A Brief but Very Expensive Session

I really enjoyed the Wonder Woman movie, but the panels below make me think I should also investigate some of the more recent comics. It’s from Sensation Comics featuring Wonder Woman #20 and you can see more of the surrounding panels from this scene here. It seems to be a very fun take on the character. Of course thanks to FOSTA, Craigslist has already dropped its personals section, so I guess a major felony is now the only way to get beaten up by Wonder Woman. So much for these new laws cutting down on crime.

I originally found this via a tweet from Alice in BondageLand.

Down and Dirty with Big Data

I found this article on pornography producers and their use of data mining interesting. I particularly liked the similarity it surfaces between popular science reporting and porn trends reporting. In both cases the media uses a few random and limited data points to spin a click grabbing headline. So on one hand we get that dark chocolate makes you smarter and on the other  we find that millennials don’t like boobs.

It also illustrates the degree to which porn is being targeted to the niches where customers are willing to pay. Although it seems to miss a pretty big part of that story. It talks about the major producers and the amateur community, but skips over the clips sites like KinkBomb,  Clips4Sale and iwantclips. The producers of that content might not be running data mining jobs on their sales data in the cloud, but it is typically very highly targeted niche material created by professionals based on customer feedback and requests.

Perhaps the most interesting question here is the one that’s almost impossible to answer: Does porn simply reveal existing kinks or create new ones? Is it leading or following? The article mentions incest as a topic that has been a big growth area. I’d also say cuckold porn is another one that seems to have gone from almost nothing to a major sub-genre in just a few years. But is this growth simply the result of a more efficient and anonymous market place? Is the number of potential cuckold fans a constant and they were just badly served before? Or is there a feedback effect, created from the prevalence of sexual imagery and more complex sexual dynamics that create more wannabe cuckolds? It’ll take more than a pornhub analyst and a database of page views  to answer those questions.

Of course I couldn’t possible mention cuckolding porn and not post some shots from it featuring odd facial expressions. They’re a staple of the genre. This is from the Submissive Cuckolds site.

The Importance of Hydration

This tweet from Victoria Rage made me smile…

Every Domme about to attempt a golden scene has a secret stash of multiple beverages hidden away to better the odds of making things happen. Look hard enough and you can almost always tell what’s in store.

That’s very true. Whenever I spot a domme regularly swigging liquids during a scene, I have a pretty good idea of what’s to come. However, sometimes it turns out the domme was just feeling dehydrated, and then it’s a little disconcerting.

We’ll get to the end of the session and she’ll be  – “Well that was fun. Take care. See you next time!” And  I’ll smile, hug and wave goodbye, but internally I’ll be thinking – “Huh? What’s going on with all that liquid? Don’t tell me it’s simply going to be flushed down the toilet! What a waste.”

I’m not sure of the original source for this artwork, but I do like the caption. ‘Ah!’ indeed. But is that his satisfied exclamation or hers?

Extreme Breathplay

Rolling Stone magazine has an interesting article on waterboarding as a kink. It features Elise Graves, the bondage aficionado I played with and posted about last week.

Waterboarding is certainly a more extreme kink, although I think its intensity can vary dramatically depending on how it’s done. I actually experienced it a couple of times a few years back, but not in an inverted position and not with a huge amount of water. I was basically horizontal and could lift my head slightly, which meant the water tended to drain away from my nose and mouth. I suspect that makes a big difference to the degree of terror induced. The coldness of the water triggered the mammalian diver reflex, which combined with bondage and a D/s dynamic created quite an unusual and intense headspace.

It’s a kink I could never have indulged in during the years when America was actually using the technique to torture prisoners. That’s not entirely logical – what I did in a Seattle playspace had no bearing on what the government did thousands of miles away – but it felt wrong and immoral to get sexual kicks from something that was being used in such a horrible way. When I did eventually try a lightweight version of it, years after Obama banned its usage on prisoners, we still avoided any kind of interrogation dynamic or roleplay. That seemed too close to a terrible reality.

Of course water and cloth is just one way to take someones breath away. As this Rodzo artwork shows, there are other options.

A Not So Magical Elixir

I think it’s fair to say that a lot of men have an inflated and illogical opinion of the importance of their penis. Nothing else can explain the amount of time and energy that goes into jerking, edging, pumping, photographing, locking up, boasting about and  sticking objects into them. If anyone ever invents a way to harness all that activity, we could solve the world energy crisis overnight.

After years spent in the sketchier parts of the internet, I thought I’d seen every possible male dick delusion. Of course, the world is always a weirder and more wonderful place than you can ever imagine – as this story about an Irishman with back pain reveals. He thought his penis had magical healing properties and spat forth a mighty elixir to cure his ills. More specifically, he thought that injecting his semen into his arm would cure his lower back pain.

I’d love to untangle the thought process behind this. Did he just think his dick was like a magical lamp, and rubbing it would produce a solution to all his problems? Or was there some solid scientific thinking behind it based on stem cells? After all stem cells therapy is a treatment, and stem cells come from embryos, and semen is involved in making embryos – so was he just cutting out the middle thing-that-might-end-up-a man? I also like the fact he was injecting his arm rather than the actual site of the pain. Doctors typically use the arm for inoculations and blood tests, so clearly he was just following conventional medical practice there. Wouldn’t want to do anything too crazy.

Perhaps my favorite part of the whole story was a doctor who “described the case as “unique” and said it demonstrated the risks of innovative treatments that are relied upon prior to clinical research in the form of phased trials.” Of all the things this case demonstrates, the need for proper clinical trials before injecting yourself with semen is probably not the take away I would have gone with.

Alice (from Alice In BondageLand) is clearly taking no chances here. With all powerful medicines it’s advisable to fit a tamper-proof lid and store them in a safe place. I think this household should be safe enough from an inadvertent semen overdose.

A Space for Grown-Ups

I’ve written in the past about my preference for play spaces that are light, airy and modern. Doing a session in them always feels more serious and purposeful. Adults exploring something complex, rather than kids playing at being mistress/slave in a faux dungeon or torture chamber.

One of the nicest I’ve seen in recent years has been put together by Mistress Jade Thunderstorm of New Orleans and featured in her recent tweet. I love how clean and elegant it is – there’s even trailing greenery! That devious looking chair was custom made for the space.

Mistress Jade was based in Seattle before New Orleans, and I was lucky enough to session with her a couple of years back, before she moved. She’s definitely someone worth seeking out if you’re in the New Orleans area. I just wish she’d stayed and built that beautiful space here.

The Secret of German Football Success

Imke Wübbenhorst is a professional football manager in Germany, and the first woman to coach a men’s team at the fifth division level. As a former player for the U-19 German national team I’m sure she has many of the attributes needed to make a good coach. One of them is clearly not taking any shit from journalists. In response to a stupid question about wearing a siren so the men might know when she’s approaching the locker room, she came back with:

Of course not. I am a pro. I pick [my team] on dick length.

I just hope the next player she drops from the team has a thing for SPH. Because I’m pretty certain his team mates are going to being making the obvious joke about why he didn’t make the cut.

Crack the Whip

This is the model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley shot by British photographer Rankin. The odd thing is that this version of the image, which I believe is the original one, isn’t the one that has been widely shared. That would be this cropped and color modified version that I originally found. I guess people are happy to trade bad composition for a closer look at Ms Huntington-Whiteley.

This is from a book by Rankin called Ten Time Rosie shot in 2010.

Bondage Therapy in Seattle

Bondage virtuoso Elise Graves has been in Seattle for the last few days. Primarily she was here to shoot for House of Gord, but she did reserve time for a couple of private sessions, and I was lucky enough to score one of them. A lovely mix of whipping, electrical play and bondage was the result. We didn’t get pictures, but fortunately for me, she did shoot them in her other session, as shown here.  I’m not sure who the other Seattle submissive is, but my thanks to him for these shots. He appears to be doing a better job of handling the rope suspension than I did.

Rope isn’t normally my favored bondage medium. I realized today that a big part of that is the time it often takes. When I’ve limited time to play, and I’m paying by the hour, I somewhat resent burning a lot of the session getting into and out of bondage. The process can be enjoyable, but not as enjoyable as what comes afterward. Fortunately, with an expert like Elise, that becomes far less of an issue. I’ve played with a lot of word class dommes, but I think she’s the fastest rigger I’ve ever experienced. She very quickly pulled together well balanced positions, with just the right degree of stress.

Elise’s smile in this image is very indicative of the way she plays. There was a lot of happy positive energy in our scene today. This image is from her Bondage Liberate site. I found it via her twitter feed.