el tercer ojo

Of Course He Does Redux

Okay, after spending the last who-knows-how-long in careful study, I can say that Rebecca Webb's Hogwart fics (they're not centered on Harry, but rather on Slytherin and everyone's favorite Head of House) are definitely worth a read.

For the right reader.  Which I definitely am by the way.

Who's the right reader? 

• someone into Potter-verse fanfic
• someone who can let go the need for everyone to be completely in character (these were written a while ago, before the recent novels came out)
• someone who likes to read.  These are long.  This is a delight because they're also exceptionally well written and develop character in rather lovely ways.
• someone who isn't just looking for spanking porn. 

That last comment was the one I found most interesting to write.  Because there are a lot spankings (or rather canings, but she calls them spankings) and the characters refer to them even more frequently.  But the stories aren't about the canings themselves.  The canings aren't (generally) detailed in a pornographic* way.  Rather, like traditional school novels (think Enid Blyton), the caning / spanking is mentioned and the possiblity of them is constant, but they aren't the stories' main events. 

I love that.

For a long time I've tried to understand why I find it so much more thrilling for there to be a reference to a spanking in say an Enid Blyton book then the emotion I feel when I read most spanking-fetish stories.  These stories by Rebecca Webb have sort of crystallized the issue for me.  My enjoyment, I think, comes from them not being first and formost about spanking -- these stories have a plot and dramatic trajectory far apart from the spanking act.  Sure, sometimes the two come together and the spanking / caning is the final line drawn under some sort of student hijinks (now there's a word I've never used before) but it doesn't have to be that way.  Not every threat ends in a spanking.  Nor does every misdeed result in a drawn out, bent over scene.

I think that's what I like.  I get off on the absence of detail, the lack of pornographic detail about her knickers, about the feeling of each stroke and how she moved.  How weird is that?

The Snape in Rebecca's stories is dark but lovable, again somewhat in the tradition of English school novels.  Yes, there's a bit of the "crusty professor with the heart of gold" but she does it and the whole Slytherin house well.

Favorite passages?  Too many to count.  However, this is representitive of the lovely energy the author gives these stories:

  Malfoy ducked just in time to avoid Snape's cane, which flew across the room at him and soared right out the door.  He watched in confusion as it sailed up the corridor.  Then, as it rounded the first corner, he took off after it at a dead run.
        He chased it up deserted hallways and staircases until it suddenly stopped short at the intersection of two corridors.  Malfoy skidded to a halt, hesitated for just a moment, and then leapt inside the nearest classroom doorway, peeking carefully into the hall.  Sure enough, here came Snape, storming down the cross corridor, snatching the cane furiously out of thin air without breaking his stride as he swept through the intersection.  Malfoy waited until the robes billowing behind him disappeared and then took off after him. 
        "Can I be this lucky?" he wondered joyously to himself as he sneaked along behind his housemaster.  When Snape turned to mount the steps to Gryffindor Tower, Malfoy fell to his knees in gratitude.  "Yes!" he cried, thrusting his fists triumphantly into the air. "

Soooo... is the author kinky?  One might think so.  I mean, the cane and all it symbolizes is a central and important to the plot of these interlocking fics, but I'm not sure.  So despite what happened with Mikki's story, I'm reluctant to write to her.  I mean, what will she feel knowing I'm perving on her fic?  But I'm perving on it the way I would on some of the classic stuff (US and UK) from the 1940s and 1950s. 

Anyway, assuming you want to read them after the above disclaimers, let me know what you think.  The stories start here.  I was sorry to finish them.  Definitely a great read.

Hope For the Sloppy

I have a favorite skirt that's brightly embroidered white linen.*  I love wearing it, however I know as soon as I put it on, the odds of coffee being spilled by me or someone else and landing on my clothes are about 100%. 

Today was no exception -- and it wasn't even me that spilled the coffee but some goon at Coffee Bean who was too busy trying to hit on the high school girls there to notice he was slopping on me until it was too late.  I'd resigned myself to a day with a 3 inch long by one inch wide coffee stain down my front when help arrived. 

Seems our office has these little towelettes called Portable Shout Wipes.  They're like the little wipes that you get with messy food except that they're apparently for stain treatment.  I'd seen commercials for them but didn't believe it would really work.  Let me just say they do.  It's not perfect, but after a few minutes use, my coffee stain has faded so much that really only I can see it. 

This product could change my life.  Really.

---

*Note: Please keep in mind I live in Santa Monica and work in Los Angeles.  It's freaking 85 degrees today here.  Southern California definitely doesn't follow tradition fashion rules about fall clothing and Labor Day. 

Well of Course He Does

I can't vouch for the fic (which has the too cute title of The Smallest Slytherin) yet as I just started reading it.  However this line from the first page did jump out just a bit:

"Never lie to Snape," Malfoy counseled. "Snape canes Slytherins who lie to him."

Well of course he does!

Snape and canes... a match made in... well somewhere you'd fine me.

Where The Raspberry Women Have Gone

I was working part time in a five-and-dime
My boss was mr. mcgee
He told me several times that he didnt like my kind
cause I was a bit 2 leisurely

When I went in to the local Coffee Bean to get my daily morning dose of caffeine via skim sf vanilla latte this morning, I was bowled over by nostalgia.  I was standing there surrounded by girls from St. Monica's high school (their uniforms are very like my own Notre Dame Academy one was) and found myself feeling like maybe I was headed to morning class too. 

Seems that I was busy doing something close 2 nothing
But different than the day before
Thats when I saw her, ooh, I saw her
She walked in through the out door, out door

I couldn't figure out what was going on at first.  The music volume was set low, as though the barristas had been told not to have it on too loud too early.  But there it was in the back ground -- Prince before he was the artist formerly known as singing. 

Built like she was
She had the nerve 2 ask me
If I planned 2 do her any harm

So, look here
I put her on the back of my bike
And-a we went riding
Down by old man johnsons farm

Prince's 1999 and Purple Rain albums were huge at my high school -- but I wasn't a fan.  They were just there in the background.  This seems odd now because I'm always so pleased (as I was this morning) to hear any of his songs playing. 

I said now, overcast days never turned me on
But something about the clouds and her mixed

She wasnt 2 bright
But I could tell when she kissed me
She knew how 2 get her kicks

My sister was a fan (and she owned the albums so I got to listen to them a lot), but I was more into the music of the LA scene at the time -- Tom Petty, Oingo Boingo, Concrete Blond and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  And now I remember us arguing during the Grammy's in 1984 about whether Born in the USA or Purple Rain should win album of the year.  We were both passionate about our favorites.  And both indignant when Lionel Richie won for whatever he'd produced. 

She wore a
Raspberry beret
The kind u find in a second hand store
Raspberry beret
And if it was warm she wouldnt wear much more
Raspberry beret
I think I love her

One of my best memories of high school was cutting for the day in the spring of 1983 to go with friends to hear a new band play a free concert at UCLA.  The new band was REM and we were all given a free copy of their first release -- Murmur.  I loved it and played the tap until it broke.

The rain sounds so cool when it hits the barn roof
And the horses wonder who u are
Thunder drowns out what the lightning sees
U feel like a movie star

It's funny now to remember all the music I loved and was so important to me in the 1980s, my days in junior high, high school and college.  Important enough that I had to have a fake ID, not to drink (booze seemed easy enough to get and not very important anyway -- we all drank what we could when we could) but so that I could get into the clubs on Sunset and listen and dance with my friends. 

Listen
They say the first time aint the greatest
But I tell ya
If I had the chance 2 do it all again

Dancing to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at the Whiskey -- finding out where Oingo Boingo would be any given night.  It all seemed so wild then and now feels so innocent somehow.  I didn't have the problem a lot of my friends did with my parents hating my music or somehow trying to keep me from listening to whatever I wanted.  They were children of the 1960s and had their own favorites.  And my dad became a fan of a lot of what I loved at the time, my mom favoring my sister's choices.  One of the things I really grateful to them for was for not seeing music as somehow evil or corrupting.  When my brother got into AC/DC and the Scorpions, they didn't find the music horrible and satanic.  Instead, my dad listened to it too and even surprised my brother by taking him and his best friend to a couple concerts.  The downside of their always listening to our music was, of course, that they constantly borrowed albums.  I still haven't entirely forgiven my dad for stealing my Pink Floyd "The Wall" tape set -- especially since I'd had to buy it myself and it was a lot of cash for a 12 year old.

I wouldnt change a stroke
cause baby Im the most
With a girl as fine as she was then

This was early days in MTV -- we'd all come over to each other's houses after school to watch.  There were so few videos that in about 3 hours of watching you could see everything there was to watch.  And by keeping up, literally see everything as it came out.  It all seemed so exciting -- even the silly bands like the Go-Gos, B-52s,Cars and Bangles.  As I stood in line this morning, straining to hear Prince talk about his first time, I caught myself thinking "the 80s were such a great decade for music -- so much better than today" and blushed.

The kind u find
The kind u find
Oh no no
raspberry beret
and if it was warm
she wouldnt wear much more
Yeah raspberry beret

I think i... I think I... I think I love her

This is, of course, what I used to roll my eyes at hearing my parents' friends say about the late 1960s.   To their credit, my parents didn't think that. I remembered my dad saying "yeah, there was great music then, but a lot of crap too.  We just don't remember the crap."  And of course there was great music in the 80s.  But there was a lot of crap too.  I just find myself missing the crap as well sometimes.  And god knows there's some great music coming out now.  Rock is fun, as well it should be.

No no no
No no no the kind u find
in a second hand store
raspberry beret

Meantime, I wondered what the girls from St. Monica's would think of the old lady behind them wondering about kids today and their music.  And just at that moment, one of them started singing along while another excitedly shouted "Hey, that's Prince!  Turn it up! Turn it up!"

Tell me
Where have all the raspberry women gone?

Still bleary because I hadn't yet had my caffeine, I started laughing.   They couldn't have been born a day before 1999, young enough to be my daughters.  But there they were.  Raspberry women.

When Worlds Collide

Okay this isn't exactly my kink life meeting my academic life as I'm not a medivalist (I mostly do contemporary Chicana feminist literature with a dash of 19th century American to keep me from getting bored) but it's getting close. 

And seeing that subject line in my university mailbox definitely counts as a startle.

Capital and Corporal Punishment in Anglo-Saxon England

42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies
10-13 May 2007
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo

We are looking for papers that deal with the various forms of, concerns
with, and issues surrounding both corporal and capital punishment in the
Anglo-Saxon period. Papers may address secular, ecclesiastical or combined
interests. Legal, historical, and literary treatments are all welcome.
Please submit abstracts for twenty-minute papers by 15 September to:

I snipped off the contact information.  But if you want to submit a paper, do let me know.  I'll be happy to forward you the full text.

Hmm...

Okay, I know these quizes are mostly bunk.  At least I generally hope so.  However parts of this sound a lot like conversations I've had with my beloved. 

Your Five Factor Personality Profile

Extroversion: You have low extroversion. You are quiet and reserved in most social situations. A low key, laid back lifestyle is important to you. You tend to bond slowly, over time, with one or two people. Conscientiousness: You have low conscientiousness. Impulsive and off the wall, you don't take life too seriously. Unfortunately, you sometimes end up regretting your snap decisions. Overall, you tend to lack focus, and it's difficult for you to get important things done. Agreeableness: You have medium agreeableness. You're generally a friendly and trusting person. But you also have a healthy dose of cynicism. You get along well with others, as long as they play fair. Neuroticism: You have medium neuroticism. You're generally cool and collected, but sometimes you do panic. Little worries or problems can consume you, draining your energy. Your life is pretty smooth, but there's a few emotional bumps you'd like to get rid of. Openness to experience: Your openness to new experiences is high. In life, you tend to be an early adopter of all new things and ideas. You'll try almost anything interesting, and you're constantly pushing your own limits. A great connoisseir of art and beauty, you can find the positive side of almost anything.

The Five Factor Personality Test