Erica's Helpful Hints #5

Spankees, we've all been in this situation: You're OTK, the spanking has ramped up and you temporarily quiet down in an attempt to absorb it. And then your top crows, "No sass? Wow! I think I'm finally getting through to you!"

So smug. :-Þ

Tempting as it may be, it's probably not in your best interest to twist around, pinch his arm and say, "Wake up. You're dreaming."

It's damn fun, though. :-D

Thirty years ago today...

... I cried all night long over someone I'd never met, but who had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember.

A woman lost the love of her life. Two boys lost their father. The world lost one of its most brilliant voices.

A working class hero, a genius, an anarchist and an icon was frozen at age 40, with the remainder of his potential to be forever unknown.

Thirty years later, I still get tears in my eyes.

Miss you, John. Still.

I know this will sound sick, but...

... I love Mondays. :-)

Mind you, I haven't always. Used to groan at the thought of them, like everyone else, until just recently. Ever since I met New Guy and Monday became SpankDay. Now I feel like I have a three-day weekend every week.

We don't even bother with the small talk upon his arrival anymore. He's not in the door five minutes and I'm over his knee. Not that I'm complaining. I never was much for small talk anyway. How was your weekend? Fine. Nice haircut. Thanks. OK, that's enough of that. Spank now, talk later.

And spank he did.

On the couch.

Over the ottoman.

And then later, long after we'd wound down, he got some bug up his butt about something or another and we had an impromptu Round #2 over the dining room table with his belt. Pardon the clutter...

Enough locations, don't you think? Nah. He had to put me in the @#$%ing corner, too!

OK, so maybe, just maybe, I deserved a little of this. Some things have the damndest ways of slipping out at times. He was going on and on and ON with that belt of his, with a very long CCR song playing in the background. (One doesn't usually hear the extended version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" on the radio. It goes on about seven or eight minutes, I think.) Anyway, I complained, "Aren't you done yet?" and he replied, "Nope, this is the long version." Har har. I shrugged and said, "Well, at least there's something about you that's long."

That might not have been the most intelligent utterance on my part. Who knew. I think I screeched "I'm sorry" about six times in about as many seconds.

But I still giggled. I can't help it. I'm insatiable.

He said I never learn. I pointed out that if one doesn't learn, it's usually the teacher's fault. Funny, he took exception to that. But I do believe he'll keep trying to impart some sort of lessons to me. And trying. And trying.

I sure hope so. :-)

Wow! :-)

This blog is four months old, and today, I broke 100,000 page views! Special thanks and big cyber-hugs to Chross and his Spankings of the Week listings, which have no doubt sent 1,000s of those hits my way. I love how my views spike sharply upward on the Fridays when I get Chrossed! :-)

I have a query for my readers. I have my regular commenters (and I love you guys), and some periodic commenters. However, a whole lot of you never do, and I know it's due in part to the fact that I turned off the Anonymous comments option. I get emails and messages from people saying, "Hey, couldn't comment on the blog, but wanted you to know that I really liked..." etc.

Two weeks after I came to Blogger, some asshat took exception to one of my topics (and some of the comments on it) and went on a spree, insulting my readers with a barrage of his own nasty remarks. I erased and erased, but he kept reposting. I even directly pleaded with him to stop, but he would not. Finally, I had no choice but to turn off the Anonymous option, since Blogger doesn't allow one to block individuals. I have always endeavored to make my blog open and have people feel safe in joining in and making it interactive, and I wasn't about to let one malcontent ruin that.

Now, I'm toying with the idea of turning that option back on. If I do, I would have to be more vigilant. I might turn on Moderate Comments on the weekends. And I would have to ask all of you to help me out -- if someone were to hurl an anonymous potshot, they must be ignored. No replies, no acknowledgment, no engaging with them. I will delete their comments as soon as I see them.

What do you guys think? Do blogs feel more open and friendly when anyone can comment? Should I try allowing the anonymous comments again?

If you can't comment with your opinion, shoot me an email. :-D

Meanwhile, thank you for reading! You guys make me sooooooo happy when I see all the hits.



Of course I sit at my computer dressed like this. Doesn't everyone?

(Yeah, I know I've posted this shot before. But it fit so well into this topic!)

Have a great weekend, y'all.

To @#$% or not to @#$%

A while back, Devlin O'Neill blogged about cursing and how he does not use it (or allow it in comments) on his blog. Despite my yanking his chain sometimes, I understand his viewpoint that he wants everyone to feel comfortable and safe. But his post gave me food for thought. What are people's thoughts on swearing? Yes? No? What's too much?

Before I continue, allow me to state two points up front: 1) I do not condone hurling ugly names in anger, and 2) the "c" word is off the table, in any circumstance. That word should be banned from the lexicon, as far as I'm concerned.

Moving on... obviously, as you've noted in my own blogs, I do cuss. As with most things in my life, I employ moderation. Of course, moderation is relative. To one who is offended by relatively mild epithets such as "damn" and "hell," my swearing is beyond moderate. But on average, I'd say I use it for emphasis, rather than allowing it to usurp my vocabulary.

Can we all agree that a well-placed swear word can be hilarious? Granted, spewing them right and left makes them redundant (and obnoxious), but with the right timing and placement, an unexpected cuss word can make me laugh until my stomach hurts.

Take spanking videos, for one example. On the extreme side, I once watched a video from a company whose product is not to my liking (won't mention the name, but it's not anyone I've worked for!), and it featured two girls getting spanked who blurted the f word and the s word every other sentence, which I found distasteful. However, an example for the plus side is one of my favorite adlibs of all time. (And no, I wasn't the one who said it.) In Shadow Lane's Sting Operation 2, Samantha Woodley is confronted by her teacher (Lance Del Toro) for cheating on an exam. After wheedling and flirting doesn't budge him, she gets petulant and snaps, "I said I was sorry! Now forgive and forget, and fuck off!" Hearing that come out of her sweet little face, and her timing, made me double over.

My thoughts on the ever-controversial word in the spanko scene: ass. Some people mistakenly think I disapprove of the word, but I don't. Where I don't like it is within a spanking scene. The phrase "You're getting a bare-bottom spanking, young lady" causes my stomach to flip-flop and my nether regions to react the way nether regions react; whereas "I'm going to beat your bare ass, bitch," makes me recoil in disgust. However, outside of scene conversation, there are times when only the word "ass" will do. I mean, calling someone a "dumb-bottom" or hurling off a snappy, "Oh, kiss my behind" just doesn't cut it.

When I was growing up, I didn't hear much swearing in my house. Sometimes I'd overhear cuss words when my older brother was in his room with his buddies, but my mother never swore in front of me. As I grew into adolescence, I thought she was quite the prig, using words like "golly" and "gee." Little did I know.

One summer day when I was 16, I was in her house, which had no air-conditioning. It was miserably hot and she had gone into her bedroom to attempt a nap, pulling down the shades and running a fan. But I guess it was simply too hot for her to sleep. Suddenly, she came bursting out of the bedroom in her underwear and yelled, "Aaaaaaaagh, it's so FUCKING HOT in here!" I was shocked! Who was this woman?? "Maaaaaa!" I said, laughing. "Well, it is!" she snapped. I guess she figured I was old enough to hear how she really talked! LOL

For many of you, cussing has always been around on TV, and certainly in movies. I'm old enough to remember the opposite, when you not only couldn't say "damn" or "hell," but you couldn't say "pregnant," you couldn't show a married couple in one bed, toilets didn't exist, etc. Of course, now on premium cable, they say everything, and even on network TV, several cuss words and references to bodily parts pass the censors.

Which brings me back to the moderation thing. No, I really don't want to return to the era of dialogue like "Honestly, Father," "Geeee, Wally," and "Well, gollllllllyyyy!" Wholesome, they called it. Another show comes to mind, a more current one -- Big Love. Because it depicts a Mormon family, there is no swearing. And I have to admit, sometimes the lack of swearing is jarring to my ears. They fight a lot, and somehow, hearing a heated "Darn you, Nicki!" or "Margene, what the H do you think you're doing?" doesn't ring true for me.

BUT -- when it's nonstop filthy mouth like on The Sopranos? Too much for me. I don't find South Park all that funny.

Returning to the humor aspect, there is one thing I do miss from bygone days of television -- innuendo. Nowadays, humor is so in-your-face dirty, spelling everything out, and so few people know the art of subtlety and suggestion anymore. The late, great Groucho Marx, on his show You Bet Your Life, could imply a world of ribaldry by simply looking into the camera and raising his eyebrows. In that era, it wasn't what was said -- it was what wasn't said that could bring on the side-splitting laughter.

One of my favorite examples of this is a classic clip from the Tonight Show, circa 1965, with the wonderful Johnny Carson. Actor Ed Ames, who played Mingo on the TV western Daniel Boone, was demonstrating how to throw a tomahawk, hurling one at a crude drawing of a cowboy figure. The tomahawk landed squarely in a most unfortunate area, and the audience exploded in laughter, as did Ames. Carson, however, didn't laugh, and didn't speak. He merely stood there, a very naughty smile twitching on his lips, looking at the tomahawk, then at Ames, then the audience, his face speaking volumes, while the laughter went on and on. And finally when it started to die down, with his perfect comedic timing, he uttered a line that made the howling erupt anew. It was one of the longest sustained laughs in television history.

If you haven't seen this clip, do watch: it's priceless.



So where am I going with all this? I guess I wanted to open the floor and see how people feel about cussing in general. Does it bother you? Are there circumstances where you think it works well? Do you think there's too much of it in the overall media nowadays?

And just so you know, I do appreciate moderation in comment cussing as well. ;-)