Attagirl!

Attagirl!

Name: Linda Milian
Age:   18
Work: High -School Student, Store Clerk (part time)
Vocation: Pony-Girl

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This is Linda Milian.

She is the image of what is good, and of what is wrong in our sport.

She has a very busy life, between the school (she lost a year due to a mismanaged family transfer in France, but she really enjoyed Notre Dame de Paris e L'Île St. Louis) and her job, but she really enjoys spend what she can of her free time here, at the Pony-Girls Ring in Kügel Canyon.

She dedicates herself to training, with admirable devotion, and is not devoid of actual talent. In fact, had her heart fallen for another sport, she would have a ticket to college thanks to an athletic scholarship.

But because she loves Pony-Girling, she is forced to work a very menial job, in order to accumulate the money to pay her tuition.

It is so, because she loves Pony-Girling - and because the current rules are, in our opinion, wrong.  

Her small frame, however very elegant, put her at a disadvantage when it comes to towing power, and more so in the initial acceleration phase, in which her 45 kg (100 lbs) can hardly compete against athletes with bigger build.

It is a shame, and a waste of what we think is real talent.

Which leads us to our proposal.

With the rise in the number of registered Pony-Girls, it is finally opening up the possibility for creating weight categories in the tournaments.

Linda, and others like her, would then be allowed to face other athletes with a similar build, in a fairer competition.

We realize that, traditionally, Pony-Girling has been considered part of the track and field sports, in which the concept of weight category has never been used.

We think it is about time to recognise the differences between this and other sports like Running or Jumping, in which the athletes must carry only their own weight.

At the same time, we admit that this is not the only possible solution to the issue.

The one proposed by our Canadian colleagues of the Calgary Pony Ring, namely equalizing the ratio Pony-Cart by adding a suitable  ballast to the cart of the heavier athletes (so that the ratio Pony-Girl weight / Cart and Rider gross weight is the same for everybody, and aligned to the less favoured Pony on the track) also promises to do away with the grossly unfair advantage that big framed Ponies have in the current state of affairs.

The Canadian solution would allow to keep the current organisational structure for the existing tournaments, with just minor additions, but we fear that some athletes may try to find ways to cheat at the time of the weigh-ins, if it will be chosen.


In our opinion, weight categories would greatly limit this undesired behaviours.

In the end, however, this is an aesthetic as well as political choice that the Federation, as a whole, must make, which is the reason why we decided, jointedly with the Calgary Pony Ring, to propose a motion to adopt either of the aforementioned rule changes.

We hope that the members of the committee will evaluate wisely, which of the two proposals will better serve the interests of Pony-Girling in the 22th Century.

Thanks for your time,
   have a nice day.

Paula Stockharden, 
chief athletic officer of the Kügel Canyon Pony-Girls Ring

- from the notes of the 35th reunion of the 
Reform Panel Subcommittee of the Pony-Girling Olimpic Federation

February the 12th, 2097 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Monogamy

No, man, that is a mistake.
It starts nice, OK, but soon you end up with the IRS
crawling your back, and her bonging your chief.

It is not a mystery that one of the many unknowns of human evolution is how our species came to monogamy and, through it, to its actual social arrangement.

In nature, while it is a basic fact that most species tend to produce roughly the same amount of male and female offspring, monogamous pairing is a minor state of affairs, being observed in a mere ten percent of the species with sexual reproduction.

Even among primates, which as a group tend to be more monogamous than many, it is used just by 50% of the species.

Anthropologists are uncertain about when the passage to (mostly) sexually exclusive pairings appeared in our species,  but more so they are perplexed about why human males have subscribed and stuck to the change.

The reason of females are clear - as the brain kept enlarging, so did the duration of development from child to adult and of the period of dependence from the parents.

While the ancillary duties of child rearing could be shuffled around in a purely female group, a situation quite common in primate species,  the sheer energetic cost - as in, amount of food required - was such that females were "forced" to find a way to get the males to collaborate to the costs of raising children.

This was obtained through a physical - humans are among the few species in which sexual mating is not limited to well defined and restricted periods - and a cultural adaptation - monogamy.

The first allowed females to have a mighty carrot to put in front of males, the second was the stick to it - essentially, a gender pact to punish the males that didn't contribute.

As the "innovation" made males in condition to have sex any time they wanted, without having to fight off  other males, as long as they stood by the side of their companions, the initial male's adhesion to the new paradigm must have been easily gained.

Probably, the "dominant males" had something to say about it, but by then the average man had already reached the conclusion that the classic "dominant male" could easily be disposed off by three friends with clubs and stones.

Anyway, monogamy is a cultural acquisition, and not something deeply ingrained in our biology (there are species for which it is so, to the point that the death of one of the couple spells that of its companion... it is not our case).

So, women has never had much compulsion to avoid shuffling-up genes with a  robust gene-bearer, from time to time - after all, preserving a mainly economic pact has not such a great importance.

Nor men have ever felt the need of keeping themselves closeted  and loyal to their women

(the old joke is ever valid... if men are pigs that shag everything that open her legs for them, a suitable proportion of the legs in question are willing to open up).

This cultural construct, in turn, fostered some very interesting consequences.

Among these, the first has been the birth of families and clans as sprawling social structures.

Before humans adopted monogamy, families were only matri-linear successions.... one could know who the great-great-grandmother was, and that was it.

After the adoption of monogamy, one could know who his great-great-parents were (or, rather, supposed to be)... all eight of them.

Families became, from the lines that they were, the trees that they are.

In turn this led to more closely knit and collaborative social groups and, over time, to what we call society.

At the base, though, below the cultural superstructures that were added over time (religious myths, "honour", etc.... ) the reason why the shenanigan worked kept being the same.

Women needed the males to do their part.

Men wanted the sex, without the stress of having to fight a mountain of muscles and violence (or, how would you describe a Silverback Gorilla?) to have it.

But that was all they got out of it, in the hand - some reduction in stress. 

And here is where things start chafing, I fear.

A perfunctory glance at the history of humanity shows that men were still encouraged to be as muscle-bound and as violent as possible, as much as possible, through the time honoured tradition of war - or, to put it as it really was, pillage-rape-arson to one heart's content - while the creation of a hierarchical society also meant that of plenty of stress to distribute to everybody, to compensate for that that was lost in not having to fight the pack´s leader to get some tail.

And, by the way, the war hero returning from the aforementioned pillage-rape-arson showing his manly propensity toward aggressiveness, was also often rewarded by some more sex on the side, from the wives of the few that didn't share their level of "manliness".


In other words, in the end men traded one source of stress and danger for a host of other sources of stress and danger.

It is not a surprise, then, that the inherent interest of males in creating and preserving what we call society is, has always been and will always be pretty low.

Give them an idea for getting more power, money and sex than they would get by sticking to the society's current rules and they'll jump on it - be it a bank robbery, a political revolution or a computer system that will trash the jobs of half the population. 

In other world, even the most paternalistic society ever was not a merely male construct... at best, it was a balancing act between alpha males and alpha females. 

If it was for men alone... we'd still be dangling from trees and fucking 24/7, like the Bonobos - you know it is true.

Many men feels society as a prison (more so when they are young... growing old, they usually learn to play the system to their advantage), and happily take any occasion to escape it.

Now,  technology has come to the point that modern women do not really need men to do their part as they used to... a Lamboghini tractor with AC and full servo on the commands can be driven by a 100 libs girl, ditto an 18wheeler.

And, in not many years, these machines will drive themselves most of the time.

Firearms also have made violence very democratic... using an AK-47 doesn't require the kind of sheer physical brawn, nor the lifelong extenuating physical training, that's needed to use a longbow or a claymore sword in combat (which is the reason why conquering a country is not what it used to be... a child soldier in a guerrilla army can kill a trained marine as well as anybody else, and costs way less to replace).

So while it may still be useful to be a boisterous bruiser, it is not all that necessary to the job of a modern policeman, or of a soldier.

In effect, there are practically no jobs that a woman can't do, a part sperm donor  - waiting fort the moment robots will do them... by the way, over time, even the sperm donor part will change.

So, it must not come as a surprise that some men  are, already, feeling pretty much redundant - they are - and "unattached" to society.


Being this the current mood, it must also not be a surprise that, when a choice is possible - in vitro fecundation, sperm filtering - the tendency seems to be to choose a female over a male offspring. 

A photo book about erotic vampires in New Orleans...

You know you want it!

My good friend mstersade is in the final steps of publishing his book of photos, about erotic Vampires in new Orleans.

He is a very good photographer, and I think his work deserves as much appreciation as possible (more than mine? ... maybe), so it would be extremely nice if you take a peek on his work and loved his photos. .

Not to mention, in the book appear a couple of models from the New Orleans area whose image I stole, myself, in the past - TheJadeRose, Hada-Pixie, TG Mondalf, Storm Decay, Sterling Bull etc.
Some teaser shot, in Fetlife

• Teaser 1

• Teaser 2

• Teaser 3

More photos and information can be found in his Facebook page and at the book's own website, neworleans-vampyre.com

For Sale

It was summer 2016, and I was in Sharm El Seikh for work.

One of my local friends told me of a place where they sold African girls, so I decide to go and check it out.

I was pretty sure he was joking - the usual tall tales that guys in our circles use to exchange, but it was true.

In the middle of that chaos, there she was, little did I know how much she would change my life...



(This is a tall tale too... I've never been in Africa, till now)

Progress in Art

Anonymous Mesolithic author, "Cave of the  Spiders", Eastern Spain, CA 3000 B.C.

 Keith Haring, New York, 1980

To be honest, I like the Mesolithic guy a tiny bit more.
Haring seems to have absorbed a bit too much Middle Age's "horror vacui".

We live in a society that is addicted to the concept of "progress", of technical evolution.

And our youngsters often seems to think that "newer is better", automatically.

In some fields, it is true. Maybe.

A newer television is better than an old television? - It depends on what you mean by better.

For at least another couple of years, LCD screens aren't going to have better colours or higher contrasts than the last crop of the Plasma TVs produced, and Plasma is a dead technology.

In other fields, it is just plain wishful thinking - or Jay Z wouldn't dote on his '77 Lamborghini Miura the way he does.

Technology does improve, but the expectations and specifications at the base of its products change over time and, in some cases, the direction in which a branch of technology has gone - or is going - may simply not suits one's need and desires.

I'd like to go to New York in three hours... Ooops, the Concorde doesn't fly any more, and no replacement is on sight for at least ten years.

So, while the vast majority of the people may find modern digital cameras incredibly useful (and they are), there is a handful of photographers - that mastered the intricacies of film photography - that are not amused by the fact that the film types they use have gone out of production.  

 
Which leads me to this:

In art, progress is - really - a joke.

This is because every artist has to build his own set of skills and style, and the ways and modes to do this haven't really changed in the last eight thousand years... nor the artists can really divide their work and hand out details of it to specialists - the way technology mostly progress - any more than they could do in the past.

(The aforementioned Miura was designed by seven guys working after hours, the whole development team of Lamborghini was 12 persons, when they created its successor, the Countach - a modern car's development teams usually number in the hundreds, without counting the industrialisation teams in the sub-contractor factories; while the Intel 4004, the first microprocessor, was designed almost entirely by Federico Faggin and Masatoshi Shima, the number of Firms - firms, not persons - involved in designing a modern computer processor is around 1000).   

So, Henry de Toulouse Lautrec's mastery of colours, drawing cartels for the bars on the Rive Gauche that had to be printed on "primitive" presses, isn't in any way less than that of the best contemporary digital artist, creating posters for Hollywood pictures that will be printed at 100"x300"  with the best photo-lithographic machines available today. And vice-versa.

A newer artist may be more attuned to the realities of the art market in his era ( or in the next... the problem of the experimenters, sometimes they arrive before the world is ready for their work) than his older colleagues, but that's all.

His work is not going to be "automatically" better -  more superficially appealing, often, but not necessarily better - nor worse than that of the "old farts" (young artist always think to be the next big thing).

Just different.

Art is about communicating things to other humans - about being human, really - and this hasn't really changed.


Of course, I know that having realised this proves, mainly, that I am getting old...

Rantz Zero

Yeah, it was one of those days, when this seems a perfectly logical and good idea.
You never had one? I have to step up the power of my drawings!

---

(
     Say with me "This is a rant, it's supposed to be therapeutic for the writer, not to bear 
     any sense for the  reader". 

         - "So, why do you share it?"

         - "..."
)

---

I have wandered through Wikipedia (and NIMH.gov, and others), these last few days.

I think I can finally describe my parents with one word - OK, two. One. Whatever.

They were two, almost classical, narcissistic parents.  Both, although each with different attitudes.

My father had no use for his sons unless they were willing to keep doing his work, following his footsteps and enlarge his contractor's enterprise.

By the way, the guy was dictatorial on the work, completely unable to delegate anything (even a pile of scrapped bricks had to be laid down where he said, how he said), so any capable employee he ever had - that hadn't very serious self-confidence issues - left the job as soon as he found another employer. 

Also, be a contractor in Italy back in the day was much a political job - zoning permits being a mainstay of Italian's politics kickbacks-extorting power - and he had managed to literally piss off every politician in a 20 miles radius. 

By the time of his death, my father "enterprise" was down to him, its co-owner and a "shadow" employee - me.


He was obsessed of being ashamed by my brother not being good enough (whom he "decided" that was "just like" his older brother -  my father was a second son, with an enormous chip on the shoulder when it came to his brother ) , but he cut me a lot of slack (I am the second son... he considered me HIS "expy"; my mother did the same, only she thought -thinks? -  of me as the expy of her brother; she is always worried that I will become, some day, a mean drunkard - given the fact that I drink one beer, only on the Saturday nights that I go out, it really pisses me off).

Anyway, of the two, dad was the one less self-absorbed and I think that, toward the end of his life, he also realized that he seriously mismanaged his parenting duties.

 (I suppose that, having to chase after me when I broke down in a fugue state, a bit more than a year before, was a serious hint).

Maybe. Or he just realized that, dying, he left me stuck with my mother.

 (And with his car... but I am pretty sure that, when he talked about the car, it was because he couldn't  really say "Sorry son, I leave you with your crazy ma, and you'll be too old to have a life of your own by the time you'll manage to disengage from her", could he? - I still have the car, by the way).

My mother, too, was very narcissistic in her ways - if you had a problem, you better sort it out yourself, because her reaction was to be hugely pissed off at you for bothering her, when she already had "plenty of problems" of her own.

 (as far as I can tell, my mother led a very uneventful life, beyond her brush with hospitals at age 22 - she gave birth to  me at 38, so by the time I was ten she already had some time to overcome that burden, one may think).

As soon as she could, she shanghaied off both me (age 10) and my brother (age 12? gran-ma cared for him till she died, so he had a couple of years more... but granny was a mean-ass bitch too, he says, so I am not sure it was much of an improvement) to "work" with dad - in our spare time - so that she had not to be responsible for us, in front of him.

(As I said, he was the less self absorbed and most caring one of the two, so if we broke some bones it would have quite upset him... still, my bro was pretty sure that he used to care more for his crane, than for one of us; at the time, I was stupid enough to think that my bro was wrong on that count - lately, I realized that he probably wasn't).

As many narcissistic parents do, they conflated their wishes with "the needs" of the family, and shaped all in term of "duties" that we sons had to carry on - why exactly, they couldn't really explain.

( So, by age 13 I had come to the conclusions that "duty" is just a word that "authorities" use to mean  "because I just fucking wish so" - so, even today, tell me that I have a duty, and I'll look for a silent way to sabotage it, open rebellion not being my weapon of choice.  

And, yes, "duties" are illusions of authoritarian minds... what people really have are choices.

For example, people has to pay taxes? No, they can go to jail instead. It is just a choice to make... someone may as well chose jail, to avoid financing a military budget that they find obscene, or just for the sake of not bowing to an external authority, whose moral right is as fictitious as any. 

It is maybe a stupid choice, but it's theirs. It is not really a "duty" imposed from outside... something that they must inherently do or the whole universe crumbles down.

And it is so for everything.

Terrorists have no right to blow others up (not sure about not-critical infrastructures... those may be fair play; alas, there is no such a thing as a non-critical infrastructure, nowadays), but everybody has the right to sit down and say "this system is shit, it's just a bunch of bullies hoisting themselves up to control a mass of sheepish morons, with truncheons if needed, and I won't have anything to do with it any more. I won't lay a finger, if my work ends up filling the bullies' pay-check". 

Not the wisest possible choice, maybe. Maybe. 

Maybe it beats be an accomplice of one's own enslavement... and, India was freed that way. 

Long live Gandhi. )

So, my parents could be classified as a couple of narcissistic parents, dad was an assertive control freak with huge self-esteem issues, mother a completely self-absorbed master at guilt-tripping and neglectful parenting.

Where does this leave me?

First thing, the literature on the category confirms something that I had already suspected...the tendency for children of narcissistic parents is to grown up into narcissistic parents - unless they have broken down in a borderline mess.

Not sure which one of thr two I am, but it doesn't really matter - neither should be a parent.

( Yes, it is a tendency, it's just statistics, it is not bound to happen to me, and the fact that I realize the risk is usually a good sign - bollocks, being a parent is a though job that I have been taught wrong before I could manage to distinguish bullshit from crap; It's over).

Also, I hate, hate, hate the "family" concept.

( I realize, now, that my parent really used it to justify, mostly to themselves, some pretty selfish decisions of theirs, but still... 

I do not fucking care. 

If there is an organization for the abolition of the family, I will join it yesterday. Luckily, modern society is already going that way - it will never be soon enough ). 

qI won't have one, no matter if it may do me a lot of  well or that I may be a good father (Really? I don't think so... I feel my own wounds trying to find a way to get MY narcissistic supply) or any of the other platitudes that my relatives come out with, when I let it be known.

Family? Thanks but no, thanks - I've already given the monster enough.

The part about not financing the enslavers?  Yes, I believe that too. Kind of sap any motivation from doing a day job.
   
As I said, read at your  own risk

Bondage Chess

A typical "Bondage Chess" indoor play.

The quantity of piercing and weights at the prize's outer labia is characteristic of the "Baka Irregulars",
one of the - if not THE - first associations of "No-Limits Prize-Girls" to have appeared in Central Park.

NLPG are into the play for the thrill of being conquered, and usually allow much wider terms to their
temporary masters than most other submissive PG, such as this kind of extensive body modifications.

Submissive PG in generals, and NLPGs in particular, are thought to be the real "soul" of the game. 

"Bondage Chess" is an extension of the classic game of chess in which a person in bondage is connected through two cables to electrodes placed on the underside of two specific pieces, one per side, usually (at the start of the game, at least), the Queens.

When the Queens land on spots of different colours the "prize-girl" (traditionally the person in bondage is a young woman, sometimes also called the Queen-to-be) receives electrical discharges through the cables.

When a Queen is eliminated its role as electrode connector - its "cable" - is passed to any of the player's remaining pieces, though the bishops are usually avoided (the bishops never changing the colours of the case they reside on, they present a limit to the player's possibilities).

Voltages are inversely proportional to the "chessboard distance" from the centre of the board which adds an element into the calculations of the players.  

(Conventionally it is said that the blacks are "+" and whites "-" however the impulse generator inside the board actually uses alternate polarity impulses, to avoid electrolysis in the tissues of the "prize").

The game is won either "traditionally" - by checkmate or by forfeit of the adversary - either on the "prize-girl" passing out.

However the players do not know if he is the one who made the girl pass out or his adversary, the one who will win in this eventuality.

Traditionally this is selected by the arbiters of the match through the launch of a coin and stated in a signed affidavit - together with the prize's detailed rules of enslavement (if they have been established) - that is placed under the time counter, before the start of the game.

The information is shared with the "prizes" when in their rules of enslavement they have agreed to a period of 24/7 servitude of a length above one week.

The "prize-girl" with a slavery period at stake is authorized to suggest to the players what would be the "best" strategy - best being "the strategy that would likely lead her into the hands of the player that she fancies more".

In fact while they are not authorized to outright state who would be the winner on a pass-out the "prize-girls" are also not compelled to be truthful, in the hints that they may give to the players. If no arbiter is present the arbiter's role is usually taken by the "prize girl" herself.

This is of course not considered ideal - unless both the prize and the players are all in very good terms with each other (i.e. it almost only happens in informal games, between friends - the prizes are discouraged from faking their loss of consciousness, but it is known to happen - some players have also been known to have used the moment of confusion, when the prize passes out, to replace the original affidavit with one with more favourable terms).

By rule in case a play with no arbiters ends with a contested "pass-out" (the prize-girl doesn't recognize the affidavit as her own), the game is considered void.

Differently from traditional chess stalemates (and generally, draws) are not allowed. In case one such situation arise each player chooses one piece to sacrifice (or to rescue if each player has less than three pieces still on the board) and, again, a coin is tossed to decide which of the two will be eliminated-rescued.

Usually this is enough to unlock the situation but should the draw re-present itself other two times (the first, the dice is used again) the game is declared null.

The prize-girl is called this way because usually (not always) she is to be handed to the winner of the game. However they are honour (not legally) bound to abide only to the rules of enslavement that they themselves have signed and accepted that are to be detailed - as explained above - in the game's affidavit.

 It is not uncommon in great tournaments to have as "prize-girls" professional fetish models, that do not agreed to perform any other function. This "prize-models" are kept unaware of the chosen passing-out policy, to keep them from trying to bend the game for purely monetary reasons - their involvement being mostly a mercenary one.

Bondage Chess is a recent extension to the classic chess game and being younger than its source, some of its rules are still up to revision as of this writing.

For example it is being actively discussed whether keeping the actual "constant voltage" policy or if an "incremental" one would suit better the needs of the play.

With the current rules it is not uncommon to see players (mostly at low levels) that spend more energies devising how to torment - at length - "prize-girls" known to establish very restrictive terms in their affidavits, than to play against their adversaries.

An incremental voltage rule would reduce the number of times the queens may be moved (on different colour squares) before the prizes pass out, avoiding some pretty irritating "Queen's Runs" (when two players agreed to a dilation tactics, in which one queen "follows" the other, in order to applying time and again discharges to the "prize"), but it would also produce higher risks for the prizes' health.

 A vehement discussion is also ongoing whether to maintain the traditional "prize-girl" definition, given the fact that the category does include males, MtF and FtM transsexuals as well as women.

 The LGBT community has lobbied strongly for a neutral "prize-person", but it still has to win over the last remnants of the traditional, males-driven players community...

---

I love writing fake magazine's articles...
Spirito di Gianni Brera, proteggimi.

The end of the Moore's Law

The so called Moore's law stated that "every 18 months, the numbers of transistors on a chip doubles".

By the way, it is not a law.

It is, rather, a business and market strategy shared by most of what is called the "tech industry".

A way to force consumer to buy a new pc - now, a new smart-phone - every three years, when it could last thrice as much.

In this the hardware industry was aided and abetted by the software community,  who came to see hardware improvements as a given,  till a somewhat more obscure but equally  inflexible law was derived: "Software is like gas: it expands to fill every byte of ram and instruction cycle available".

This latter is the reason why a '486 with 4 MB of RAM takes the same time to boot of an I3 dual core with 4GB, and why both computers run their respective version of Word just fine enough that one can use the former to write the same books he can write with the second.

The Moore law, in its original form, hit the walls of the physical limits of the materials in use when it was stated, some years ago.

The hardware industry maintained the pace anyway, but had to resort to something more than just reducing the print dies of the same circuit.

They started by using copper in the circuitry instead of aluminium, than to making "tri-gate" transistors, which are in effect transistors that surge from the silicon substrate in order to have an active area bigger than their footprint, then they developed multiple prints, to create circuits with details smaller than the wavelength of the light used in the photolithographic processes that create chips.

These new processes have increased circuits density, but finally resulted in reduced yields - the sweet spot , with the lowest cost per transistor, seems to be the so called 22 nm technology.

Depending on who you read, or when was written the piece, the definitive end of Moore's Law is expected for either 2016 or 2020.

People will likely not realize it for a couple of years, as by that time smart phones will be in the middle of the switch from LCD to AMOLED screen that will probably mask processors and memories stall, but chances are a computer from 2025 will be only marginally better than a computer from 2020 - smart phones and tablets included.

There are a set of "impending" technologies that may prove viable and avoid the IT sector to follow the path of many other technologies thst crashed into "maturity", but one thing is almost sure.

The days of "picking the low hanging fruits" of computing technology are soon to be over.

What will it entail, for the average person that - ensnared by the brilliant light of their iPhone -  has bought so far that he was living in a time of thriving technological development?

Will he recognize the stasis?

Will the enthusiasm for our electronic gizmos die out the same way the enthusiasm for cars died out since the '90s, when people saw that, year after year, in all it's always the same crap with a better paint job?

The ways of the vanilla are a'changing.

"BDSMers" tend to call "vanilla" what should be called "strict heterosexual sex", and by extension they often also call "Vanillas" those that engage only in that kind of sex.

Sometime, with a somewhat depreciative under-tone... mostly when talking about "vanilla" males.

On one side, it is because a lot of BDSMer tend to over-impose on the "vanilla" category their bad experiences with this or that "hetero-normativist" (usually, their fathers), and conflate the ones with the others.

But a second reason may be that, as seen from a BDSM practitioner point of view, a ton of "vanilla" males could be as well called "cheaters" - as in, they tend to cheat in the "game". 

There is not  much to say about it... vanillas have it somewhat different from full blown BDSMers, when it comes to establish the consent of their partners.

First thing first, many vanilla men do not see any reason why they should not shag a plastered woman that they just met.

She is drunk? Her fault.

Of course, this doesn't sit well with the conscious BDSMer.

I should remember the reader that is not into it, that one of the BDSM golden rules is that no action should take place if any of the actors is under influence and has his mental faculties impaired - be the influence that of alcohol, cocaine or any other drug.
This, mainly because BDSM practices are often dangerous activities - dangerous like, say, climbing a mountain - that should never be tackled with less than full mental capabilities, and at least a modicum of training.

Also, a lot of "vanilla" males do not seem to mind much the whole "informed consent" side of things either... you get them to spread their legs, one way or the other, it is all good.

And, finally, they hardly even take a no for a no. Again, this is kind of at odd with the "rules" of the "game", as perceived by a BDSMer that's worth the definition.

I may be too harsh, here... and too blinded by my personal tastes and affiliations.

Many "BDSM" males would likely be happy to play by the same "rules" of the "vanilla", if they could... but there is a hard-wired difference between "BDSM" and "vanilla".

In most cases, vanilla sex doesn't leave lasting physical traces - which is one of the reasons most rape accusations aren't even investigated.

If the victim doesn't allow the use of a rape kit, chances are that by the time she manages to overcome the sense of shame  - and the fear of being re-victimised by the tortuous paths of the justice system - enough to log a formal complaint, physical proofs will have disappeared.

On the other side, in most cases even the most consensually established BDSM activity leaves physical marks that can be seen for quite a while more... the victim has some more time to reflect, and come to the conclusion that it wasn't all good and well in that session.

So , it is not that the BDSM male is more virtuous than the vanilla one... it's that it is somewhat easier for him to be charged for assault and battery, if one fail to get the partner's consent in a way that convince the partner that it was freely given.

From this derives some of the most curious habits of the discerning BDSMer, like asking - relatively often, and even in the middle of the scene, when the sub is all but floating in her sub-space - their partner if all is well and if they are still decided to go on.

Now, I will admit that, in this, my "vanilla" friends may be right.

Asking ten times, in an evening, to your partner if (s)he wants to go on may feel a bit clumsy and a bother.

But, curiously (or maybe not at all), it is also what seems to be bound to become the norm in college campuses in the USA, if the "[Only] Yes Mean Yes" campaign - and similar initiatives - takes root.

College authorities, faced with a growing consciousness by the general public that much of the sex that happens in their dorms is of the "fast and loose" variety (unintended rape, near-rape, full blown rape) are now resorting to the kind of ethical trappings that the BDSMers had to resort to.

If these will become the norms for every kind of sexual interactions between adults, then I see one reason less for the divide "BDSM" -"vanilla".

After all, then "vanillas" wouldn't cheat any more than us.

Faith from ignorance

No, it is not about religious faith.

This is about faith in the possibilities of technique, of science to solve the problems.

Now, it is not a mystery that, within my limits, I like science. I have my subscription to Scientific American (Italian edition), and nothing can pry it from my hands before I read it, when it arrives in the mailbox.

At the same time, I have no illusion of actually understanding much... I am just a reader of a magazine, with a solid technical formation - maybe - but I am not privy to a lot of the mathematics that would be required to REALLY understand how most things work.

For example, about Ricci's Tensors... I know just the name, and that they must be some kind of compact notation to operate over some matrices that represents interaction between entities such as multidimensional vectors and scalars.

Probably, I could learn to use it, if I really needed, but... it is a job that takes time, and I have other things to cook.

Anyway, as every not completely ignorant person, I have a very vague idea of the magnitude of my ignorance, and of the limits of what is actually known.

Also, I have some respect for the fact that our splendid (sorry, I can't stop laughing) technology can't really do much.

NO, don't start with "what are you saying, Willis?"

 We only really  have access to electromagnetic fields, for example, so we have no hints of how to manipulate any of the other fundamental forces that act on the matter - not gravity, nor the colour force, not even the "weak" nuclear force.

Airplanes are stuck in the same flight envelope since the fifties, and that that a suborbital flight could really spare a lot of fuel. My 1990's car is as good as any new car I had occasion to try, and a well kept Miura would outrun any car in the city - no matter that the last was built in 1977.

Even when it comes to information technology, the bright light that shines on everybody and convinced most that we are in a time of progress, it doesn't really come to much.

Yes, a computer is a marvellous thing, but most of them can't even compete with a bee's brain. Surely not when it comes to analyse the world and extract its shape, just from a set of visual inputs.

A bee's brain represents,  more or less, the kind of computational power that it is required to navigate a car through a street.

So, when you see Google's car, you are looking at something that  - while improving - is still significantly less "knowledgeable" than a bee.


Reading through a drug's leaflet, you can always find a part about the nefarious side effects of its interactions with other drugs.

What most people doesn't realize is that, often, said side effects have been observed after the drug had been commercialized for a while... biology being so complex that many interactions could hardly be predicted at all, it is no surprise at all that almost any successful drug has killed its share of humans, in its career.

The simplified field of pure technology, of mashing up well tried products of mature technologies, doesn't fare any better.

Every now and then there are interactions that aren't possible to analyse or foretell... transmitters that go into "lock" and need to be reset once a week - by switching off and on - when coupled to a new antenna, car engines that blow their gaskets when moved in a new model, airplanes that lose a wing or two after an engine swap.

Spend enough time reading through tech forums, and you'll start feeling bewildered that anything works at all - which, someone told me, it is the true marking of the technician.

So, when I do something and it works (it usually does), a part of me always jumps for the happiness, while the rest is a bit on the "I can't really believe it" side of things.   

Some years ago, I discovered that people that do not care about science and technology, do not care to know their limits either, and stretch or shortens them as it suits their ideological needs.

It was, for me, an odd discovery.

I was discussing comics with a fellow comic-maniac, and the thread wandered through the issue of medical experimentations on animals.

The guy was some ten years older than me, better at drawing, and he was an animal rights person.

As such, he was sure that experimentation on animals was abused - he may have been right - and that in those days and age (2002) it was also useless, as it could have been replaced by numerical simulations.

And, of course, there was where he lost me.

I wouldn't care to buy a car before it had been on the market long enough to know its main defects, so I wouldn't even touch a drug that had not been experimented in vivo, but he remained perplexed at my scepticism.

I tried to explain him that, useful as they are, numeric simulations alone can lead to circular thinking... the simulation follow the dynamic that we think is correct for the system at hand, so it may give the results expected by the researcher.

But there is no guarantee that the model is acutally correct;
 By using a simulation alone we may not even be able to ascertain that the model has, really,  anything more than a passable relationship with the real phenomena that it is supposed to describe (Yes, String theory, I am looking at you, you, you... mathematical misticism!).

We can not, unless we extensively cross-check its results with what happens in the real world, using some kind of experiment and/or reviewing as much real data as possible (in some cases, creating experiments is beyond human reach... branch of science where this is the norm, are often seen as "soft").

The moment where you confront the model with empirical data, retrieved from the observation of reality, is still what marks the difference between what we call science and the tall tales humanity has always liked to create, to explain itself the meaning of things.

Unfortunately, in biology it sometimes means using expertiments on animals and then, if the results of these are encouraging, maybe using clinical trials.

Which are, really, experiments on humans with a P.C. name.

I said all of this to my friend, who was astounded at discovering me a sceptic.

Then, he scrolled his head and went back to his line "with modern science, we can surely do without experimenting on animals".

The truth is, we can't even do without experiments on humans (no matter how we call them, to avoid the association with Mengele&Co.)... and every now and them, even those aren't enough to avoid problems.

Aphorisms: Mom's tales

For my mother the big issue, if I broke a leg, was that my father would have gotten angry...

"Mom, I broke a tooth" - "can't you wait a couple of months to get it fixed? we are left with just 20k$ for the day to day expenses"

-"So, son, how was your session with your therapist?"
- "Mom, you shouldn't even ask th..."
-"So, has that woman [the help psychologist] finally told you to leave your girlfriend?"

When I am called "Hijo de puta", I am saddened. I have known many actual whores and, for the most part, these humble and honest workers did nothing to warrant such a grievous insult.

My mother used to complain about me being born, what a big mistake I was. How life would have been better had she remained a spinster, cutting dresses and tending to the garden. I wholeheartedly agree.

My mother used to kill my male cats, for any of a host of invented reasons. The truth, she can't kill me, so when she is pissed with me she kills the only philandering male that she can. Till my current cat... he's a neutered Maine Coon, trained to stay inside the flat at all costs.
Her ideal of a son.

Some mothers fret about their sons getting a fiancée. They fear their sons may meet some woman, as exploitative of their kids as they where of their own husbands. They are wise - after all, they have grown their kids so that they could be easily exploitable.

My father used to say that friends come at your home, to scam you off work and fuck your wife.
I used to think tat he had a bleak vision of life, till I knew my mother better.

- "I'd rather go gay, than be just another idiot that marries a copy of his mother"
- "There is always something of your mother, in any woman you meet"
- "Joe, I know there is something sexual in any friendship between males, but you are really pushing the envelope, here."

I dislike cunt-munchers as any other white trash male does. Each of them is one to two vaginas less for us to fuck. Yet, I rather see lesbians marry each other and be happy, than for them to become parodies of heterosexual women like my mom.

I am into SM because of my mother control-freak issues, says my shrink. I hate them buggers when they are so right on the mark.

My father was the only source of maternal love in my family.

My father was always angry, from Saturday 12:00am to Monday 07:00 am. When he died, and left me stuck with mom,  I understood why

"Mamma, ce n'è una sola. Per fortuna" ("Mom, you only have one. Thanks God!" not mine, but I approve)

Mom has grown way softer, now that she finally has dementia.

When they see me down, my cats come and pet me till they cheer me up. Momma seemingly can't even see if I am up or down, so she simply asks whatever passes through her mind anyway. 

I never heard my mother approve of anything or anyone - always democratic, she has acid words for everybody and all, starting with her sons.

In case of doubts, my mother always assumed the worst and everything to be my fault - yes, I was her preferred son.

I landed on the page on Fred Rogers, again - a fay of crying ensued, my eyes so red that I have trouble seeing, read or drawing. My mommy finally catches on, realizing that I am feeling quite down... with a hint of glee? 

None of the above is, actually, a joke.

Jus Primae Noctis

This is a short tale on the "jus primae noctis",  the (complrtely fictional) right of nobles to have the "first night" of a new bride, before the groom.

As you will see, there is more than one way to exercise a right... and, whose right is that?

---

I always thought that it was barbaric... our duke is the only noble, in a hundred miles, that still requires newly wed women to spend their first night of marriage with him.

I used to despise the idea, I really did.

Then, my fiancé died in a stupid work accident, and the man that I had to fall back on... has a very traditional  family, that values the damn virginity thing.

I am, of course, no virgin at all... my position in their pecking order is bound to be very low.

But what can I do? I cam't get my hymen to grow back, now, can I?

I was surprised, when our lord communicated us that he expected to have my company for my first night of marriage. If I knew it I'd have gone in a convent, the hell with men and their idiotic ideas.

The evening of my narriage day, I was led to the lord's house, and so here I am.

Dining with our Duke, and the Duchess.

-"Come on, dear, this lamb is delicious" - says the duchess.

Her presence disconcerts me... she must know why I am here.

_"I think that she didn't expect to see you, my dear. You know, Jus Primae Noctis, the feudal lord takes what he wants from the poor peasant girl. She thought she was going to be prsented to me naked, bound and with an apple stuffed in her mouth, for my ducal spike to skewer her."

-"In a way, my lord, indeed I was."

-"Oh, dear girl, you got it so wrong" - the voice of tyhe duchess is mellifluous, slightly amused.

-"Am I wrong, my Lady?"

-"My husband is not going to force himself upon you, dear. I can promise you that much."

-"That is... why not?"

-"Because I am not a damn bastard!"

The voice of the Duke booms, irritated.

-"So, if I want, I can go home, right now?"

-"Oh, no, my dear, that can't do. You are here to spend the night"  - her Ladyship voice is velvetry, but a hint of steel gleams below it -"would you mind, looking in the tray at your right?"

I expected food, instead, lifting the tray's cover, I find a glass thing shaped like a big man's cock.

-"You may decide not to have intercourse, but I cannot allow you to exit this house, tomorrow, with your virginity intact".

-"I beg your pardon, my Lady?"

-"You can have sex with the two of us" - the Duchess hand reaches that of the Duke and holds it for a second, reassuring - "and I can guarantee you that it will be an experience to remember" - the duke almost growls, at the idea. He really don't care for this?
-"Or you can use that to take away your virginity, while I witness it; It's your choice".

My confusion is complete, now. What the hell is this about?

The Duke raises an eyebrow, his irritation subsided, his voice that of an old teacher, when he speaks again '"Do you know why are you here, child?" - Of course I don't, if it is not just for his lust - "there are two ways we chose to ask a new bride to give us her first marriage night, when the marriage is announced to us" - he pauses to sip a bit of wine - "one, we both toss a coin, me and my lady, and if both are heads, she is invited to join us for a night".

-"You toss coins, sir?"

-"I am not my father, child... I don't have the guts to shag every ugly daughter of every unwashed tosser in my lands, just for the sake of having a go with the few beautiful ones, and singling out the nice ones would be an injustice..." - another pause -"... and an incentive for them to disregard personal hygiene, in the days leading up to the marriage..." - a small laugh from the Duchess interrupts him with a smile -"... so, yes, two coins, one possibility in four. I wouldn't care to stress my poor loins more than that."

-"So, I was just - lucky?"

-"Two ways, lass. The other, is the woman asks it to us" - why the tone of the Duke hints so much that this is my case? I didn't ask anything.

- "The woman, or a member of her family that doesn't believe in her ability to fake convincingly to have a virginity that she has already lost" - the voice of the Duchess is soothing, I feel I am not the first recipient of this discourse.

-"What?"

-"Your mother is a very practical woman, my dear. And, it worked for her, after all, before you were born"

 I am astounded, I didn't suspect any of this. Any.

-"Which is a very good reason why you should pick the glass thing, lass" - he eats some more lamb, leaving me the time to reflect on it, than he realizes that my mind is in a blank

-"I would rather avoid you giving birth to your half-sister" - he says, finally.

-"She has a right to know actual lovemaking, if she so chose, before being chained to a pork farmer for the rest of her life!" - comments drily the Duchess.

-"She could be my daughter!"

-"She has a right, my dear. Noblesse do Oblige - and I could be your sister... it didn't stop you"

-"Don't remind me that. Thank God, times are changing. Our son will not have to put up with this, this... shit!"

The Duchess come over to me, smiling in a wilynway -"So, wat do you chose? A piece of glass, or me?"

Behind her, I see the Duke raise his eyes to the sky and sigh.

I didn't expect this to play out this way... then, her ladyship leans down and kisses me on my mouth.

I am surprised, I don't put up any resistance - it is one hell of a kiss.

At the other end of the table, the Duke growls again.

To hell with glass.