Tuesday 25 June 2013

As With My Internet Connection: Nun's The Word!

Hi folks!  Today’s posting is I admit going to be boring.  But the next one, later this week should be better: I going to restart uploading scans of some of those old spanking magazine Reader’s Letters pages that have influenced me so much over the years, both here and on the website.  I’ve also been doing a bit of writing, exploring a different direction and including some femdom themes, some of which I’ll be sharing with you over the coming weeks. 

I bet you’ve been wondering where I’ve been?  Well, ponder no more, coz I’m back.  In truth I hadn’t intended to post anything more for a week or two following my last offering, but I hadn’t intended to leave it five weeks or how ever long it’s been!  And fear not for my mental health:  My prolonged absence this time has had nothing to do with me having gone down with a fit of the old ‘black dog’ (although I have been depressed at times because of the hassle).  In actual fact I have been as fired up as I have been since I started the website and the joint graphics project with Angela Fox earlier in the year. 

No; it was not my mental health at fault, rather the mental health of some individual or group of individuals (surely not a team – and yet surely no single person acting independently could cause such a rumpus) working at Supanet (my internet provider – or non-provider, as I’d started to refer to them as).  They phoned me up, out of the blue, one sunny day in May and asked me how I found their broadband service.  So I told them: At £19.99 per month for 8 Mbs (I actually receive closer to 5 Mbs), bloody expensive.  So they offered me an optical fibre system (for slightly less outlay per month!).  And like the idiot I am - seduced by the dizzying speeds they were quoting - I signed up for it!!

First they sent an engineer out without agreeing an appointment with me first (I was going out that day, leaving as he arrived).  Then the sent two more engineers on different days (apparently – I was at home on one of those days and neither heard nor saw anyone), again without contacting me to make an appointment beforehand… And then the broadband connection went dead!!!!!!  Assuming that at least one of those engineers had gained access and installed the all-important cable modem at my end, some idiot (clearly without checking the new all-singing-all-dancing optical fibre system was up and running) pulled the plug on my ADSL Internet connection, presumably at the local telephone exchange.  And without home Internet, updating the blog and the website become no-go areas:  There are just too many judgemental pairs of eyes keenly looking over one’s shoulder nowadays if using public WiFi connections – and a surprisingly large number of WiFI points here in London block access to adult sites too.

Then it took eons to get them on the phone – and when I DID get their (not so) technical support team on the blower, they went around and around and around chasing non-existent line faults:  “…Yes mate… it’s yer phone line mate, yer line’s down.”  “Err… I’m talking to you on it?….” says I, tagging a fashionable Aussie-style upward inflection on to the end of my sentence to underline the irony of it all.   

You see, for once my often crackly phone line – the cause of a many a day’s snail-paced Internet connection, and part of the impetuous propelling me into going for optical in the first place – was as clear as the proverbial bell; I could hear the boogies rattling up the guy’s nose. 

On a different tack:  I wonder if anyone remembers this title (right) from the late 70s / early 80s?  It was the first magazine of its kind I remember beginning the use of the term 'college uniform', which was pretty meaningless here in the UK at the time.  And of course, typically, in searching that pic out I just came across this one (top left) which could have come straight from a scene in the last book I completed, earlier this year (ALICE UNDER DISCIPLINE BOOK 2).  God only knows where I've downloaded it from, but if I'd stumbled over it towards the end of last year it would have gone a long way in influencing that particular book - it certainly does a good job in illustrating the spirit of the book, that sort of pseudo-legitimised feeling, I was trying to put across.  Yeah I know the placing and ordering of today's pics is a little counter-intuitive, but the picture with the nun in it looks more exciting - and I have always loved those rear-fastening hospital examination gowns which tie with bows up the back, which is what those two pentitants' punishment or chastisement smocks remind me of!   

2 comments:

Orage said...

The same misadventure happened to a friend of mine in Weymouth. He said first: "I'm going for it because of its speed, and because it should be free of all the failures in our local phone-line system."
And about a month later: "the engineer who at long last fixed my line was honest enough to admit that the fault was probably caused by the previous fibre-optic engineer accidentally disturbing the phone-line wires in the wiring box 100m down the road!"

Toyntanen said...

Hi Folks!

An anonymous contributor has left a couple of comments which - although they have appeared, repeated, in my email - for some reason have not appeared here.

I don't know how or why this happens from time to time, but rest assured: If you post a comment and don't see it pop up here later, it is NOT because I have blocked or deleted it (unless it has to do with kiddie porn of course. If you notice your comment hasn't appeared, please let me know by email and I'll do my best to rectify the situation.

Meanwhile, that being said, here are the comments Mr, Ms, Miss or Mrs Anonymous posted:

1) "It looks like the nun picture might be from the recent season of American Horror Story, although the show was in colour."

2)"Specifically, I believe it is from the end of this episode:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricks_and_Treats_%28American_Horror_Story%29

So, my reply:

Thanks for the link, Anonymous (please, oh please invent an alto ego for yourself, so much clearer to all concerned if and when there is more than one popping up on here. I mean: Garth Toyntanen is an invented alto ego - there's no shame in it!)

I checked out the link (copy and paste it into your browsers; a direct link won't work in the comments section) and I have to say from the storyline it could be a screen grab from that show. On the other hand, reading the story line it also sounds to me as if a single character ends up taking the caning rather than two characters being caned side by side.

Besides, from the image's position within my computer's file hierarchy where I blundered across it I'd say it originated earlier than the date of that episode.

The trouble is: a lot of the file creation / modification dates of the stuff I have on this machine have got mangled somehow and often don't make sense. For example: I have files which claim to have been created / modified before I actually built this computer!

I DO like the sound of that show, though! I have come across mention of it before but have yet to see it pop up on UK TV. Certain aspects of what I have read of the storylines have come close to aspects and events I have previously included within my own writings. For example: in the episode we are presently discussing a character has some sort of journal or diary she has been keeping taken away from her.

Now, in the comic book-style storyline Angela Fox and myself have been working on recently a character is given a good hard caning in order to force her to reveal the whereabouts of a secret journal she has been keeping.

Also - without wanting to give too much away - within this graphic novel thing of ours, one of our characters (a pretty young thing in her late teens) is placed under a regime of repeated ECT or electro-shock treatment deliberately in order to disrupt her memory. Again, not unlike certain events within the show's episode we are discussing, except in my hands we are not treated to the graphic violence described in the TV show, rather the horror of it is all psychological: There is no need for the patient to even be awake for this procedure, let alone experience the physical pain. Where there is physical pain or discomfort illustrated in our book it is those subtle discomforts peculiar to the straitjacket or the searing sting of the cane, strap, paddle, crop or Scottish tawse landing across robust chubby late-teen bottom cheeks. For instance: What interests me about the straightjacket is not so much the incessant aching and burning in the joints and limbs if tightened within an inch of the wearer’s life as - to give an example - the girl suffering something as common and simple as an itching nose; or perhaps there is a tap or a pipe dripping somewhere, or an incessantly ticking clock…

Right! I'm off to update the website before working on a couple of frames from the comic book - but first a quick visit to the gym; I'll keep you all informed... about the website, not the gym... Who cares about the gym?