More dangling

I'm putting in a chat transcript from my latest adventures in virtual noosing, but I need a little background first. In Second Life, the avatars have a little bit of floating text above them to show their name and a group title, if the group title is turned on. My avatar is a member of a group called Cocksucking Males, which shouldn't be surprising. It's not an active group, and the founder disappeared long ago. It is useful because the members get the title "cocksucker," which will appear above their name and avatar, like so: 

With that established, I can tell the story. As of about 2 a.m., Gus had been hanging for two days and ten hours. A guy came up and sent a private message to him/me. Chat wouldn't have worked, because dead men don't chat. Neither do gagged men, really, and dead gagged men are very quiet. But private messages are kind of a gray area. He apparently noticed my group title. I decided to see how far I could push the envelope. 

The chat is behind this "Read more" link, because I need to say it makes liberal use of the "F-slur" and, if you don't like that word, you should know in advance. But it was key to making the exchange hot for me, because in addition to being dead I like being humiliated a little too. 

Another SecondLife dangle

 

My SecondLife avatar, Gus, got hanged again. He's into latex, so this time he was strung up in head-to-toe latex, and wearing a ball gag and a blindfold. He was inspired by someone else who was hanged nearby in a latex outfit that was a bit more science-fictiony. 

The thing with death in SL is that it's not easy to kill an avatar permanently. Gus looks pretty dead, now, but when he comes down from the gallows he'll be pretty much fine. It depends on the roleplaying involved, really. If I'm playing with someone else and we agree that dead is dead, then the victim is dead, unless the player backs out of it. If I'm playing with someone else who has a ritual to revivify me, or maybe a stasis tube for healing, then death doesn't have to be permanent but it needs fixing first. Or, y'know, not. How seriously will it be taken?

It's all on the honor system anyway. You could agree to let me kill you. You even decide you're willing to never use the avatar again after this. So we interact in such a way that your avi dies, and maybe gets cremated and interred afterward, nice big funeral, etc. That seems final, yes? But it's not like real death. You CAN take it back and play your avatar again. It might piss me off, but so? According to the terms of service, I can't make you not play. (Some "killers" take your login credentials and change your password at the moment of "death." This is not allowed under the ToS, but if the admins never find out it's not stoppable.)

Anyway, snuffing it is just one of the many activities possible in the online world of SL. Obviously it's not one of the more popular activities. It's interesting to play with for some of us. Like a few other activities people do in SL, it can be, y'know, kind of horny in real life, too. It's a bit safer than wrapping a rope around your neck in RL, which is a plus.

Hey, surprise, it's a post! With photos! These are selfpics from 2004. No hangdogs were actually harmed in the making of these photos. Dammit.

I intend to post these to The Noose Network, if I can figure out how. It looks like the "post photos" function has disappeared from where I thought it was. A lot of functionality has disappeared from that site. It's really kind of, um, fascinating, I'll say.

Noose selfie

That's me. Can't you tell? A reader suggested photos of myself with a noose, and this one just happened to get into my camera. Yes, I know the knot isn't behind my ear and the rope is slack, but ... if only I knew another kinky photographer to help out here.

This season's rope collection

The well-appointed gallows has a selection of ropes for discerning customers. The one above is 1/2 inch braided nylon, fairly well made, soft (at first) but tough when it counts.

 Perhaps a more natural rope is more suitable. This one is 3/4-inch hemp, in a raw state (could use boiling or oiling, unless you really like it rough).

This one-inch braided nylon is thick and the knot is a hefty one. It, too, has a soft feel when merely snug.

You can find anything in Wikipedia, right? This one is described there as "Hanging of a Horse Thief," in 1900 in Oregon. This horse thief still has a bit of life left in him, apparently, but that probably didn't last long.

Noosed-up cowboy

Usually I want to post photos here with some of the story behind them. This one's story has eluded me so far. In fact, I can't really be certain it's historical. Maybe it's from a TV documentary. The little camera logo in the corner gives me pause too; I don't know if this is a photo from a stock agency, or rather which one. I've had some photos in my computer collection for years, and as I've commented before details are hard to come by with Internet photos. Having said that, though, this is a pretty good Western-looking photo. I've run into a few guys on IRC who would like to be noosed up and geared up like this guy.

Anyway, if you happen to know anything about this photo, please drop me a line in the comments. Or if you have anything else to say, for that matter.

GPOY

I had the idea for this photo this morning, and took it tonight as a self-pic. The problem with beards, especially big beards, is they would hide a noose. I wanted to show this rope off. It's 3/4" hemp, not quite as scratchy as I thought it would be. Come to think of it, it's been photographed before. It still hasn't been really stretched yet.

Check-in

It's been a few months since my last post, so I thought I should post in case anyone is checking in to see if I'm still around. The last few months have seen me working on other, somewhat more sedate things. Lately I've worked on more noose stories. I revised the story "Mark & I" that was posted here a while ago (link is to the original version). I'm trying to figure out the best way to share the new version, whether I should remove the old one or just keep both here. And I wrote a new story based on some artwork posted to the Gaynoose group on google. The new one needs a reading and probably revising; I just finished the draft this week.

The other bit of news I have is that a couple of months ago I tried to post a photo to my Recon account, but they bounced it, presumably because it violated their terms of service. Recon updated their documentation to spell things out more clearly, and they have certain rules because it's located in the U.K. that wouldn't apply in the States. I can accept that... if it weren't for all the other noose photos I see that are a bit further across the line than my rejected one was. I'm not complaining, because I don't want someone there deciding to go after everyone. I'll post the one they rejected here, and the best part is I can explain that I was laying in bed, decidedly not dead, holding the camera in one hand so that the rope could be seen. It wasn't even that tight, really. I mean, I could breathe and everything.

Unknown rope stretcher

My source for this image claims that nothing is known about this former rope-dancer. (But then it claimed that the image of the guy strung up in the photos I posted on March 8 is of Big Jim Long, and it's not.)

I just realized that the Killin' Jim Miller image I posted last month was already posted before, dammit. I probably deserve a flogging; hangin's too good for me. (Oh wait, I'd probably like that, too.)

Killin' Jim Miller et al.

Left to right: Jim Miller, Joe Allen, Berry Burrell, and Jesse West, hanged by vigilantes in Ada, Oklahoma, April 19, 1909.

Killin' Jim Miller didn't drink or smoke. He just liked killing people. He was alternately a murderer, a sheriff, and a hired killer. But he was caught, and when it looked like he might find a way to get off, good citizens took the law into their own hands. The other three lynched with Miller had hired him to dispose of a rival of theirs. (Some info from here and here.)

The real Big Steve Long

As promised, here's Big Steve Long, strung up in Laramie, Wyoming with two half-brothers in 1868. This image is from a carte de visite and on the back was scrawled the following legend:

L to R
1) Gunfighter - Big Steve Long
2) Con Moyer.
3) Ace Moyer.

A lynching in Laramie, Wyo.
- 1868 -
Con & Ace were Founders of Laramie, Wyoming!

Two views and a check-in

Dunno who this guy was; the filename on the .jpg said it was Big Steve Long, but apparently that monicker belongs to another unfortunate hombre (maybe I'll post that pic next, though I never liked the quality of the copy I had). Whoever he was, he sure had a lot of folks present to wish him well on his journey....


Although, as is often the case, they were just fair-weather friends, and they left him to continue on alone.

***
Sorry for the silence here in the last couple of months. My mind has been wandering elsewhere, though I've had this blog (and its inspirations) in the back of my mind all along. There may be a new story at some point, if I can get it out of my pen.

Shasta, California, 1892

John and Charles Ruggles were lynched in 1892 for stagecoach robbery and murder in Shasta County, California. They were hanged from a harness; the method by which the harness was hoisted is not immediately apparent, unfortunately.

Self-Pic

Unlike some other kink and fetish interests, nooses are hard to self-photograph. This is a photo of me wearing a noose that used to be on my old site. It's a Polaroid and about thirteen years old, which doesn't help (lots of color shifting going on), and it's cropped to hide the fact that the camera was held at arm's length. I still like it, mostly because of the nice thick rope—3/4-inch manila. It's the rope that inspired the "Buying Rope" story, in fact.

Telephone poles work, too

George Witherill ran afoul of the good citizens of Canon City, Colorado, in 1888, and wound up decorating a telegraph pole. I'm kind of surprised at how well-dressed the mob is here.

Photo: Say cheese! Uh, maybe not...

Damn paparazzi....
(Kansas, 1894)

A more formal hanging

Another hanging from the nineteenth century, but one planned out in advance unlike the other photos I've posted. My guess is that the drop this gentleman took probably did not break his neck, since he only dropped three feet or so. (Wish I had more information on some of these pics, but when you get them from the Internet you can't ask for a full bibliography.)

Nooses and horses

Too bad Killin' Jim Miller is cut off in this pic, since the caption indicates he's the star here.

I'll probably post a story in a day or two.

Another historical pic

Someone actually posted this image to a bear newsgroup once years ago. Well, he is bearded.... It also appears in The American Frontier: Pioneers, Settlers & Cowboys 1800–1899 (Smithmark, 1992), along with a few other photos of strung-up desperadoes and lots of other words and pictures about the West in general.