Tag: Mainstream

Zen and the art of bondage

A few posts ago I linked to an article on BDSM and meditation. On a similar theme I stumbled onto this short video from the New York Post on the idea of meditative bondage. It features classes from Erin Houdini.

The idea itself is interesting, but sadly the presenter of the video is fairly annoying. She takes great pleasure in announcing at the end that she didn’t find it sexually charging and didn’t ‘get into it.’ I’ll never understand people like that. Not liking something is fine, we all have different interests, but why would anyone be happy about it? I love discovering new things I like, whether it’s food, drink, people, art or sexual activities. Conversely, I’m always disappointed when something doesn’t push my buttons. That means a potentially interesting and new avenue of exploration is closed off to me. Why would you be happy about having less options in life?

BoundAndFuckedThis gentleman appears to be enjoying some stringent rope bondage. I wonder how Zen he’s feeling? The watermark has been annoyingly cut off, but I’d guess this is from the kink.com studios.

Cleaning up in DC

I thought I’d finish this trilogy of posts on forceful female characters from mainstream media with a slightly offbeat choice – Kate Kaplan from the Blacklist. She plays a cleaner and problem solver. Someone who can dispose of dead bodies for you or, when necessary, find the dead body that you’ve carelessly misplaced. She’s terse, low key, awesomely efficient and strangely hot (to me at least). You can see a montage of her in action here.

I have to admit it’s weird that, in a show featuring a hot FBI agent and a hot Israel agent, I go for the spinster in tweed and horn rimmed glasses. I guess there’s just something about a forceful, no nonsense, understated attitude that does it for me.

Kaplan

Murdering people in Miami

This is a slightly odd segue from the last post. Watching Julia Stiles in the Bourne series reminded me of her role in Dexter. She plays Lumen, one of the lead characters in season 6. After being raped and abused by a group of men she uses Dexter’s help to enact a fitting and violent retribution on each of them. The scene of them on his boat in the season finale is one of the sweetest moments you’ll see featuring two serial killers returning from dumping a body.

In fact the series has a number of strong dominant female characters. As well as Lumen, there’s his aggressive and foul mouthed sister (Jennifer Carpenter), dangerous Lilia from Season 2 (Jamie Murray) and serial poisoner Hannah from Season 7 (Yvonne Strahovski). Not really much BDSM content, but definitely one for the fans of femme fatales.

LumenHere’s Lumen learning from Dexter how to stab a man.

Kicking ass in the CIA

I’ve just been re-watching the Jason Bourne trilogy. It’s not a particularly subtle or intellectual series, but it is fun to watch late at night over a drink or two. Personally I prefer the directing of Doug Liman (who did the first Bourne Identity) rather than Paul Greengrass (who did the two sequels). Liman’s style is less frenetic and more traditional than the jerky and over the top Greengrass. That said, the two sequels have one big advantage – Joan Allen. She plays the hard as nails CIA agent who struts through the films, barking orders, facing down her superiors and figuring out what’s really going on. The movies are escapist nonsense of the James Bond variety, but it’s nice to see a strong female character kicking ass and not sleeping with the hero.

Joan Allen in the Bourne Ultimatum

Fore!

One of the more remarkable aspects of the Brexit story is the contrast between England and Scotland. While England was mixed on the issue, with a slight bias to leave the EU,  Scotland was heavily in favor of remaining. As a result there’s now new discussion on Scottish independence and how it could remain part of the EU when England leaves. It’s incredible that having just recently won a referendum to maintain the union, the British goverment has managed to create a situation that gives new incentive and opportunity to dissolve it.

Finding specific Scottish femdom material to illustrate this post was kind of tricky. I know of dommes based in Scotland, but that’s not quite the same thing. In the end I’ve gone with a golfing shot by Eric Stanton. It’s a sport that originated there and is synonymous with the country. While the image is classic Stanton in its style, I’m not sure a golf pro would approve of the ladies swing. This mix of fashions is also kind of interesting. The lady wearing the tie looks like she’s from the 1980’s, where the lady next to her is a classic 1950’s Stanton look.

Hole In One cover art by Eric StantonI found this in this flickr stream of Eric Stanton book covers.

Stupidity in the UK – now slightly reduced

Regular readers will hopefully remember me covering some really stupid new laws in the UK that attacked freedom of expression and had a big impact on independent BDSM producers. Posts like this, this and this touched on some of the background and the law’s impact.

The good news is that the agency responsibly for clamping down on many independent porn sites (ATVOD) has been stripped of its power. And this month Pandora Blake – creator of the Dreams of Spanking site – managed to get her original ban overturned on appeal. She’s written about it on a blog post here.

Her site is now back up and running and accepting new members. So if you’re a spanking fan, and want to support a great independent site run by someone who has fought long and hard against censorship, then I suggest checking it out.

Dreams-of-Spanking_houseboy-film072This image is from the Houseboy – The Film. It stars Eliza Grey, Pandora Blake and Tai Crimson.

What big medals

I’m normally a bit wary of posting military uniform pictures. I like them, particularly vintage ones (like this or this), but there’s often a strong hint of Nazi about some of the domme military outfits. While it’s true that the bad guys always have the best outfits, I’m not sure we’re quite far enough away from WWII to hijack its imagery for sexual pleasure. Or at least I’m personally not comfortable with that.

Fortunately, this shot of an American actress pretending to be a communist jet fighter pilot from the cold war has no such moral issues. The lady in question is Janet Leigh (most famous for her role in Psycho) and the movie is Jet Pilot. By all accounts it was a terrible movie, but I do think Ms Leigh looks great as the Russian pilot, particular with the Princess Leia hair (20 years before Star Wars).

Janet Leigh in the movie Jet Pilot

A little prick in the rump

At a quick glance this could be an image from a femdom pegging or a medical play porn scene. In fact it’s an advertisement for disposable one use syringes. You can see the full size version of it here.

The tag line is that ‘non-disposable syringes are the second biggest cause of HIV’, so I guess their pose is meant to allude to the biggest cause. Although that doesn’t make a lot of sense, as pegging is probably one of the safest forms of penetrative sex you can have. I’m also not sure what the bowl of apples is about, unless it’s another allusion to sex and sinful temptation. Still, whatever the confused philosophy, I’m certainly a fan of advertisements featuring this kind of medical scene.

LittlePrick

Headline Hard-ons

There have been a lot of dicks in the news recently. And no, that’s not a set-up for a Donald Trump joke.

Firstly, there was the story with the headline grabbing title – ‘Is your penis really shrinking?‘ Apparently falsely believing your penis to be shrinking is a defined medical phenomena known as Koro. I know men think all sorts of strange things about their dicks on a daily basis, but panicking that it’ll vanish back into the body is a new one on me.

Then there was the story about a penis transplant. A lot of headlines billed it as the ‘first’, where in fact it was only the first in the US and the third in the world. A penis transplant sounds like a set-up for a great porn movie or a terrible horror movie, but in fact it’s a fascinating medical and human interest story. The recipient seems like an interesting guys who has tackled the issue in a very open and honest way.

Finally, in slightly different medical news, there was the English surgeon who wore a chastity device while performing operations. The story is full of lurid details of a penis torture device, but from the description it just sounds like a regular plastic CB device or something similar. He wasn’t discovered because of the bulge in his scrubs, but because he snapped photos in a hospital locker room and emailed them to a ‘professional’ (note quotes) dominatrix. She then turned him into the hospital authorities who suspended him.

I’m in two minds about that last story. On one hand he doesn’t seem to have exhibited great judgement, which isn’t a good sign for a surgeon. On the other hand, I’m really not sure what the big deal is about doing your job in a chastity device. The article talks about hygiene issues, but unless he was doing surgery sans pants, I can’t imagine that would be a problem. If it was a vibrating butt plug or nipple clamps then I’d understand the concern, but some people wear chastity devices 24×7. I’d be more concerned with his bad judgement in snapping photographs and picking a horrible domme than the device itself.

Dick PicI’m afraid I don’t know where this particular dick pic is from. It has the look of a cropped image from kink.com.

What a lovely canoe

I’ve written about some of America’s crazy cultural issues in the last couple of posts, but it’s not alone in having some strange attitudes. All countries have odd cultural baggage when it comes to sexuality and gender. The latest example from Japan would be this story of an artist and her vagina canoe.

As any porn aficionado will tell you, Japan has odd laws around pornography and obscenity. Japanese producers create some fairly extreme (to Western eyes) material, but the genitals must be obscured. Artist Megumi Igarashi pushed this law to the point of absurdity by distributing the data that would allow someone to ‘print’ a 3D model of her vagina. She did so to help fund a canoe also modeled on her body.  Amazingly, for distributing what’s basically a mathematical description of part of her own body, she was found guilty of obscenity and fined 400,000 Yen (about $3,680). The problem with pointing out the absurdity of a law is that after you’re done with the absurdity the law bit is still there. One can only hope that the sheer ridiculousness of the ruling may provoke a change.

Past artists have worked around the censorship laws with strategically placed objects. Mike Myers had fun with that approach in this Austin Powers clip. Namio Harukawa was a little subtler in the image below.

Namio Harukawa artwork