Depressed

I’ve followed the 49ers since I was a young boy in the UK. The first game of American Football I watched and actually understood featured Joe Montana and Jerry Rice destroying some hapless opposing team. At the time I didn’t realize I was watching two of the greatest players to ever play the game, but I did realize I was seeing something special, and I’ve followed the team ever since. I’m therefore feeling pretty grumpy right now, after watching them lose a Superbowl for the first time ever.

I’ve got nowhere I’m really going with this. I just wanted to share my grumpiness. As for the image, I stumbled across it earlier tonight and it put a smile on my face, despite the circumstances. I loved her tie and glove combo. Hopefully it’ll have an equally positive effect on my readers.

Breath play

I’m afraid I don’t know the original source for this image. I found it on Ms Roxanne’s tumblr.

Never play alone

While I was searching for images for my post on sensory deprivation I came across this very sad post on the death of a leading kink engineer. It’s a very clear example of the dangers of attempting to do BDSM activites alone. By all accounts Matt was a very smart guy and an expert in his field, but even that didn’t save him. There’s a degree of danger to all BDSM activities, but attempting them solo magnifies the risk massively. Just don’t do it.

I’ve never played with a vacbed from Kink Engineering, but I’ve heard a lot of great things about the quality of their product and their attention to detail. The company was founded by Matt and his partner Archean, and it seems she has done a great job in taking the company forward despite incredibly difficult circumstances. Having read through her posts I’m personally in awe of how well she’s dealt with such an awful situation. If you’re a latex or vacbed lover, they sound like a great company to deal with.

The shots below feature a beautiful vacbed from Kink Engineering. You can also see a short video clip of the bed in action here.

vacbed from kink engineeringvacbed from kink engineering

The mirror shot genre

Using a camera phone to snap a reflected mirror shot is one of the new genres in candid porn. There are entire web sites dedicated to it, typically involving young women. It often hits the news when celebrities do it, or when the girls involved are teenagers and inadvertently create completely ridiculous legal problems for themselves and their friends.

Here’s a fun variation on the theme – showing your bound, gagged and cock locked slave off. Personally I’d say that it’s the best version yet.

Mirror Shot

I found this on the Fuck Yeah Femdom tumblr.

The boyfriend trainer

For those looking to enjoy some virtual domestic violence, I have just the app for you. As this yahoo post describes, an Apple app called ‘The Boyfriend Trainer’ let’s you lead a guy around on a leash and slap/zap/mace him as you desire.

“Crack that whip and teach your guy a thing or two about being the Perfect Boyfriend!” reads the game’s description. “When scolding doesn’t work, just zap him, whack him and train him to be your ideal man!”

It sounds like a fairly stupid and obnoxious digital toy, but that’s not what annoys me about it. What really bugs me is what I’m sure would happen if this got tweaked into a BDSM app. After all, a lot of the actions described are things some men (including this one) enjoy immensely in the right circumstances. With some minor changes to the game scripts, and a new marketing campaign to cast it as a consensual D/s interaction, much of the criticism would be mollified. Of course if that was the application in question, Apple would undoubtedly ban it from the app store. They don’t allow sexual applications.

Jezebel points it out as a double standard between men and women. What annoys me far more than that is the double standard on sex and violence. Media featuring non-consensual sex and violence is a big part of mainstream culture. This application is a good example, along with movies available on iTunes like The Last House on the Left or I Spit on Your Grave. Yet mix sex and consensual violence together and you’re instantly confined to the porn ghetto.

Luckily there are better ways to train a boyfriend than swiping your iPhone screen. From the smile on the lady below, I’d guess she’s pretty happy with the progress from her training regime to date.

Pegging with a smile

I found this image on the Mujeres Dominantes tumblr. It’s originally from the Strapon Dreamer site.

Let me have just a little bit of peril?

I’m in NYC for the first time in several years, and I just got out of a very enjoyable session with the wonderful Miss Troy Orleans. There’s a lot I could write about, so the obvious topic to pick is an old children’s cartoon called The Perils Of Penelope Pitstop.

You can blame this strange selection on D from Dumb Domme and her post ‘damsel in distress‘. She’s clearly not a fan of the iconic ‘tied to the railroad tracks’ trope…

It angers me that she doesn’t fight the villain harder and that she doesn’t struggle more to escape her bonds. It disgusts me when I suspect she exerts more effort craning her neck to see if a hero is coming than she does in trying to free herself.

This particular post grabbed me, because that villain/heroine dynamic is one of my earliest recollections of being excited by restraint, control and dominance. Specifically in the aforementioned Perils of Penelope Pitstop. If you’ve never seen it then this clip should give you some idea of the plot. Based on a 1914 series called The Perils Of Pauline, the cartoon featured a dashing and attractive young lady who constantly finds herself tied up and threatened by deadly Rube Goldberg like devices. As a child I never knew why it excited me, or how I related to the roles, I just knew there was something very compelling about it.

I get where D is coming from with her dislike of the scene, but I think she misses the submissive’s perspective on it. It’s the victim’s job to be the object of the desire. With ‘object’ being a key word. The villain is charge and creates the danger. The hero is in charge and (hopefully) removes the danger. Both of them desire the victim, but in different ways. The victim gets to be desirable but, as an object, doesn’t get to have control. She looks for the hero because that’s his role and his choice, not hers. She fears her fate but doesn’t control it. And that’s hot. It turns me on just thinking about it.

Obviously as a child I didn’t want to see Penelope actually get bisected by a train. But the combination of danger and helplessness pushed some deep internal buttons. The powerless female and mustache twirling villain might not be great role models, but I’m not sure that matters. After all I grew up wanting to be the victim. Although I never did develop Penelope’s love of pink.

When it comes to pictures of peril, Augustine is always a reliable resource. His images always seem to be the missing the hero character however.

Augustine

Punk, porn and femdom

After publishing my post on the AVN awards a couple of days ago, I dug a little deeper into the background of the BDSM award winner, Rubber Bordello. It looked like it was made with more humor and style than is usual for porn movies these days. I noticed it also won for the best soundtrack and best song, written by someone called Fat Mike. It took a few seconds for the penny to drop that this was the Fat Mike – founder, lead vocalist and bassist for legendary punk band NOFX. Not to mention his very entertaining side project of Me First and the Gimme Gimmes (famous for punk covers like Over The Rainbow). I’ve been a fan of his music for years, but never expected to hear a ragtime BDSM porn soundtrack from him.

It turns out his partner is Soma Snakeoil, domme, fetish model and director/writer of the movie. By all accounts Mike is a pretty kinky guy…

It’s something that I’ve always done in my life, but people think most of the stuff I write about is bullshit. “Oh, he must have made that up because there’s no way a Japanese dominatrix put out cigarettes on his nipples.” Yep, that actually happened. We probably have thirty hours of footage that didn’t make it onto Backstage Passport and it’s of me getting beat up in Japan by Japanese doms. That’s a double feature right there.

That’s taken from this interview on the background to writing the Rubber Bordello soundtrack. There’s also a more general one on his BDSM interests available here. I’m not sure if a punk musician can be described as mainstream (unless you’re Billie Joe Armstrong), but it’s nice to hear someone like him talking openly and honestly to the press about their kinky proclivities.

Cello shot featuring Soma Snakeoil

The image features Soma Snakeoil as the player and Perfect Miss Pixie as the cello. You can find more shots of Soma on her members website. Alternatively, if you’re in the LA region, there is the possibility of arranging a session with her.

Minion required

I’ve spent the evening packing for my upcoming New York trip. Not a fun time. Traveling to LA or Vegas is easy. Neither the climate nor the restaurants demand any sort of significant planning in the wardrobe department. Throw a few short sleeved shirts and a sports coat in a carry-on and you’re good to go. Manhattan in January is quite a different packing proposition.

What I really need is a minion to take care of it. I think I’d suck as a dominant, but having a minion seems like it should be easier to deal with. You never see evil masterminds worrying if their minions are having their needs met. Or doing any aftercare post massacre. Or blackmailing world leaders just because their minions always had a thing for financial domination. They just stick them in a colored jumpsuit and tell them to guard the hollowed out volcano. Can we not create a D/s/m hierarchy for lazy submissives like myself?

While I return to jumping up and down on my case, I’ll leave you with a shot of someone being looked after appropriately. I’ll bet she doesn’t have to worry about shlepping her overstuffed carry-on bag around icy streets.

Submissive caring for shoes of dominant

I found this on the Domina Desires tumblr. It’s originally by Kajali on deviant art, and is entitled Venus In Furs I.

Awards season

As part of writing this post on the Adult Video News (AVN) awards, I took a look at what had won this year. The general idea of giving awards to specific movies strikes me as an anachronism. Who buys porn DVDs these days? However, I figured the specific performers and genres recognized might be interesting. I was very surprised to discover how little attention BDSM and fetish got. There were just three awards that looked vaguely relevant – Best BDSM release, best femdom strap-on release and best foot/leg fetish release. This is out of a total of more than 100 other awards.

I’ve no idea if the titles that won were actually any good. Rubber Bordello looks like it might be fun, the other two (His Booty Is My Duty 2 and Asphyxia Heels The World) look like average porn movies with just passing nods to their supposed audience. But regardless of the selections, I was shocked there was so little recognition of BDSM. They didn’t even distinguish between maledom and femdom. There are no awards for top performing domme, or best submissive, or best rigger, or really anything interesting. What a missed opportunity.

I actually attended the awards ceremony back in 2003. I can’t say I recommend the experience. It’s fun to dress up and walk the red carpet, but the awards themselves are very dull. Amazingly, they’re not allowed to actually show explicit clips, so you end up with a lot of thank you speeches accompanied by Cinemax style edited soft porn. Getting to see Larry Flynt give the hall of fame speech and sitting next to Rocco Siffredi in the bar afterwards were the highlights. Of course if you do it with someone like Mistress T then you might be in for a slightly more exciting time (Updated: You can see Mistress T & friends in her latest AVN experiences here).

Kink is one of the biggest BDSM producers these days, but the only thing they won for was ‘Best Alternative Website’, whatever that means. I’ll leave you with a shot from their Divine Bitches site featuring Maitresse Madeline getting alternative on Robert Axel’s ass.

Maitress Madeline and Robert Axel

Spanked over the chaise longue

This caught my eye when I came across it on the Who’s Sorry Now tumblr. It’s rendered in a very striking style. I don’t know the artist, but I’m guessing it’s the same person who did this piece. Both of them feature slightly androgynous submissive young men that put me in mind of Japanese animation and videogames. I was going to go on to suggest that BDSM and D/s might be an interesting basis for a JRPG, but given the dating games genre that exists in Japan, somebody has probably already done it.

It’s also unusual to see a chaise longue involved in a spanking scene, although when you think about it, that’s actually a very suitable piece of furniture for the task.

Spanked with a belt

Interlude

I did have a follow-up to yesterday’s AVN post swirling around in my head. But then real-life intruded. Which in this case consisted of friends, dinner, drinks, more drinks and finally watching favorite movies late at night. The movie in question was Watchmen. It gets short shift from the comic book aficionados, but I personally think it’s one of the best comic book adaptations in recent years. For fans of latex and aggressive women, the corridor fight sequence is definitely not to be missed. In that spirit, I’ll leave you with an image of Malin Åkerman as Laurie Jupiter / Silk Spectre II.

Silk Spectre II