll be done in uncomfortable and impractical fetish gear designed to appeal to men. However, there was something about that middle segment of the image that caught my eye and stirred some long dormant brain cells.

Many, many years ago there was a British comedy duo called The Two Ronnies. In the 70’s and 80’s they fronted a sketch show and at the time were probably the most famous comedy pairing in England. They often did short serial stories as part of their show, and the one they did in 1980 was called ‘The Worm that Turned‘. Obviously riffing on 70’s feminism and the first female Prime Minister, it was spoof sci-fi, set in 2012, that had women running the world and men in frocks staying home to do the housework. The secret police, enforcing this new world order, were the fetish clad women shown in this clip (@ 1:52) and in the image below.

I should make clear that all the detail above is not from memory, but from me researching it tonight. I was probably around 7 years old when I watched it, and I’m pretty certain I haven’t watched it again in the last 35 or so years. Some comedy from that era has aged well (e.g. Monty Python or The Young Ones), but this now looks terribly dated and sexist. That said, while I remembered almost nothing else about it, those black clad marching women obviously made a strong impression on the young paltego. Enough at least that I could jump back almost four decades from a fuzzy third of an image to the relevant youtube clip in just a few searches. I had zero idea about sex or kink as a kid, but clearly the wiring was already in place.

I wonder if the image creator was aware of the kind of source material he was drawing from? I’m guessing most of the twitter commentators on the image aren’t.

Slutty Witch

It’s Halloween in the US, which means only one thing in the paltego household. I’m curled up with a bottle of red wine, safe in the knowledge that there’s a condo concierge, a key locked elevator and a thick door between me and the hordes of ravenous tiny people roaming the streets for candy. Nobody can accuse me of not getting into the festival spirit – namely because I steer clear of everyone on these kind of occasions. I am the E. Scrooge of Halloween, minus the annoying ghosts and the last minute change of heart.

The other thing Halloween means is lots of shots on twitter of professional kinksters wearing fetish gear to parties. That seems like cheating to me. It’d be like Superman turning up at a fancy dress party dressed as Superman. Sure, it’s an unusual outfit, but shouldn’t your costume be something different to what you normally wear? Although come to think of it, Clarke Kent dressing as Superman for the Daily Planet Halloween party would actually be a great costume.

Anyway, for those that do celebrate the festival, I hope you had a great time. I’ll leave you with this from the War and Peas comic series.

Making art from porn

A recent interview with Maggie Gyllenhaal quoted her as saying that “that pornography is an art form”. She’s right of course, but she missed one of the key elements: Only when it’s in black and white. Anyone who has browsed tumblr extensively will realize this. Depraved color pornography is instantly transformed into a moody art shot with the simple application of a monochrome filter.

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously stated, in Jacobellis v. Ohio, that he knew pornography when he saw it. At the time he was judging Loius Malle’s film ‘The Lovers‘. That was shot in black and white, and obviously that’s why he found it not obscene. It’s basic science.

I don’t have a original source for this image. I’m sure it started as a far more depraved and non-artistic full color shot.

Update: The original source is StrapOn Dreamer.

A cunning plan

Trying to dig up dirt dirt on your political opponents is a time honored trick. Liberal Democrat candidate Dean Stone seemed to be giving it a shot when he emailed his opponent to ask if she had ‘anything embarrassing’ in her past. Admittedly, simply asking your opponent to simply volunteer political ammunition is pretty dumb, but at least it follows the basic formula. However, he then decided to give the old storyline a new twist, by sending her a naked picture of himself, partly dressed as a mouse and with a dominatrix. Presumably he thought she might not have been clear what he meant by ’embarrassing’, and thought that a personal example might really clarify his original request.

In today’s climate, it’s tough to set new standards for dumb political decisions. I really thought America had this sewn up. Yet Mr Stone has made a strong play here to bring Britain back into contention. Sadly, despite his cunning plan, he ended up coming 6th out of 6 candidates, so clearly the British voters aren’t on board with this new approach. Maybe he should try giving the White House a call? They seem to like out-of-the-box thinkers who can do exciting new things with social media.

Of course if Servitor had his way, male politicians and voters would be a thing of the past.

AWOL

Apologies in advance – I’m off to the wilds of Oregon for the weekend, so there’ll be no new posts until I’m back. I normally wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere without internet access, but I have family in town, and they wanted to see a bit more of the US than was visible from my usual haunts of urban cocktail bars and restaurants.

If anyone is looking for some alternative entertainment while I’m gone, I noticed that Midori had done a couple of podcasts on her Forte Femme course. You can listen to part 1 and part 2 here. If I’m honest I found the interviewer a little annoying, as everything was awesome and amazing. I’d personally have preferred a more investigative and inquisitive approach, but your mileage may vary.

Hopefully I’ll be back on Sunday with new posts. That is unless I’m captured and ravaged by a wild roaming dominatrix, as captured in this rare photograph. I know what to do when encountering a bear or a cougar in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, but what about a domme of the forest? Based on my knowledge of the urban domme, I’m guessing the answer is probably a cock shot of some sort. That’s probably better than bear spray when it comes to ensuring everyone stays a long way away from you.

This is from the lovely Goddess Jessica’s twitter feed.

Kinky Speed Dating

Apparently, it’s a thing. At least it is if you live in Los Angeles. You turn up at the event, fill in a match card, do a series of 5 minute dates and then wait a few days to see if anyone you met is interested in getting kinky with you. It sounds simultaneously horrifying and appealing.

The traditional way to meet kinky people in person is a munch. Which, from a personal perspective, as a naturally shy person, is a pretty stressful concept. Munches are unstructured social events. I fear cliques, hidden social dynamics and the mix of motivations for attendees (much like this). Kinky speed dating might lead to some strange conversations, but at least everyone is on the same page when it comes to motives and the process.

If anyone has attended one of these, or is planning on going to the June 15th one in LA, I’d love to hear how it went via a comment.

The image is from the Angry Little Girls webcomic series by Lela Lee.

So it’s come to this

This is, I swear, my last retrospective post to commemorate my 2000th post anniversary. If I’m not careful I’m going to be still writing about it when post 3000 rolls around. So normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

Until then, let me finish by sharing links to some of my favorite past posts. These are the ones I most enjoyed writing and I think best represent what I’m trying to do here. So here, in no particular order, is my top 10.

  1. The post ‘Reality and Physicality‘, featuring a quote from the book Neuromancer, captures a sensation from kinky play that I often experience, but haven’t seen described elsewhere. It also features some lovely shots of Domina Yuki.
  2. I’ve frequently posted on the silly stereotype that most submissive men have stressful high power jobs and like the chance to unwind in a dungeon (for example here). I think this particular post is the best rant I’ve managed to date on that.
  3. Stupid legal situations have been another good area for angry cathartic posts, particularly featuring the UK. This was the one that made me laugh the most.
  4. This post on Bob Flanagan wasn’t anything too special, but it did trigger one of the most interesting comments I’ve ever had (from scott Kelly).
  5. This post and it’s more constructive follow-up highlighted an issue in scene negotiation that has bitten me in the past. Hopefully they might have saved others from a similar situation.
  6. My posts obviously rely a lot on artwork created by others. This post had one of the cutest pieces, and also addressed an important issue.
  7. You can prove anything with statistics – including the fact that more people fantasize about being peed on that watched the 2014 World Series.
  8. Large tech companies doing stupid things with adult content is a frequent and significant problem. I thought this post on why that might happen presented a perspective on it that’s rarely heard.
  9. BDSM bloggers often write about pain in scenes, but less frequently address how stress can build up in play. I thought Accumulating Stress and it’s follow-up Relieving Stress were an interesting take on that.
  10. Being listed as a top sex blogger back in 2012 was nice, but even better was the chance to write this Colbert-esque acceptance piece.

For images I hunted back to find something that I really liked. Expressions and smiles have been a common theme and it seemed appropriate to repeat that. Not to mention some cool suspension rope bondage.

When a switch marries a domme

I’m guessing from her expression, his desire is likely to go unfulfilled. Or maybe he can be the dominant one, just as long as he does exactly as he’s told.

This drawing for Playboy magazine is by the British cartoonist Francis Wilford Smith. According to his Wikipedia page he was a man of many talents. He did cartoons for Punch, Esquire and The New Yorker. He worked on advertising campaigns for major companies, wrote books on pin-up magazines and was a collector and expert on Blues and Gospel music.