Photo credit unknown but borrowed from Fesseur

A couple of lifetimes ago, or roughly 30 years, I saw a film called “Cutting It Short.” That’s what the film was called in the United States but its title in Czech is “Postriziny.” That really isn’t right either because the word should have a bunch of diacritical marks that I have no idea how to put in.

The Bell Museum of Natural History on the U of M Minneapolis campus showed a great many foreign films and during my undergrad years I frequently attended the showings. So impressed was I by the subtitled Czech movie that I returned twice to see it again. This was long before I became a writer in a certain genre, and Lisa Carlson, Mr. Swayne, Cameron and their fictional cohort were scarcely a gleam in their author’s eye.

However I still was me, regardless how green and unformed, and there is one scene in the film that especially attracted my attention. I’m sure you can guess its nature, but the entire work is quite well done also, humorous, and eloquent in its simple story of a quaint Slovak village being dragged unwillingly into the hectic pace of the 20^th century. Then too there was the film’s star, Magda Vásáryová, who attracted me like few actresses did before or since. Her cherubic, pixie-like face and long red-gold hair delighted me, and her soft voice was violins and harp strings to my ears.

When I got my first VCR I searched video stores for the film to no avail, and as the years passed I gave up looking. But relatively recently I have seen online a few stills from the movie, especially of that special scene, and even a few video clips, though the quality of the outtakes has been far less than sterling. So I’m sending a huge thank you to the owner of Fesseur Blogspot, listed in the Blog Roll to your right, for finding not only a very good and very long clip of the film, but also a marvelous portrait of its star, which appears at the top of this rant.

I think perhaps the photo was shot a few years after she made this film, but her elfin energy and joie de vivre still are superbly manifest in the photo, and my eyes widened gleefully – you may not realize that I’m capable of glee but I am – with both remembrance of Magda and the happiness she gave me all those decades ago, and also with a shock of recognition of quite another kind.

I met my girlfriend a year ago. We started talking by email and then moved on to Skype, the terribly Buck-Rogers sort of video-phone computer system, and still speak that way almost every day, so we were able to see one another before we met in the flesh. I can’t say for certain it was love at first sight for us, although the passage of time has shown that might in fact be the case, but from the beginning I felt I knew her already, or at the least I knew someone who looked exactly like her, and was already quite taken with either her or the person she looked like, or both.

Then when we met in person and I could spend time close to her the feeling only increased. When we were together I had no need to look very far to see her face. I had merely to look down most of the time to find her looking up at me, tucked under my arm as we strolled the Las Vegas Strip, hand in hand on Pensacola beach, lying in bed with her head resting on my chest, or even tramping through a live oak grove in Florida or trudging the Nevada desert, except that then she usually was six paces ahead of me, grinning back and urging me to stop dawdling and catch her up.

Magda doing a quite credible and similarly almost innocent impression of my girlfriend about to put salt in the sugar bowl.

I told her a couple of times, maybe more, that she reminded me of a film star but I quit doing so because it was awkward to admit that I couldn’t think who it was, yet often when she turned her face a certain way or tilted her little nose in a certain direction, for an instant I was sure I knew where I had seen her before. Then last night I found the photo above and it finally made sense, and all the months of nagging almost-certainty came to an end.

If you put my girlfriend’s photo next to Magda’s you would see only some or even a fair amount of resemblance, but you don’t see my girlfriend as much as I do, or in as full dimension, or remember Magda as purely and fondly. To me they could be identical twins. Not that this makes any difference to how much I love my girlfriend, which is a blooming lot, Magda or no Magda, but I can’t tell you how relieved I am to be rid of that occasional feeling of unresolved déjà vu when I see my girlfriend’s cherubic, pixie-like face.

So now that the fog has lifted I know exactly whom my girlfriend resembles. She looks exactly like the girl I have longed to cherish forever since the day I was born.

That is all.

Devlin out.

Yesterday, while perusing the online edition of The New York Post newspaper Opinion page I came across this delightful picture in their ‘Today In Photos’ section. Turns out it is from a protest rally against sexual harassment of  female students by male professors held in Kiev, Ukraine in front of the Education Ministry. The protesting group is FEMEN, a Ukrainian activist organization who defend a woman’s place in society. I say more power to them. Sexual harassment is deplorable and perpetrators should be strung up by their….. thumbs. But I must say that I admire the way these young feminists display their civil disobedience. Here is another site with more information and photos of the protest.

~Michael

For those who can’t see the link – http://englishrussia.com/?p=6310#more-6310

I struggled with this piece.  I sat down to tell the story behind Mr. Renegade’s ripped pants (snicker, snicker ) …

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to The Spanking

but my focus kept coming back to the guy himself rather than the spanking he gave me that afternoon.  Without getting too much into his colorful military background, suffice it to say that Mr. Renegade can take control of a situation very easily –  in my case, *too* easily.  

I’ve always been a firm believer in never going across a lap willingly for a spanking – never ever – protest is the key word – protest and more protest.  Alarmingly though, none of my proven defensive maneuvers have worked on this man.   My negotiating skills fall on deaf ears; my spanking delay tactics fail me.  Strenuous wriggling & squirming & kicking are met with an unyielding grip.   Running & hiding – not my proudest moments but heck, desperate times call for childish action, right? –  he’s always two irritating steps ahead of me and I’m caught before I can flee. Unbelievably, even my big gun, i.e., whining, is ineffective.  Simply, all my defenses  have proven futile.  This is what you call fighting a losing battle.  I’m spanked at his will.  (Don’t you hate it when that happens?  *G*)  I refuse to say that I’ve met my match but, look, here’s a visual aid so you can see what I’m up against …

See?  I’m doomed.  ;)

But perhaps not.   Mr. Renegade is an experienced Dom but  he’s not a Spanko, thank God. I never thought I’d say that but honestly, if the man was a Spanko he’d understand the havoc he was wreaking with my insides when he hauls me across his lap; he’d know about the psychological elements & effects of spanking … he’d know about The Butterflies  (oh Gawd, please, anything but that!)   If he had Spanko knowledge he’d have even more ammo against me.  He’d have me waving a white flag in a heartbeat.  I’m safe for the time being, though.  He spanks me because he knows it’s my kink, that’s what he knows.   He doesn’t understand my weakness for spanking and the intense power of that weakness.  For now I’m safe.  Sore but safe. *G*

xoxo

Girls need mean and horrid from the men they love. They don’t like it, the girls I mean, not at all, especially if mean and horrid is accompanied by sore and ouchy, in their bottoms I mean, or worse, strict and scold-y, as in a good telling off.

But the men who love certain kinds of girls, girls who really do know better than to drink too much, stay up too late, drive too fast, or any of the other things that get girls into trouble, realize that their girls truly require a stern guiding hand and not just on their bums.

Then too there is the matter of semantics. A girl of this kind says ‘mean and horrid’ when her man, he of the stern guiding hand, would call it ‘insistent and unyielding.’

Such a man must insist upon limits to alcohol consumption and the strict observance of rules of the road, and often be unyielding in regards bedtime. This is because he knows he is right, knows what is best for the girl in his charge, because he has carefully considered her needs for as long as he has known her, and perhaps even for years prior to that.

She knows as well how right he is about her and her needs, and in most cases has admitted that he is. And yet girls of this kind are more than apt to forget in the heat of the moment, the instant she thinks she must have one more gin and tonic or the moment she realizes that more fun is to be had if only she could delay bedtime just another hour, that very often, aggravating as that is, her man knows what he’s doing.

This condition exists because this kind of girl is intrinsically, unabashedly, and continuously naughty. There are lapses in her naughtiness of course, periods of goodness where she in fact wonders how she could possibly act that way, but these incidents are intermittent and pass quickly.

Her man, her in-charge guy, sees these interludes for what they are, calms between storms, and so is ever vigilant, ever mindful of his responsibility to her, to them, and to his unwavering purpose of keeping his naughty girl’s worse instincts in check by whatever means necessary.

When she acts stubborn and willful, he is stern and implacable; when she wheedles and cajoles, he smiles and says no as often as it takes to convince her that he will not be cozened. When she sulks he commiserates, but does not surrender in order to see her smile because giving in is not only wrong for her and for them in that instance, but it tells her that he is weak and cannot hold her as she needs to be held in his unyielding grip.

A girl with a mean and horrid, insistent and unyielding man in her life is quite fortunate, which she sometimes will admit to herself if to no one else, but very frequently she feels ill used, mistreated, and quite angry about it.

The man whose girl this is often feels put out, exasperated, even frustrated at the ongoing battle to steer his girl away from her naughty behavior, yet never does he regret his actions nor even hers, because that’s how he always has known her and loved her, and never expects anything else.

And then when the smoke clears, the redness in her bottom fades, her foot stamping is done, his telling off is over, her rage is tempered by his strength, and he calls her from the corner and the cuddles and kisses ensue, neither has cause to complain.

That’s the way they were meant to be, these two. His stern and implacable hand, his eyes, his voice, can guide them only where she leads. And neither would have it any other way.

Don’t forget to use your wooden spoons when working with non-stick pans!

But if your house is like my house, the wooden spoons don’t see the kitchen very often.  Yeeeouch!

[And speaking of wooden spoons, here's a shot of a certain gentleman whose pants split just as he was about to administer a spanking to a very good girl.  It was FUNNY.  I know ... I was there when it happened.  *G*    ... Hmmm?  Yes, you're right; his split pants have nothing do to with wooden spoons.  I was just looking for an excuse to post the picture.  ]

xoxo

The difference between a fairy tale and a sea story, in most cases, is that one begins “Once upon a time …” and the other starts with “Now this is no s*** …” I realize that censoring the word isn’t at all sailorly but around here what’s sauce for the goose, and so on and so on, though I want no inferences made later when I quote someone directly.

Anyway this really did happen nearly 40 years ago and it’s true to the best of my recollection, although four decades of intermittent retelling may have altered real events somewhat.

Right out of boot camp I sailed in the USCGC (US Coast Guard Cutter) Rush, call sign WHEC723, which at 378 feet is one of ten of the biggest, fastest, and most heavily armed ships ever to fly the Coast Guard ensign. The war was on and the Rush had returned from Viet Nam only a couple of weeks before, where among other duties she provided offshore fire support with a one-gun battery.

The day after I reported aboard we cast off from the dock in Alameda, California for ASWEX (Anti-Submarine Warfare Exercises) in the Pacific near Hawaii. I never had been to sea in anything bigger than my uncle’s 18-foot fishing boat, catching grouper in the Gulf of Mexico around Padre Island, so I was ill prepared for the adventure, and strictly speaking quite ill in fact, and spent a great deal of time the first couple of days at the rail.

By the time we got to Hawaii, however, I had my sea legs, and we docked in Pearl Harbor and had weekend liberty before heading out to do battle with enemy submarines. I was billeted on the deck force – chippers and painters, deck swabbers, bridge watch standers and so on, but my GQ (General Quarters or battle station) assignment was as trainer on the 5-inch gun.

For anyone not familiar, five inches is the diameter of the shell fired by the gun, so this was a hefty bit of artillery. It is the trainer’s job to crank a wheel to turn the gun from side to side so the barrel is facing the right way, while the pointer who sits on the other side of the gun moves the barrel up and down, and also has the trigger.

We took a few practice shots before getting down to the submarine hunt, and I have to say that sitting right next to the gun’s breach when 30 pounds of Cordite exploded not two feet from my head was quite the shattering experience. I didn’t so much hear the noise as feel the shock of it to the pith and marrow of every bone in my body.

Then we went into hunt mode and hunkered down to Port and Starboard watches, meaning six hours on and six off at our GQ stations. I spent many early mornings trying to sleep on the metal deck of the gun mount, my foul weather jacket snug about me, and my sound-powered phones on, not so as to hear if the gun captain said anything, but to keep my ears warm. It’s amazing how cold it can get on a bare metal deck even around Hawaii.

In that fashion we hunted enemy subs, and frequently made sonar contact with subs that were hunting us. Ever and anon the alarm would sound, I would jump into my metal seat and light off the mount, which I did by throwing a nasty looking power switch in front of me by my feet, and then we would swivel the gun around to make sure it worked, and wait to see what became of the contact sonar made with the enemy. Usually the sub outran or out maneuvered us after a couple of hours, and we stood down and I hunkered down on the cold but quiet deck again.

But then for three days we chased one particular contact, and I never was sure if we were catching up to him or if he was coming back round to harass us at some ungodly hour in the night, but I clearly recall thinking that 3 am was no fit time EVER to waken someone from sleep, however cold and rubbish it might be, and make him crank up a gun left over from World War II.

Did I mention the Coast Guard gets a lot of Navy hand-me-downs? Our gun came off a decommissioned aircraft carrier. In any case, I had no idea what we would do with a deck gun, regardless how huge or old, against a submerged opponent, but that wasn’t my lookout – ours not to reason why and all that.

Then one late morning when I was out of the gun mount and getting some much needed rack time, we caught up with the annoying little beggar who had been dogging us and nailed him!

Apart from the deck gun, a couple of mortars for star shells, a half dozen heavy machineguns and so on, the Rush had 12 torpedo tubes, six port and six starboard, mounted to the second weather deck.

No one told me, oddly enough, that part of our mission was to test a new torpedo, and that was what the gunnery lads fired at the enemy. Its mission, the fancy high tech torpedo’s, was to race down to where the submarine was, come within a hundred yards, register the hit electronically – the shooting solution as they say now – deactivate its engine, and surface for pickup and reuse.

That was the plan, but the torpedo had other ideas. Again for those not familiar, even a torpedo without a payload of explosive is quite a hefty device, over a half-ton of engine and machinery, a mini-submarine in fact with a velocity of 40 knots or more.

This one had, for the time, the latest sonar, heat, metal and motion detecting equipment available – a target seeking underwater missile. All the torpedo’s systems worked except its communication, the part that says the drill is over, your job is done, time to quit.

It kept going, this overzealous dreadnaught, and slammed hard into the submarine’s port tailfin. Then because it didn’t explode but merely bounced off, it got angry and smacked her again, twisting the boat’s port side screw. Exasperated perhaps at not getting the fiery, destructive and gallant end it was designed for, the torpedo struck the fin once more, but then gave up and deactivated.

The submarine, our annoying nemesis, now battered but by no means bowed, surfaced and sent really, really annoyed radio messages to the Rush. I wasn’t yet a radioman but I can imagine the terse and barely constrained rage of those communications.

But I wasn’t thinking about that when I was rousted out of my cozy rack and sent on deck. The master chief bo’s’n’s mate, also the gun captain of my watch who also had been rousted untimely, set us to work lowering a companionway ladder for the benefit of the crew of the crippled New Zealander submarine now tied alongside.

The ladder was a collapsible aluminum staircase with a platform near the waterline when extended, but just a compact collection of metal at the first weather deck gunwale at any other time, and seldom if ever had been used, the ship being so new, so it took a while to get the thing dropped and secured.

When we had nearly done, the chief and everyone else disappeared and I was by myself, dutifully checking, per the chief’s order, that all the tholepins at the ladder’s top were belayed.

And so it was that I, a boot seaman apprentice on his first voyage, stood alone on the non-burning deck when the Kiwi submarine captain, red of face and stormy of visage, stomped upward toward me, apparently prior to his scheduled time if indeed there was one for such a visit, and demanded of me –

“Where the bloody hell is your captain?”

The bo’s’n chief chose that moment to reappear, as I gaped, unable to speak, and with great relief and gratitude I pointed to him, my jaw working but no sound emanating.

Upon our return to Pearl, all hands were instructed, cautioned, urged, ordered NOT to get in the way of any New Zealander sailors whilst on well earned liberty, and as far as I know none of us did. But I had to laugh when I saw the red painted Kiwi design that the gunner’s mates stenciled on one of the port side torpedo tubes.

The Rush has a new gun now, a more modern 72-mm automatic last I checked, and she’s berthed in Honolulu instead of Alameda.

But I’m willing to bet the Kiwi stencil still is there on the torpedo tube, though few will know why.

That is all.

Devlin out.

photo credit: pyzam.com

Today in the United States we celebrate Veterans Day, which commemorates the bravery and sacrifice of the men and women who have honorably served in the military. To all veterans, past and present, we offer our deepest and heartfelt gratitude for standing strong, guarding our shores, risking your lives and when called upon, making the ultimate sacrifice.

Because of You, Unknown Soldier

By Courtney Tanabe

Because of you, I am here

Because of you, I am able to live freely

Yet I do not know you

And I have not done anything for you

But there you stand, ready to fight

And there you are prepared to die

For me

You’ve fought before

And you’ll fight again

For someone you don’t know

So thank you Unknown Soldier

Fighting for me

I’m here because of you

And I owe my future to you

This is a special day on this website because as some of you may already know Devlin O’Neill served his country faithfully as a member of the United States Coast Guard. The USCG  can trace its roots back to 1790 and the dawn of this country. Their motto is Semper Paratus, which is Latin for “always ready.” Since coming to know Dev I consider him my brother and can state first hand he is still a Guardsman and is always ready. Always ready to lend a helping hand when needed. Always ready to listen when you need an understanding and compassionate ear. Always ready to offer kind words when appropriate and honest, hard words when required. Dev is always ready to aid any person, be they friend or stranger, in troubled times or times of joyous celebration. In finest Coast Guard tradition, Devlin O’Neill is and remains, ALWAYS READY.

Gwen and I wish Dev a Happy Veterans Day, and Gwen, Dev and I wish all veterans a meaningful and reflective observance of this day.

~Michael

The inimitable Chross picked Poppy’s blit bit ‘Disobedience’ for his Spankings of the Week today. Saying that she is pleased about this happening is a gross understatement, but she is English and trying very hard not to be overly enthusiastic about it – with absolutely no success at all. I have been telling her for a while now that Chross would notice her sooner rather than later, though you all realize that, like most girls around here, patience is not her strong suit.

In any case I am thoroughly delighted that her talent has been recognized and notice taken. Still I’m going to have a heck of a time getting her to sleep tonight, wound up as she is like a three-dollar watch. That’s all right. I’m up to the task and if worse comes to worst I have The Voice. I hate to use it on a Friday night but what has to be has to be.

So congratulations on this milestone, Poppy, and may there be many more!

-Dev

“Stanley, I don’t believe you’re going about this in the proper manner.”

“I hate to disagree with you, Ollie, but this young lady cadged my cup of tea practically right from under my nose and she needs a jolly good hiding, so bog off and find your own girl. Hmf!”

Two of my favorite people engaged in one of my favorite activities, something I never imagined I would see. (Thank you, Richard Windsor.)

Gwen, please note Mr. Hardy’s well polished oxfords, and also Mr. Laurel’s stylish spats. Her heels are quite chic as well so no footwear faux pas here.

Her shorts are quite becoming too, as is her look of absolute … glee? Can that be right?

Perhaps Stanley will need Oliver’s help with the jolly good hiding after all.

Its so not fair when a good girl plays the wickedest, naughtiest Cabbage Night trick on a big handsome man … the most mischievous, *awesome* trick in the world … a trick worthy of a smokin’ hot spanking … and she’s counting the days with that dreaded thrill you have when you know what’s coming to you and…

he gets the flu. LOL.  Nuts.  … Patience.  Where can I get some?  ;)

xoxo