Ahh Those Magdalene Sisters Again! A Caning, Near-Ideal Uniforms, AND a Disciplinary Haircut – All in One Clip (pardon the pun!)

Ahh Those Magdalene Sisters!  Near perfect uniforms – certainly get the Toyntanen thumbs-up for being conducive to strict discipline and discouragous (is that even a word?) to adopting airs and graces; and practical too! 

Perhaps that is where the institutional dress code does fall down a little – practical for the work house, and for discouraging undue pride in a girl’s (I prefer the term ‘inmate’ in such situations) appearance – but less convenient when it comes to metering out correction; witness the, albeit short, unseemly kafuffle regarding hitching up those frocks when it comes to receiving a little behavioural modification from the good sister’s cane.  A much shorter hemline would avoid all of this of course.  Their ‘modesty’ could still be preserved by a pair of sturdy short-legged bloomers, the type that would be gathered around broad elasticated leg openings, perhaps opening at the rear and fastened there with threaded laces so as to allow quick access to the bottom, or the cane can be applied to the rear of the thighs.  Shapely legs, that might otherwise give grounds for self admiration can be made to look decidedly less so in scratchy woollen or thick lyle stockings, providing that sufficient area is left bare to allow for attention to the upper regions of the thighs, if that is to be the site of their carers’ disciplinary zeal.

But what is that medallion or neck chain doing there?  St Christopher, undoubtedly, but surely nothing – and I mean, nothing – of a personal nature from the world at large can be allowed within the high walls of a strict long-term residential institution of this type?

This clip has it all – not just a caning, but verbal humiliation AND a penal-style haircut going in on in the background too!  You just have to love what she is doing with those clippers – and taking such care as well!  But don’t’ you think the caning is surprisingly informal – AND too brief?  Shouldn’t there be more procedure to it, more… yes, ritual?  Bending straight-legged and touching the toes, counting the strokes, asking for and thanking afterwards the disciplinarian for the correction, additional remedial or penalty corrections (not necessarily in the form of further caning; use your imagination; a good disciplinarian always should) for short comings when under discipline – all these things can add greatly to the psychological aftershock.  And those hair clippers should surely have been put to work on or near day one, as a standard part of the admission procedure – there is far too much scope for individualism on show here; but perhaps that itself is part of the procedure; perhaps this is early days and these two still have a way to go, especially the one on the left.  Now as to the girl on the right, on the other hand: perhaps that style would be suitable as a sort of institution regulation cut as it is?  Or perhaps that same style but somewhat reduced in length?  Any thoughts?  I’m NOT a fan of shaved heads or the spiky ‘skinhead’ type of thing – but one can still appreciate the value of forced hair styling / hair cuts, both within an institutional setting AND within the domestic environment given the right set of conditions, with out going to such extreme lengths (HA,ha,ha… another pun!  I’m on FIRE today… LENGTHS geddit?)     

I’m hard at work at the moment, modifying some of Roger Benton’s spankingly good fifties and early sixties period piece artwork for the artist, as well as putting together a couple of Photoshop-modified pieces for my own (and yours, I hope) amusement.  I still have a lot of half written stuff on my hard drive that I may revisit too, since I have a little time on my hands while my knee recovers.  I have managed to take my cycle out on the road now, but only for a short distance; most of my rehab work is going on in the gym on the stationary exercise cycle and using (light - very) weights.

On a more painful note (and my knee IS getting quite painful sitting here!, I’ll have to get up and move around in a mo) this computer is starting to complain.  The warning signs are all there.  On start up this morning it kept complaining that some component of Windows wasn’t present (a DLL file) and so it couldn’t start.  And I hadn’t backed up since September… OMG!  It turned out that despite running the RAID utility (I have 2 Western Digital Raptors – 10,00RPM – disks in RAID 0 to make it go faster) it was trying to boot from a third hard drive it has AND it wasn’t detecting the Raptors RAID array!!!  Yeah I know that strictly speaking what I have isn’t real RAID….  I have a bad feeling in my bones, and it aint just from the titanium in my new knee!