Yes, exactly. In such a situation one needs to cuss, it helps to ease the pain a bit.

How bizarre. I just turned up to post this in news of the day (subfolder: things we've always suspected) and here you are already talking about it.
Apparently the word of your own choice is most effective.

Swearing Makes Pain More Tolerable
LiveScience.com
livescience.com – Sun Jul 12, 10:10 am ET

That muttered curse word that reflexively comes out when you stub your toe could actually make it easier to bear the throbbing pain, a new study suggests.

Swearing is a common response to pain, but no previous research has connected the uttering of an expletive to the actual physical experience of pain.

"Swearing has been around for centuries and is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon," said Richard Stephens of Keele University in England and one of the authors of the new study. "It taps into emotional brain centers and appears to arise in the right brain, whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain."

Stephens and his fellow Keele researchers John Atkins and Andrew Kingston sought to test how swearing would affect an individual's tolerance to pain. Because swearing often has an exaggerating effect that can overstate the severity of pain, the team thought that swearing would lessen a person's tolerance.

As it turned out, the opposite seems to be true.

The researchers enlisted 64 undergraduate volunteers and had them submerge their hand in a tub of ice water for as long as possible while repeating a swear word of their choice. The experiment was then repeated with the volunteer repeating a more common word that they would use to describe a table.

Contrary to what the researcher expected, the volunteers kept their hands submerged longer while repeating the swear word.

The researchers think that the increase in pain tolerance occurs because swearing triggers the body's natural "fight-or-flight" response. Stephens and his colleagues suggest that swearing may increase aggression (seen in accelerated heart rates), which downplays weakness to appear stronger or more macho.

"Our research shows one potential reason why swearing developed and why it persists," Stephens said.

The results of the study are detailed in the Aug. 5 issue of the journal NeuroReport.

SMELL CHECH UR F*CKING BREADS WHEN U TOAST THEM.

r.x.
i feel much breader.

Ooooh....I feel better too! Placebo by proxy.

Swearing is a wonderful thing. With teenage boys who are playing Halo in the rec room with their friends all afternoon, I do find it irritating to listen to them swear ALL the livelong day. It makes me feel a lot more aggressive myself, and less civil.

That's why I ask them to save their swear words for special occasions - that's what they're for. If their squadron gets wiped out by aliens, they have to think more creatively, and it's pretty funny what they come up with.

what do you do when stuff like this happens?

usually I

I check off "Threaten to Leave" on my Board Troll Bingo card.

read the fine print

scan for smileys

QOTD

What squares are on your Board Troll Bingo card?

Being even meaner and more sarcastic than I am

i was thinking she meant ...........

oh well it doesn't matter........

here is someone else's list::

http://www.waste.org/10.html

scroll down a bit for the actual list :)

link courtesy of
pierre assouline's blog entry
for today

thank you pierre!

Raising the topic of trolling.



*tick*

recursive snark

*tick*

"overweening modem geek"

*tick*

every alphabet word, the double entendre, board owner

¿Q?

has this ever happened before?

yes.

yes.

yes but last time there
was a sort of
"us and them"
thing going on :)

the more the merrier

this go around

this this?

yes damnit. over and over again. but she says, "That, that."

time for an indecent Qnew

what do you wear in bed to sleep in?

nothing mostly, sometimes a tee shirt, sometimes jammies

hmmm... depends where I'm going

my heart on my non-existent sleeve

lamby jammies

new Q for like mostly thursday or somethin

What was the last thing you had stolen from you?

a flowerpot (with Aloe aristata in it)

and time, of course.

My car GDimmit - thanks for bringing that up. I live in an urban area and I was a stoopid dipshit. But got it back. I sold it.

I don't know about "stolen" but the Radisson's policy of refusing to refund a pre-paid hotel room in Paris with 24+hrs notice seemed pretty poor at the time.

other than getting fiddled by corporate bullshit like that, I can't remember the last time something was actually removed from my possession without my permission.

A dirty damned scurvy dog got onto the docks and tried to make off with my dinghy. The pirate unhitched my pretty little green and varnished El toro tender and rowed her over to the public docks where his pick up truck was waiting. Along the way he was spotted by a salty neighbor with a sharp eye who called attention to the would be thief...upon which the pirate escaped, without my dinghy, however, which is for now on locked and cabled to my boat.

^ Yey!

my spirit

¿Q?

^this method came as a complete revelation to me


you?

cute boxers

no i've seen it done, i prefer the slice-stem-open-with-fingernail-method. if you peel the other side in 2 parts, sometimes the peel flaps back in your face.

seriously, i've pondered this for hours and hours! :D