Everyone (and I do mean everyone),

After a long conversation yesterday with one of my new friends, I couldn’t help going back to our exchange in my mind, all last evening. Without going into any specific detail, my new playmate is a sweet, gentle, beautiful, respectful, delightful person. She’s smart, well-educated, and has achieved much already in her first three decades. Like nearly every single person I’ve had the wonderful pleasure of meeting via this thing we call spanking, she’s a Good Apple. But there’s a problem:

She doesn’t love herself enough.

That’s not her fault; it’s the fault in the tools she’s been given to construct her self-image. And it’s not a singular issue, is it? How many of us has something(s) about ourselves which we simply cannot forgive? Are we too tall, too short, too skinny, too fat, too redheaded, too blonde, too freckly, too fair? Do we have scars, stretch marks, thinning hair, big feet, small hands, wrinkles? Do we feel inadequate – as partners, parents, friends…people? Are we underpaid, underappreciated – unloved?

Hell yes.

Every single one of us feels this from time to time. That’s called being human. But some of us feel it all the time – a prevailing sense of ‘not-good-enough-ness’ that no number of sunny days can relieve. We find ways to numb ourselves to our own thoughts, thereby cutting ourselves off from everyone else in the process.  Isolating. Finding ways to keep ourselves in that dark place because it’s the only place we feel comfortable.

That’s not our fault, either. Unless we don’t work, every day, to change our minds. Change our circumstances. Most importantly, change the way we look at ourselves.

Many times, I’ve asked my friends to stand in front of a mirror – looking into the reflection of their own eyes – and repeat things like, “I love myself.” You cannot imagine (or maybe you can) just how difficult these exercises can be. To look at oneself, not subjectively, but with unconditional love, is one of the hardest things most of us will ever accomplish. Usually, because we’ve not experienced enough of it – love without conditions, that is.

We’ll all talk much more about love, limits, self-care, and spanking for years to come, but today, there’s just one thing that I think ALL of you should know:

You are beautiful.

–  Dana

Yes, you read right. I’ve been reading Pandora Blake’s blog, Spanked Not Silenced, and am shocked and dismayed to read the following, excerpted:

“Today in the UK, the law changed regarding the sort of content that can be sold online as “video on demand”, to bring online regulations in line with the existing guidelines for the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification). Video on Demand (VoD) services are regulated by the Authority for Television on Demand (ATVOD), which restricts the types of sexual content that UK VoD distributors can provide. In other words, online porn sales are now subject to the same restrictions as DVD sales, and it is no longer legal to sell online anything which could not be classified by the BBFC as R-18.”

What does all that malarkey mean?…..

According to Pandora’s post, it means:

“Under the new legislation, UK distributors are no longer allowed to sell content depicting bondage and gags, fisting, public sex, age play, facesitting, urination, female ejaculation, and spanking and caning beyond that deemed “transient and trifling”.” (Wait, FEMALE ejaculation is illegal but male ejaculation is totally okay? That’s some seriously repressed thinking, said the caveman.)

Are you paying attention? Basically, what’s being said here, in LEGISLATION in the UK, is that sites like Pandora’s DreamsofSpanking.com and others like it are now breaking the law. Every minute they’re online. Not because of sex for the sake of sex, or because of any of the parochial things you’d assume, but because of this strangely arbitrary list. The really screwed up part is that you, the consumer, may still happily watch content made in other countries, like the U.S., but that your lovely neighbor Pandora and others in the UK will be targeted as criminals. In the meantime, and in usual politico fashion, they’ve made it terribly easy for producers to circumvent this law by simply moving their servers to a proxy country. What a waste of official seals.

Please take a few moments to read Pandora’s full post HERE – and write, tweet, vote your opinions. Are the people of the UK going to allow their government to censor their creative and sexual rights this way? I sure as hell hope not.

* This is no joke kiddos. The UK isn’t outlawing violent video games where you can rape a hooker or shoot an innocent pedestrian, they’re not making it illegal to film a gangbang bukkake scene where the girl is obviously distressed, but it’s now illegal to spank someone hard, film it, and sell it, in the UK. This is disturbing on SO many levels. Mainly because we here in the U.S. always view the UK as somehow ahead of us in the arena of sexual freedoms….I guess we were wrong.  Gratitude to Pandora for bringing this issue to our attention, and all my love and support to the men and women who’ll be fighting this ridiculous legislation tooth and nail.

–  Dana

UPDATED 11/25:

Still working on this problem everyone. I may have to switch the feed to a more reliable service. Stay tuned.

PS. The blog will be it’s usual hive of activity again soon.

________________________

Readers,

If you’re a Feedburner/RSS subscriber and haven’t been receiving your email updates, please take a moment to let me know, here in the comment section. A few folks have emailed to say that they’ve not received their email updates and I’m working hard to figure out why. Your feedback will make things easier. Also, if you’ve been experiencing feed outage and find that you’re now receiving updates, let me know that, too, otherwise I won’t know when I’ve gotten the damn thing fixed.

Thanks,
Dana

Readers,

As with most things, if I see the word ‘spanking’ I’m likely to pay a bit more attention. Here again is a case of semi-relation to our peccadillo, as one of our common English phrases contains the word which makes us all tingle:

“Brand Spanking New”

I found this recent article, posted on Grammarist.com, about the origins of the phrase (below copied directly from linked article):

The phrase brand spanking new means to be entirely new or recently created, and was first recorded in 1860. It evolved from the compound word brand-new and the phrase spick-and-span. Also, spanking, while the main definition is to hit someone on the butt, can also mean to move quickly. So one might say that a brand spanking new object was created quickly or appeared very fast. In truth, no one knows quite how it was coined or what it originally referred to.

This idiom is not officially recognized in most dictionaries, and as such does not have an official spelling. Most instances are hyphenated, since the phrase is used as a compound adjective. Though since hyphens in general are on the decline, an argument could be made for not using them. There are some publications which prefer hyphenating brand-spanking and not new, so that it is new that is being modified.

In the end, it is personal preference since this idiom is informal.

Example:

What better way to do it than whilst wearing a brand spanking new pair of kickers.

Although the example says ‘brand spanking new pair of kickers’, my spanko brain immediately turned the last word into ‘knickers’….works better my way, don’t you think?..

What better way to do it than whilst wearing a brand spanking new pair of knickers. 

– Dana