By their cheeks you will know them

“Facial recognition technology is growing rapidly, both in the consumer world and among police, but privacy advocates are troubled by the potential for intrusion and misuse,” California Watch reports.

“… India’s government is working on an ambitious plan to biometrically identify each of its more than one billion people, and Mexico in 2010 signed a contract with Pennsylvania-based Unisys Corp. to build a large database of fingerprint, eye and faceprint information belonging to millions of people there. Officials in the United States already collect biometric data on international travellers wishing to enter the country. …

Researchers are also looking at the way we walk and even at human buttocks as possible unique identifiers for the future.”

Hurdies like a distant hill

Raise a tawse to Robbie today on the anniversary of his birth!

In case you were wondering about the title of this post, hurdies are buttocks.

And in case you were wondering how to make haggis, look no further.

Marine Life

An Australian woman was attacked by a shark while snorkeling, but managed to escape after punching and kicking the two-metre-long fish until it released her. Significant damage was done to her legs and buttocks, and she lost a significant amount of blood during the attack. The victim faces at least five operations, but it's not all doom and gloom.

Her take on it? "I have to have a new remodeled bottom, so that's a positive."

Read the full story here.

I Can't Believe it Either

In Canada, a popular margarine goes by the name of "I Can't Believe it's not Butter!"

A' The Best, Robbie

Today is Robbie Burns Day, celebrated with great enthusiasm not only in Scotland but by the Scottish diaspora around the world. It is also the 250^th anniversary of the poet's birth, so I thought a tribute was in order.

Burns is well known as a womanizer; he loved the lassies, but did he spank them too? First of all, I had to do some research on that word. In the Scottish language, spank is "skelp".

Skelp - a slap, a smack, to run, to hurry, to skip or trip.
Skelpie-limmer - female scolding. A hussy.
Skelpin - walking smartly, resounding.
Skelping - slapping, spanking.
Skelpit - hurried.

from the Scots Language Centre, where it was word of the week in September of last year,

The skelp might be administered on the buttocks, earning teachers the unflattering nickname of 'skelp-dowp'... but the preferred skelp was on the hand with tawse.

I discovered only minor references to spanking in Burns' poetry. I have taken the liberty of replacing Scots words with English , for the convenience of the Sassenachs (anyone who is not Scottish).

The first is in his Address to the Devil. Here, the word is used in the true sense:

Hear me, Old Hangman, for a while,
And let poor damned bodies be;
I'm sure small pleasure it can give,
Even to a devil,
To spank and blister poor dogs like me,
And hear us squeal!

The second is in the poem Tam o'Shanter, where it is used to mean hurrying:

Well mounted on his gray mare Meg,
A better never lifted leg,
Tam spanked on through mud and mire,
Despising wind, and rain, and fire;

Let's not forget the part of the anatomy most often chosen for our favourite activity. The buttocks are "hurdies", as in the Address to the Haggis, commonly recited at Burns Night suppers:

The groaning platter there you fill,
Your buttocks like a distant hill

Here's a parody on Burns' most familiar poem, from Dave at Anime OTK.



TO A BOTTOM (with tribute and apologies to Robert Burns)
A poem recited by a strict but loving uncle as he looks down on his 18 year old niece Jenny’s pale, pink, bare buttocks across his lap.

Wee, sleekit, cowerin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breasty!
Thou need to shiver away sae hasty
Wi' squirmin' rap!
I mon slap ye so hard and hearty,
Wi' leathern strap!


I'm truly sorry your ill-mannered action
Has broken our social union,
'an justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee submit
to me, thy erstwhile good companion,
an' friend complicit!


I see your buttocks laid bare an' waste,
An' the hard strap comin fast,
so uneasy here, beneath the blast,
Thy cheeks must dwell,
Till, thwack! the cruel leatherin' is past,
an' the pain's like hell!


That wee bit cigarette ye smoked in bed,
Will cost thee monie a sore stripe red!
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,
wi' buttocks fully bare
To thole the leathers hard weary stroke,
An' thrashin' rare!


But Jenny, thou art not the one alain,
proving pleasure may be in vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Gang aft agley
An' leave you nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Can You Be More Specific?

Here's a definition of the part of the body that is the source of delight for us spankos, courtesy of St. John's County, Florida.

"Buttocks: The area at the rear of the human body which lies between two imaginary lines running parallel to the ground, when a person is standing, the first or top of such lines drawn at the top of the cleavage of the nates: (i.e., the prominence formed by the muscles running from the back of the hip to the back of the leg) and the second or bottom line drawn at the lowest visible point of this cleavage or the lowest point of the curvature of the fleshy protuberance, whichever is lower, and between two imaginary lines on each side of the body, which lines are perpendicular to the ground and to the horizontal lines described above, and which perpendicular lines are drawn through the point at which each nate meets the outer side of the leg."

Anti-nudity ordinance, St. John's County, Florida

Is that clear?