Wednesday, July 30, 2008

The Prolefeed Menace

Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means...

- GEORGE ORWELL, Nineteen Eighty-Four, about the Ministry of Truth

Alright, let's get this over with. The inevitable blog post about the Mosley case - or "spankgate", as some newspapers called it. A witty bunch, these journalists, aren't they? Actually, "spankgate" is appropriate enough, given that the tabloid which started the whole mess has something of a history with illegal phone tapping. Along with the usual list of libel actions brought against them.

As pretty much everyone in our scene knows by now, their latest invasion of privacy involved one Max Mosley, president of the International Automobile Federation (FIA), a secretly filmed "sadomasochistic orgy" with five "hookers" and, the icing on the cake, trumped-up charges of Nazi role-play. Naturally, there was nothing remotely Nazi in the accompanying "evidence video". As someone who has studied German history in considerable detail, I can tell you that Himmler's henchmen didn't wear nylon stockings. But since when does the gutter press let truth get in the way of a good salacious story?

What the hacks probably didn't expect was that Mosley would refuse to follow the precedent set by other influential men caught in sex scandals - you know, do a mea culpa, resign from office, issue a tearful public apology, blame his woes on the evils of pornography, that sort of thing. Instead, he stood his ground, rubbished the laughable Nazi allegations and calmly insisted that he had done nothing wrong. His sexual fetishes, Mosley argued, are unorthodox but perfectly harmless, and what consenting adults get up to in their private lives is nobody else's business. Imagine that! Next thing you know, he launches and wins a lawsuit against the tabloid, with more on the way (read Justice Eady's judgment here, and a good summary from The Spanking Writers). It goes to show that a rich, kinky, Oxford-educated lawyer is not to be trifled with. Way to go, Max.

I'm not a Formula 1 fan, so until four months ago, I had never heard of Max Mosley. But I was following the story from the beginning, because some of the involved "hookers" (that's Prolefeed slang for spanking professionals) happened to be penpals of mine. At the time, I and a handful of other bloggers made a silent agreement not to write about the case - in the hope that, the less it spread on the giant rumour mill that is the internet, the safer our friends would be from harassmant by the press. Of course, it turned out to be a vain endeavour. For me, the most tragic moment was when the media witchhunt eventually engulfed Paul and Lucy of Northern Spanking - who had nothing whatsoever to do with Mosley!

While the bloggers' agreement of silence quickly became moot, I still resisted writing about the sordid affair. The reason is fairly simple: to be perfectly honest, I think it is an utter waste of time. That's right. My writing about it here is, for the most part at least, pretty damn useless.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't want to make light of what has happened or of the very real harm suffered by those who were caught in the tornado. On the contrary, I was often among the first to hear the news, and it left me deeply saddened and seething with anger. It is one thing to study history and understand that, generally speaking, people are scum and society is doomed - two semesters will turn even the staunchest idealist into a cynic. However, it's another thing entirely to see your own friends suffer from terrible injustice and defamation, while you're powerless to do anything about it.

I figured that, rather than artfully but impotently venting my outrage on the blog, I could do more good with my time by just being a friend, writing emails to cheer things up a bit, and offering whatever humble support I could without making a big fuss over it. Many others did the same, and even I, German pessimist extraordinaire, couldn't help but be touched by how the community pulled together in these difficult times. It was a privilege to see that.

To name but two prominent examples: Niki Flynn's piece I'm a Prostitute!, a call for support for Paul and Lucy (she also lent her blog to the two of them to write in their own words). I can only join in: if you haven't done so already, let me persuade you to join Northern Spanking for a month or two. It won't break your bank account, it's a fabulous site created by genuine enthusiasts, and they can really use your help right now. Moreover, I recommend you read Pandora Blake's article Fighting for Freedom. Not only does it sum up her own views on the Mosley case (which largely mirror mine) very clearly, it also contains a series of interesting links, to other kinky bloggers and the mainstream press.

There is really nothing I can add to what has already been said. I think all of us here agree that kinky play is healthy, fun, morally unobjectionable and nothing to be ashamed of. We all agree that what consenting adults do in private is their own business, not that of junk food journalists or self-appointed moral guardians. We all agree that, on the "most worthless" scale, tabloid hacks rank somewhere between con artists and religiously motivated terrorists.

Which is why I said that me blogging about this is basically a waste of time - I'm preaching to the choir. It's all very well to solemnly nod our heads and back-slap each other here in the spanko community. But if we leave the wider public discussion to the tabloid-reading simpletons and the Philistine hypocrites who exploit them, what's the use? So I should really add my voice out there in the trenches, not in the safety of the ghetto.

I've done more than my usual share of that in recent months, as I'm sure have many of you. Those of you who haven't added their opinion yet: I hope you will join the ranks. I'm not asking you to become a full-time freedom fighter. But if you have time to surf spanking blogs, you can spare a few minutes to write to a journalist, comment on an article online, get involved in the debate. Whether you do so under your real name, your scene name or another alter ego created specifically for "civil rights commentary" is unimportant. What matters is what you say, and that you stand up to be counted.

One more thing, try to be polite and patient with the zealots. I know it's hard, but even I manage reasonably well, despite having a very low tolerance level for stupid bullshit. Remember, it's not about convincing the anti-BDSM fanatics - it's about winning over the majority with common sense and calm, reasoned argument.

Take an example from the Magnificent Seven: Max, Women A, B, C and D, Lucy and Paul. If they can stand up for what they believe in, in the face of so much holier-than-thou hostility and despite great personal risk, then the least the rest of us can do is give them our support in word and deed.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Movie Review: Upstairs Downstairs

(Picture courtesy of Calstar Spanking, where you can download the movie)

Producer:
Calstar (released in 2001)

Entire Story In Fewer Words Than Are In This Sentence:
Parallel punishments on two floors of wealthy London household

Victim Appeal:
Many Calstar DVD's feature two separate movies, and basically, so does this one. In the case of "Upstairs Downstairs", though, the segments are supposedly taking place at the same location, the Bellamy residence. So we get one story, at least in name. One half is about a maid who is spanked by the butler for stealing money from the sideboard. The other half involves the daughter of Mrs. Bellamy. After her mother's sudden death, her aunt is taking control of the household. When young Miss Bellamy is late for the funeral and shows up in inappropriate attire, the new lady of the manor teaches her a lesson she won't soon forget.

The French maid is played by a blonde girl with a very convincing accent, so she might actually be the real thing, une fille francaise. While her pronunciation is cute, her acting sucks and there is little chemistry with the butler. His acting sucks, too, so that whole scenario is pretty forgettable. The other one, starring Miss Bellamy and her strict aunt, is much better. The victim is a long-legged spunky English lass. She and the domme play nicely off each other. Not award-winning material, but they start things off with a lively furious argument and are infinitely more watchable than the other two performers.

Gratuitous Sadism:
After two brief opening scenes with the usual "This kind of behaviour will not be tolerated here!" lectures from the butler and the aunt, respectively, the rest of the 52-minute video is all action. Actually, before he begins to spank her, the butler searches the maid. Just to make sure that she didn't steal anything else, you see. I wonder why he keeps fondling her breasts for ages. Does he suspect a hidden compartment in there? Anyway, a pervy touch from the old geezer, enjoyable if you are into that sort of thing, but I found it dull.

Both girls get the formulaic Calstar treatment: progression of OTK hand spanking on the panties, hand spanking on the bare, two different leather paddles, and finally a caning. The action cuts back and forth between what is happening "upstairs" and "downstairs". As usual, the victims are gradually stripped, losing one item of clothing after another as things move along. Interestingly, young Miss Bellamy is allowed to keep her slutty leather boots on. Huh? I thought the punishment was about indecent clothing? That said, she looks quite sexy, being caned in those boots, so I won't complain too much.

The severity is moderate for the most part, the hand spankings and paddlings are long rather than outrageously hard. The maid receives 9 strokes with a junior cane, which cause vocal reactions and some light marks, but nothing serious. The Bellamy girl gets a pretty good thrashing to top things off. Ten strokes (repeated from several camera angles) with a thick senior cane, fairly vicious, leave her with vivid dark welts. It speaks volumes for the incompetence of the editors that they chose to end the movie with the maid's caning, rather than this much more satisfying one.

Best Reactions:
The model playing Miss Bellamy, because she is the more determined of the two. She tries harder to restrain her reactions, which makes each buckling of the knees and each little gasp she is forced to let out all the more fun.

There is a delightful out of character moment after cane stroke number six, when she looks at the camera, shakes her head, waves her hand and lets out a garbled protest sound that was probably intended as a word and ends up as a groan. What she means is, cut, wait a minute, this is way too hard! But she then soldiers on, because four more strokes follow, and they aren't getting any lighter.

Best Line:
There really isn't any memorable dialogue here. Not even an absurd, unintentionally funny bit I can recall. But I liked it when the Bellamy girl said, after the final caning: "Can I go now please, auntie?" Her tone of voice, a mixture of pleading, anticipation of relief, contrition and tenderness, just made that line stand out somehow. Especially the way she says "auntie".

Nice Psychological Touch:
The story with the butler and the maid, which is otherwise utterly unremarkable, had an element of blackmail. Not only did he catch her stealing money, he also knows that she entered the country with a forged passport. "And so, you're in a funny situation, aren't you? You either please me or the police get involved, and you are getting lots of trouble." Hardly novel, but kind of cool.

Plus, it leads to one seriously weird and gratuitous scene. In the middle of their punishment session, right between the OTK spanking and the leather paddle, the butler orders his victim to do some physical exercise. The girl is already stark naked by that point, save the shoes and socks. He makes her jump up and down, touch her toes, jog around a bit... For no reason whatsover, mind you, he's just toying with her. The bemused look on the maid's face is priceless. It's all rather silly, but certainly out of left field, that scene.

How Good Is It Really?
Standard Calstar fare: amateurish in technical terms, but it has this "homemade" feel I like to watch every once in a while. Nothing fancy, just a paddling and caning shot in someone's living room. Which is interesting if the performers are interesting. In "Upstairs Downstairs", we get two movies, one boring, the other one with decent chemistry and a solid caning.

What You Learned:
The parallel stories concept has potential. Of course, it is just a gimmick here. If it weren't for the text on the back of the DVD cover, you wouldn't even know that all this is supposed to take place at the same house.

But it got me thinking, what about a spanking film along the lines of Robert Altman's Short Cuts? Where the stories are actually interwoven, where the characters meet and interact at certain points, tying together the otherwise separate plot strands. It's a fun idea, and probably the main reason why I reviewed this average CP video in the first place. Someone has to write a script. Any takers? Ah well, I'll just write it myself then...

Monday, July 21, 2008

Life is a Circus

I have a confession to make. As a kid, I never liked the circus much. My parents took me a couple of times, but I always found it pretty boring. Maybe because I come from a generation when magic and exoticism had long become the domain of movies. I preferred the cinema to performing bears and elephants, and I never became a circus fan.

Not until much later, that is, when I discovered SM-Circus and their lovely menagerie of pets.

I first saw them doing shows at BoundCon V and was impressed by their originality and sense of fun. So when the opportunity presented itself to attend a proper movie shoot, as a translator for two English-speaking visitors, I was all for it. Especially because the visitors happened to be Niki Flynn and Amelia-Jane Rutherford aka Ariel Anderssen.

I had always been a huge admirer of Amelia-Jane (like every other spanko out there, I suppose), but had never met her. She is as radiant in person as in her work (more so, actually) and very interesting to talk to. I'll call her Ariel here, because she used her bondage name for the shoot. Even though it involved lots of spanking and little bondage. No, I don't understand it, either.

Then there was director Dirk Sands, Germany's leading pet girl tamer. It's a kind of play I, as a full-time spanking and CP obsessive, know little about. So it was all the more enlightening to talk to one of the renowned experts in the field. I asked, what exactly is it that fascinates you about pet play? Can you pin it down to one particular element, the essence of it all? The answer came quickly: it's the ambiguity. Who is in control, the tamer or the animal? Arguably, one of the big questions of kinky play - who is really in charge? - manifests itself in its purest form here, in this kind of relationship.

Of course, the aim is for the tamer to be in control, but it is a constant struggle. A good tamer will succeed in bending the animal to his will. For an unskilled one, things can get quite dangerous. Director Sands told me of a colleague who was driving his carriage, drawn by a pet girl. And when he lost control of her, they were going off the path, down a slope and into the trees... See, that's what happens when you underestimate your beasts of burden. Never take your eyes off!

No such calamities were expected during the upcoming indoor shoot. However, it turned out that the guy originally scheduled to play Ariel's boyfriend wasn't available. Needless to say, I volunteered immediately. That was before I learned that the boyfriend was supposed to lose her to the circus director in a game of dice. Oh well! I could already hear the public teasing, but figured that it wouldn't be any worse than my recent spell in the village stocks. Time to take one for the team and heroically save the production. As Nietzsche said: that which does not kill us...

A few minutes and rolls of the dice later, I was in breach of various international laws banning human trade, and a loudly protesting Ariel ("Ludwiiig! Luuudwiiiig!") was locked in close combat with the director's loyal watchdog, Niki. Having been well-trained during her first visit to SM-Circus, Niki overpowered my hapless ex-girlfriend, who was then shackled and lead into the circus tent. Thus Ariel Anderssen became a pet girl. Exit one bankrupt gambling addict, and the interesting part of the story began.

Still in a fighting mood, Niki decided to give the new arrival a hard time. After a friendly exchange of greetings ("Look what we have here...!", "Go away, you're mental!"), she started torturing poor caged Ariel with hot candle wax. The circus director, alarmed by all the screaming and writhing, caught Niki red-handed, and one embarassed bully found herself bending over the cage for the first spanking of the day. Ariel was purring with obvious glee while she counted the swats.

Her contentment was short-lived, though, for it was now time to start the new pet's training. It only took a few minutes (and the occasional stroke with the riding crop) for Ariel to get acquainted with the basic commands like "Sitz!" ("Sit!") or "Platz!" ("Down!"). Next up, the director instructed her and Niki to assemble some obstacles - without using their "paws", of course.

The ponygirl scene, with the two of them high-stepping over the bars forward, backward and blindfolded, was my favourite segment. As simple a scenario as you can imagine, I just found it incredibly exciting to watch. Would they clear the next hurdle? Would they knock it over and get punished? Somewhat to my own amusement, I was totally and undeniably transfixed by this, the equivalent of a perfect three chord pop song. The tension was palpable, and when you listened carefully, you could almost hear Niki and Ariel thinking aloud, trying to coordinate their movement.
They made a remarkably good job of the ponyplay, too. Director Sands jokingly remarked to me that there weren't enough mistakes. Things got messier with the next exercise, which involved a duck walk race and a bowl of water. Before long, the water was everywhere but in the bowl. After that came feeding time, and with it more spilled liquids. It's bound to happen when you have two hungry pets fighting over a single dish of yummy cold rice pudding. Half of it was dutifully lapped up by the girls, the other half ended up on the floor. I lost count of the spankings by that point.

By the way, it was most interesting to compare Ariel and Niki during their meal. The Fair One licked up the rice pudding with a very long tongue and impeccable elegance. Save perhaps for my own pet cat, I've never seen anyone with a better, haughtier "Eeew! Am I supposed to eat that?" expression. By contrast, The Dark One would bury her face in the bowl with merry abandon, like a starving puppy dog overjoyed at not having been forgotten. Quite a tag team, those two.
By the end of the shoot, I was well on the way to becoming a pet play convert. There is a conceptual purity and sense of innocence to it that is really quite appealing. In less pretentious words, it was a fun day, watching a group of genuine enthusiasts. SM-Circus are passionate about their kink and the details, right down to the tamer's outfit, the tent and the travelling schedule of a real circus. It's great to see that kind of drive, and we need more of it, in pet play and elsewhere.

Two final notes for us spankophiles: one, Dirk Sands dishes out most of his punishments with a leather glove. Not worn, mind you, but empty. It's an unusual instrument and one I haven't seen in action before. Makes a nice sound, too. Have to try it sometime.


Furthermore, the director is highly fond of ancient units of measurement. The numbers of strokes he uses are 6, 12, 24, 48, 60 and 120. The first few are obviously derived from the dozen, "Dutzend" in German. But what I didn't know is that 120 is called Grosshundert ("great hundred") or that 60 is called a Schock ("shock"). A Schock can be divided into 2 Bund (30 strokes each), 3 Stiegen (20 strokes), 4 Mandel (15 strokes) or 5 Dutzend (12 strokes). I have to do some research on these old numbers, they beat my conventional 6, 12, 30, 50 progression all to hell.

See, this is the kind of stuff you can learn at the circus. Now I'm a fan after all. (Pictures courtesy of SM-Circus. Read Niki's account of the shoot for more.)

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Spanked Women on the Moon

I'm really proud of what I'm about to unleash on you today. It's cheesy alright, but only a True Geek like me could have found the following scene. It's from the 1953 science fiction B-movie Project Moon Base. The film has an IMDB rating of 2.1 at the time of this writing and was parodied by Mystery Science Theater 3000. You get the picture.

Basically, it's a poor man's version of Destination Moon, and this is actually how I located it. I had just watched the George Pal classic, I was browsing the excellent SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review site, and before long, I had discovered that there was another moon mission film based on the work of Robert A. Heinlein: "Project Moon Base", a much lesser effort and rightfully forgotten. But, there was talk about a spanking scene!

It's only a threatened spanking, but hilarious nonetheless. The whole film is hilarious in a "so bad it's almost good" way. Especially its attitude towards women, which is just horribly dated - a typical confused 1950s mixture of faux feminism and patriarchic condescension. One of the protagonists is a female astronaut officer, but what starts out as an attempt to portray gender equality in the military / space program soon collapses into embarassing sexism.

I mean, to begin with, the character is called Colonel Briteis! Get it? Bright eyes. And she is constantly patronized by her male colleagues. “Can I help you up? Can I strap you in?” (Yeah! Bondage!) Those were the post-WWII days with their double standards, when women were encouraged to seek higher education and professional training, but expected to then meekly step aside and let the men take charge.

Socially, "Project Moon Base" is very much a product of its time. And a dull sci-fi snoozer with wooden acting and cheap special effects. But I like the following scene. The "soundproof" line really had me in stitches. Ah, they don't make 'em like this anymore...



(In the unlikely case that you want to see the whole movie, the MST3K episode is available on Youtube, and there is a BOO! TV treatment on Google Video. See, I told you I was a True Geek. Actually, the soundtrack of my clip is a combination of these two versions, because I wanted to get it as clean as possible, without any outsiders blabbering. Can't believe I spent an hour editing sound files for this piece of celluloid crap...)

Monday, July 14, 2008

Movie Review: The Auction


Producer:
Elitepain (released in 2007)

Entire Story In Fewer Words Than Are In This Sentence:
Environmentalists suffer to save baby seals

Victim Appeal:
The movie stars two Hungarian lasses by the names of Betty Sweet and Vicky. I like Betty in particular. With her blonde vixen physique and nicely pained reactions (if nothing else), she first caught my attention back in 2004. Actually, it was her debut with Mood Pictures that inspired me to write my first spanking film review, a trite and hyperbolic fifteen-paragraph-monstrosity published under another nickname and thankfully consigned to the dustbin of history.

In the meantime, Miss Sweet has unfortunately ruined her body with a pair of equally monstrous breast implants. Why, oh why do women keep doing this to themselves? 3000 years in the future, when aliens discover the remains of our long-extinct civilization, they are going to find two silicone cushions in every second grave, and what an impression is that going to make? At least it explains where the money for Betty's previous shoots went and why she is back needing more. Unnecessary surgical disfigurement aside, though, her reactions are still great.

The plot? Oh yes. The girls play environmentalists looking to raise money for their save-mother-nature foundation. They will do anything - anything! - in return. An auction is set at the Elite Club. You can imagine where this is going.

Gratuitous Sadism:
The auction has several rounds, each one resulting in a scene of torture. I need to take a look at my notes here. Okay, so first Betty gets her bottom caned, 11 strokes. Followed by 20 single tail lashes on her back. Then Vicky receives a "Victorian butt caning" (huh?) of 30 strokes. Next it's Betty's turn again, frontal whipping, 30 lashes (on the legs, mostly). Vicky again, getting 20 whip lashes on her tits and another 20 on the front of her legs. Finally, Betty gets her pussy pierced with two fishing hooks. Yikes!

This is intense stuff. Marks, screams, tears, plenty of "I can't stand it!" pleas... I was too lazy to calculate how much money the two activists had made by the end of the story, but in a perfect world, it ought to be a substantial sum after this kind of abuse. Then again, if we lived in a perfect world, they wouldn't need to raise money to save the planet, anyway, right? And we wouldn't get to watch all this vicious torture. Ah well...

Best Reactions:
Betty Sweet, of course. During her back whipping.

Best Line:
"Ladies and gentlemen, we have gathered together here today to stand up for saving baby seals." Not a brilliant line in itself, but the experience of hearing it uttered in a CP movie is just... What is the word? An augmentation of "surreal"? We need a new adjective.

Nice Psychological Touch:
One overly jealous participant of the auction accuses Betty of "laying eyes" on her husband. She requests that the girl should make tea for them - with tea bags fixed to her breasts with wires and nipple clamps while her bottom is being caned! And if she flinches and spills as much as a single drop, she should be whipped with the single tail. You have to admit, that's pretty inventive cruelty. Needless to say, Betty can only stand 11 strokes (hence the unusual number) before her reflexes terminate the strange tea ceremony... All under the gleeful gaze of the angry wife.

How Good Is It Really?
A pretty straightforward gonzo torture flick, this one. But the premise is so wacky that I felt I had to give it a review. And even though her appeal has faded somewhat for me, I'm a Betty Sweet completist. For old times' sake.

What You Learned:
I'm quite a greenie myself, but honestly, there are things I wouldn't do to save the environment. Like, insert fishing hooks into my genitals. That's taking the cause a bit too far I think! See, you can tell: I switch, but I'm a top at heart, not a bottom. Besides, whatever happened to natural selection? Let the stupid seals take care of themselves...

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

In the Village Stocks


I fear that the time has come for me to stand in the village stocks and atone for past misdeeds. Here is that much-anticipated video of me being caned by Niki Flynn. Quite severely, I might add, just like the readers demanded it. Thirty strokes, on the bare, with gusto. You voted for it, you waited for it, now let's get it over with.

(Actually, and I mention this right away before the inevitable gloating begins: I ended up getting 32 strokes. Yeah, I miscounted at one point. Dumb embarassing mistake. It seems like Niki was really making an impression when she fired off thost last few swishes. Or maybe it was my subconscious agreeing with Keith and Tigerbutt - see the comments section of this post.)

No need to go into the backstory again. In recent weeks, you've all been following the news of my impending suffering with sadistic glee (bastards!). And in the unlikely case that this is the first you hear of it, you can read up on how the whole saga unfolded here:

Kinky Siberian Holiday
Your Vote Counts
Someone's in trouble...
The Readers Have Spoken

The gist of it is also mentioned in the introduction of the video.

I suppose the one advantage of these virtual village stocks is that the jeering mob can't throw rotten tomatoes. Verbal taunting only, and I can live with that. Admit it, you wouldn't have brought any vegetables, anyway, you are just here to watch the public flogging. After all, that's what the crowd here in the CP blog village is really lusting for. So, without further ado:
 

AVI format, resolution 720 x 576, 168 MB:
Uploaded.net link

(Click on "Free Download", wait for the counter to count down, then solve the captcha and download the file. The video uses the Divx codec and MPEG Layer-3 for audio.)


Be advised, it is a pretty severe thrashing and may not be to everyone's taste. But that's the kind of headspace Niki and I like to explore, and after all the buildup and public drama, we wanted to do something that is worthy of the occasion. So, I suffered properly and certainly didn't enjoy it at the time. I suppose we can call it a genuine comeuppance, and I'm happy and excited to have it immortalized on film. Again, the technical quality isn't perfect, but it's a marked improvement over The German Lesson. And as free clips go, I think this piece of work here is pretty damn good, actually.

It's a lot of fun to see Niki on the other end of the cane. Proving, if it were needed, that she really is a Lupus girl in every sense of the word - receiving pain, and dishing it out. After making the video, we were joking about how it might reduce her daily dose of "will u spank me?" spam mails. See, boys, this is what you are letting yourselves in for! But I'm not sure, maybe she will get even more requests now...

As you can see, Niki has great technique, very accurate, fluid whippy movement, and not too shabby in terms of impact... A pleasure to witness. Unless you happen to be the one who gets it. Tops take note, and watch the wrist flick in slow motion.

As for me, I don't switch to the other side very often, so it's always special and an interesting "reminder". I hadn't been caned in almost a year, which is why I get some pretty dramatic-looking welts (and yes, they felt as painful as they look). It's a pity that most regular victims, for obvious reasons, don't mark so easily. With me as the tender canvas, Niki had drawn blood within the first ten strokes. She used one of my canes, which is covered with dried splatters now, so I've retired it and keep it as a souvenir.

Blood-stained trophies and kinky fun with friends aside, one intriguing aspect of the whole thing was the act of filming it, and filming it for publication. Actually, in addition to the usual creative joy and the social experiment with the reader vote, that was part of the attraction for me - to get a glimpse, at least on a very humble level, of the spanking model experience. And even though I can't seriously compare myself with the professional victims, it's interesting how much you learn just in one scene.

(For one thing, you never realize the full scope of your countless physical imperfections (slouching posture, chicken breast, et cetera...) until you see them magnified like this. Niki assures me that this is the normal perception and largely delusional. Ah, well. I suppose so.)

Maybe I'll do another scene like that someday. But not for a while. Got to restore the natural order of things first. There will be more twists to come in The Caning Saga, I'm sure. We'll wait and see. In the meantime, I hope you like the clip. You should, you voted for it. And because of your harsh verdict, it took three days before I was sitting comfortably again. Happy now? I suppose so, especially the sadists who called for the 30 strokes option. I won't be playing any April Fools' Jokes on you next year, promise.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

The Wolfenstein Experiments

It looks as if my travel report is a little late. I'm already back in Bavaria again! Has something like that ever happened to you? It does frequently to me. You are on a journey and really busy exploring all the sights. When it's almost over, you think to yourself: "Damn, I ought to write a postcard!" So you scribble something down and send it off from the airport, just before getting on the plane. And you end up seeing your friends again long before the card ever arrives...


In this case, though, I'm not going to apologize for it. You would have neglected blogging, too, had you been in my position. Visiting Niki Flynn, there is just far too much good stuff to do. Not a minute left to concern yourself with things you might as well do alone at home.

Niki has already posted her account of events (love the title!). What can I, the dry obsessive chronicler, add to it? Statistics, of course. In total, I dished out 8 hand spankings, 1 hairbrush spanking and 5 canings. I think... It's hard to keep count with that girl. See why I didn't have time to write? And in the rare moments devoid of bottom smacking, we were watching Hammer horror films or reenacting scenes from Silence of the Lambs. In so many words: if I had to repeat any of these days forever in Groundhog Day mode, I wouldn't complain.

Mind you, it's not like we were lazing around all the time. No, Sir, there was plenty of serious study and exercise. I enriched Niki's German skills with the following three (err, four) sentences:

"My hovercraft is full of eels."
"I can kill bats with an egg spoon."
"Honey, can you pass me the chainsaw? I want to cut my toes off."

Now, I agree, failure to protect your hovercraft from anguilliformes invasion is not a spankable offense. But believe it or not, Niki didn't know where that famous line is from, and such a gap in education surely deserves a good thrashing. The second sentence is of Monty Python origin, too, from a John Cleese interview on German TV. Did anyone recognize the third one? It's a variation on George Carlin (rest in peace, George, you will be missed).

You can imagine that my right arm was hurting quite a bit after all the teaching work. Not nearly as much as Niki's bottom, of course. But don't pity the poor girl too much. She got her revenge, and I my long-awaited comeuppance, as requested by the readers. You'll be pleased to hear that it was a rather severe caning, too. Ouch! Painful indeed. And with me switching so rarely, it produced some very lively welts. Thankfully, while sensitive skin marks quickly, it also heals quickly. So after a few days, undoubtedly to the disappointment of Miss Flynn and the sadistic voters, I am sitting down comfortably again. Thank you for asking.

I'm working on that clip right now. The computer was giving me trouble, and that's not a lame excuse, it is the annoying truth. My video capture card hasn't worked in a while, but I was finally able to fix the problem yesterday. Afterwards, I encountered another issue with encoding the uncompressed movies, one I had never had before. I've been able to solve that, too. Most of my free time since coming back to Munich was consumed by techie crap.

Now everything is functioning fine, and I just need a bit of time to edit the video (needless to say, there are several camera perspectives). It will be published early next week. In the meantime, I leave you with some outdoor pictures:

What a view, eh? And here's a tidbit of previously undisclosed werewolf lore: Niki owns a car. Around 34 million people in the UK do, so I suppose I can safely reveal this. I'm just mentioning it because you'll be interested to learn that she makes little mouse sounds while driving. "Feep! Feep!" It's true. Whenever there is a sharp turn, whenever another car approaches on the opposite lane at high speed: "Feep!" Too sweet.


After we were driving for a while, I started filming the scenery. She turned to the camera and said, deadpan: "Let me know if you see a good place to dump the body."

For me at least, these two little anecdotes capture the essence of Niki Flynn better than any long-winded description. She is a very cute girl with a very dark imagination. How lucky we are that she exists. No mad scientist, no matter how big and complex his laboratory, could come up with a creature like this one.