Spanked by Obama?

My teddy bear was pleased with my recent trip to the States, as I brought back a present for him. He’s now proudly sporting an “Obama 08” badge – which looks a little incongruous on his monk’s habit, it must be said, but bears can’t be choosy.

I was amused to read recently about 95-year-old Charles Edwards presenting said Presidential Candidate (how wonderful to write that!) with a maple walking stick. Obama waved it about, commenting:

“This is a beautiful stick. I really like this. And if members of congress don’t pass my health care bill? I’m ready! I’ll whoop them. I’ll whoop them! That’s right. They better not mess with me. I’ll have that stick.”

Haron is at this very moment preparing her run for Congress – on an anti-healthcare reform ticket.

Punished by… poetry??!!

A friend and I were watching the TV in San Francisco earlier in the week, when they trailed the most bizarre news item under the strapline “Punished by Poetry”. We had to dive out for breakfast, so I had to turn to the Boston Globe online to fill in the details.

Robert Frost, the poet, spend more than 20 summers at Homer Noble Farm, in Ripton. It’s now owned by Middlebury College. Shortly after Christmas…

…a 17-year-old former Middlebury College employee who knew the farmhouse planned a party, giving $100 to a friend to buy beer. Word spread. Up to 50 people descended on the farm, the revelry turning destructive…

When it was over, windows, antique furniture, and china had been broken, fire extinguishers discharged, and carpeting soiled…The damage was set at $10,600.

Police charged 28 people, mainly with trespassing. The court decided that a jail term would be too harsh – and instead made them attend a series of classes about Frost’s poetry.

Shame the Farm didn’t have any nice apple trees. I mean, if they were looking for inspiration for innovative punishments, a good switching would have done the job just as well and far quicker.

A one-track mind

On Saturday I was strolling around public gardens with the only kinky childhood friend I’ve got (*waves to him*). The weather was typical of a Ukrainian summer: hot, humid, bright with sun.

“Mmmm,” I said happily, “isn’t it nice out here? Just smell the flowers. And look, there are switches growing on the trees up there!”

Upon reflection, it’s not me with the one-track mind. It’s the person who’d planted a whole grove of weeping willows right where the innocent citizens may see them.

The gardens have been planted by a filthy-minded pervert, definitely.

The plight of the plagiarists

Earlier in the week, the BBC reported shock findings on behaviour within our Higher Education system:

University students who are caught submitting plagiarised work are very rarely expelled, shows a survey. A study found only 143 students caught cheating were expelled out of 9,200 cases – despite almost all universities threatening expulsion as a sanction.

Of the other cheats, 1,475 were let off with a formal warning. The remaining students were required to report to the government’s new regional Centres for University Discipline, where trained officers administer corrective canings. “I was given twelve strokes for copying my friend’s essay,” explained Emma Buckenham (pictured), a second year student at the University of Cheshire, “whilst she was given four strokes for helping me to cheat. We’ve learned our lesson the painful way, and neither of us will ever break the rules again.”

Almost eight out of a hundred students caught plagiarising had already been caught on previous occasions. These offenders are birched. No cases of students being caught plagiarising for a third time have been reported.

OK, OK: I may have edited the text just a little…

Grabbing a spanko’s attention

Last night I was attending to the pleasant task of picking a book to read. The publishing house Tor has been giving away free e-books over the last couple of months, and I’ve downloaded them regardless of whether I’d ever heard of the author. (I mean, come on: free books. Wouldn’t you?) Which one to read now, though?

I opened the file containing “A Shadow in Summer” by Daniel Abraham, and had a taste of the first few paragraphs.

Otah took the blow on the ear, the flesh opening under the rod. Tahi-kvo, Tahi the teacher, pulled the thin lacquered wood through the air with a fluttering sound like bird wings. Otah’s discipline held. He did not shift or cry out. Tears welled in his eyes, but his hands remained in a pose of greeting.

“Again,” Tahi-kvo barked. “And correctly!”

“We are honored by your presence, most high Dai-kvo,” Otah said sweetly, as if it were the first time he had attempted the ritual phrase. The old man sitting before the fire considered him closely, then adopted a pose of acceptance. Tahi-kvo made a sound of satisfaction in the depths of his throat.

Otah bowed, holding still for three breaths and hoping that Tahi-kvo wouldn’t strike him for trembling. The moment stretched, and Otah nearly let his eyes stray to his teacher. It was the old man with his ruined whisper who at last spoke the words that ended the ritual and released him.

“Go, disowned child, and attend to your studies.”

Thank you, Mr Abraham, with this fine display of enforced ritual and corporal punishment at school, you have captured my full attention. I’ll have some more of that, please.

So OK, this is the prologue, so maybe the rest won’t go along the same line. Still, an author who can write a kinky scene like that deserves to be checked out in more detail.

The alarmed call

“Good morning, sir. This is your 6 a.m. wake-up call.”

I was just awake enough to reply: “But I booked the call for eight o’clock.”

Pause. “Oh.” Pause. “I’m sorry, sir, I think I’ve just misread the handwriting on our list. I’m really sorry.”

The solution seemed obvious to me. After all, I had a paddle and cane in my suitcase.

It took a few moments for her to arrive at my door – flustered, contrite. She noticed the implements on the table as soon as she entered; looked at me in momentary panic.

“It seems, young lady, that you need to be taught the difference between six and eight.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Remove your skirt and come and stand in the middle of the room with your hands on your head.”

She folded her uniform neatly over the back of the chair; adopted the pose. I circled around her. “Why so careless?”

“It was a mistake, sir. Really: I’ve never done it before.”

I pulled down her knickers; let them drop to her ankles. Still circled: “And what happens to girls who make mistakes?”

“They get punished, sir.”

“Then you shall bend over the back of the armchair, and take the consequences of your carelessness. I shall start with six swats of the paddle. And I’ll finish with eight strokes of the cane…”

* At some point this account and reality diverge somewhat!

Anne Hathaway waiting for her spanking

At the original site where Abel found this photo, it was titled “Why so glum, Anne Hathaway”?

Anne Hathaway looking sad

It’s pretty obvious to me why she’s sad: she’s about to get punished. I’d love to know the details, though.

Is she reporting to an on-set discipline officer, who holds the young stars to answer over their misdeeds?

Or is the producer dealing with her in person, because she’s been particularly bad?

I wonder.

The morning test, revisited

I seem to keep coming back to my recent musings on the month-long training course to prepare for an exam, in which a girl gets chosen each morning to be tested, with a one-stroke tariff for each wrong answer.

Further twists and turns present themselves. In the morning test, when the girl made a mistake, the tutor would ask the rest of the class whether anyone knew the correct answer. It occurred to me that the one stroke might become two, if one of her fellows could answer the question. (They’d not want to get her into trouble, but wouldn’t be brave enough to admit their ignorance. Perhaps, then, the tutor would have to review each girl’s progress weekly, and her performance in these sessions would form part of the assessment?).

The tension at the start of the course bears consideration, too. The young women would know about the disciplinary regime before they enrolled, of course. But on that first morning, just after they’d met their fellow trainees – just after they’d met their tutor? Who’d be the first girl to be called up? What would the caning be like?

And a couple of weeks in: what if one girl still hadn’t been selected in the random morning draw? Imagine the relief at having been spared, clashing with the feeling of now being an outsider – hope that she would now be selected, to get it over with, to go through the same experience as her friends.

I imagine the girls being set an assignment. A detailed critique would be offered of their work, when the essays were handed back in class the following morning. For all girls, that is, except one: “Jennifer… We’ll discuss my feedback on your paper in private at the end of classes today.” A nervous wait would ensure, as she’d know that a private discussion meant she’d failed to make the grade, and would be accompanied by the order to “bend over and hold your ankles”. That she’d be caned was inevitable; the only question was the number of strokes, and leniency wasn’t usually on offer.

Last, but far from least, word might reach the tutor that a number of the girls had been seen out drinking, excessively, in the local pub one night – when they were supposed to be revising. He’d make them line up outside his study at the end of the following day. Call them in one-by-one. Ask whether they were serious about passing the exam, or whether he shouldn’t just send them straight home. And then cane them over his desk – punishment for their lax behaviour, instilling discipline for the remainder of the course.

The Implement Mystery

When Abel and I are apart, we email – as much as my currently dying laptop and his travels allow. This morning, I got a following report about his day:

Went to the top two fetish shops which had some superb stuff in them – prepare to go owwww when you get home.

Even now, I can feel my bottom clench in anticipation. I catch myself guessing. He’s in America, so it won’t be a cane. (They’re a bother to fly transatlantic, anyway.) There’s a carousel of straps, paddles, crops, quirts, floggers and all things whippy and stingy dancing before my eyes.

He said “owwww” like that, with four “w”s, I wonder if that’s significant – that the implement in question is less fierce than one that would merit five “w”s, but more severe than one that just makes you go “oww”?

…One week of separation down, three still to go.