Marzipan dildo
Oct. 13th, 2011 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistI have what my friend ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
haggis once calle brain velociraptors -- the idea being there's some blog or something of pictures of normal stuff with velociraptors in the background, looking normal and blending in. Or something like that.
I think I've got it close enough that it's a reasonable analogue of depression, which spends a lot of time convincing you it isn't there and your life really is this awful and always will be.
So yeah, it's been bad today, bad this week, bad this month.
But even so, when Andrew was trying to take a nap earlier he instead was treated to me giggling and then laughing and then just howling with uncontrolable glee; he asked me what made me laugh and he's told me just now he hasn't heard me like that in a long time, which now that I think about it is surely true.
but it's not every day I, in the middle of a normal-seeming documentary in the endless proud tradition of Stephen Fry talking about language, am treated all of a sudden to this:
(Warning: up until about the 2:50 mark, this video clip contains several naughty words about sexual practices or orientations and and one racial slur against Chinese people. I may go to hell for liking it as much as I do.)
It's of Stephen Fry and Brian Blessed taking part in a couple of experiments familiar to me about langauge and swearing and brains. First they're asked to say the color that a series of words are printed in, which is quite easy when the color is the same as the word itself -- green, brown, red, blue, etc. -- but immediately causes them to struggle with their task, laugh uncontrollably, say the word they see printed rather than the color they're meant to be paying attention to, and in Stephen Fry's case actually slapping his knees, so great is his delight in the words he has been presented with by this very nice-seeming smartly dressed researcher.
The second part (at which point the video is relatively safe to watch, as the men try to restrict themselves to one swear word each) is an old friend to people who've seen as much Mythbusters as I have: to test whether pain is actually alleviated by swearing, they're asked to put their hand in a bucket of ice water twice; once repeatedly saying an innocuous word and the second time using the word they'd use if they hit their thumb with a hammer.
Highlights here include Brian Blessed theatrically booming the word "wooden" and the researcher chiding him again to keep saying the word at a steady, even pace...but I think an argument could be made that this is steady and even for him. I love Brian Blessed; if I could drive and had a sat-nav, I'd totally get his voice for it. Also when he tried (failing several times) to restrict himself to just the one word "bollocks" that got me giggling too.
Giggles aside there is Actual Science supposed to be going on here. The colors-of-words experiment is meant to show that our brains can't ignore taboo words even when we're asked to pay attention to some other quality of them, like the color they're printed in. (I think they might have had similar difficulty concentrating if other silly words were used as a control, rather than just the names of the colors themselves, but that's just a hunch. It is clear that swear words have a special hold on us, as evidenced by the fact that they're often some of the first words to "come back" when someone has a stroke or something, and that they can be the most difficult to inhibit... as the "hitting thumb with hammer" class of things also indicates.)
I am not sure, though, that I agree at first with the stated theory for why swearing makes pain less painful -- that it's "a shock to the system," and gives you a hit of adrenaline that shoots pain-reducing chemicals through your body But then the swearing "worked" much better on Stephen Fry, who was able to hold his hand in the water several times longer with swearing than without, and it worked less well on prodigious swearer Brian Blessed, who actually managed a few seconds less saying "bollocks" than when he wasn't....which would seem to support this theory that it'd have less effect on people who were "desensitized" to swearing because they did it all the time.
I am fascinated by the different swear words I hear in British and American English. I don't think the US has many that the UK doesn't (though it does tend to use some, like "dick" or "motherfucker" more in my experience) but it's not as if a British person wouldn't recognize those whereas British English has not only words that either aren't words or aren't naughty (bollocks, bloody, wanker, etc) in the U.S. (rosamicula has a great story about someone in Texas being horrible to her who had a name like Dave Wanker, which would just never happen in Britain; it's like poeple called Randy, there's just no way.)
Plus I think there is a long tradition of really inventive swearing and name-calling and such things in British English. The Thick of It could not be like that in America (another part of this program has Armando Iannucci telling of the negotiations about how if he wanted to use three "cunts" in an episode he had to get the "fuck" count below 100). Andrew delights in telling of his dad shouting "You wall-eyed trestle-legged fuckpig!" at fellow drivers. This and Malcolm Tucker both show that there's a lot to be said for being creative with your profanity, whereas I overgeneralize Americans into mostly stringing together as many "fucks" and "motherfuckers" and "cocksuckers" as possible and not really delving too much further into the possibilities of linguistic weaponry.
Were I to do something like hit my thumb with a hammer, the word I'd say is probably "shit." How about you?
haggis once calle brain velociraptors -- the idea being there's some blog or something of pictures of normal stuff with velociraptors in the background, looking normal and blending in. Or something like that. I think I've got it close enough that it's a reasonable analogue of depression, which spends a lot of time convincing you it isn't there and your life really is this awful and always will be.
So yeah, it's been bad today, bad this week, bad this month.
But even so, when Andrew was trying to take a nap earlier he instead was treated to me giggling and then laughing and then just howling with uncontrolable glee; he asked me what made me laugh and he's told me just now he hasn't heard me like that in a long time, which now that I think about it is surely true.
but it's not every day I, in the middle of a normal-seeming documentary in the endless proud tradition of Stephen Fry talking about language, am treated all of a sudden to this:
(Warning: up until about the 2:50 mark, this video clip contains several naughty words about sexual practices or orientations and and one racial slur against Chinese people. I may go to hell for liking it as much as I do.)
It's of Stephen Fry and Brian Blessed taking part in a couple of experiments familiar to me about langauge and swearing and brains. First they're asked to say the color that a series of words are printed in, which is quite easy when the color is the same as the word itself -- green, brown, red, blue, etc. -- but immediately causes them to struggle with their task, laugh uncontrollably, say the word they see printed rather than the color they're meant to be paying attention to, and in Stephen Fry's case actually slapping his knees, so great is his delight in the words he has been presented with by this very nice-seeming smartly dressed researcher.
The second part (at which point the video is relatively safe to watch, as the men try to restrict themselves to one swear word each) is an old friend to people who've seen as much Mythbusters as I have: to test whether pain is actually alleviated by swearing, they're asked to put their hand in a bucket of ice water twice; once repeatedly saying an innocuous word and the second time using the word they'd use if they hit their thumb with a hammer.
Highlights here include Brian Blessed theatrically booming the word "wooden" and the researcher chiding him again to keep saying the word at a steady, even pace...but I think an argument could be made that this is steady and even for him. I love Brian Blessed; if I could drive and had a sat-nav, I'd totally get his voice for it. Also when he tried (failing several times) to restrict himself to just the one word "bollocks" that got me giggling too.
Giggles aside there is Actual Science supposed to be going on here. The colors-of-words experiment is meant to show that our brains can't ignore taboo words even when we're asked to pay attention to some other quality of them, like the color they're printed in. (I think they might have had similar difficulty concentrating if other silly words were used as a control, rather than just the names of the colors themselves, but that's just a hunch. It is clear that swear words have a special hold on us, as evidenced by the fact that they're often some of the first words to "come back" when someone has a stroke or something, and that they can be the most difficult to inhibit... as the "hitting thumb with hammer" class of things also indicates.)
I am not sure, though, that I agree at first with the stated theory for why swearing makes pain less painful -- that it's "a shock to the system," and gives you a hit of adrenaline that shoots pain-reducing chemicals through your body But then the swearing "worked" much better on Stephen Fry, who was able to hold his hand in the water several times longer with swearing than without, and it worked less well on prodigious swearer Brian Blessed, who actually managed a few seconds less saying "bollocks" than when he wasn't....which would seem to support this theory that it'd have less effect on people who were "desensitized" to swearing because they did it all the time.
I am fascinated by the different swear words I hear in British and American English. I don't think the US has many that the UK doesn't (though it does tend to use some, like "dick" or "motherfucker" more in my experience) but it's not as if a British person wouldn't recognize those whereas British English has not only words that either aren't words or aren't naughty (bollocks, bloody, wanker, etc) in the U.S. (
rosamicula has a great story about someone in Texas being horrible to her who had a name like Dave Wanker, which would just never happen in Britain; it's like poeple called Randy, there's just no way.)Plus I think there is a long tradition of really inventive swearing and name-calling and such things in British English. The Thick of It could not be like that in America (another part of this program has Armando Iannucci telling of the negotiations about how if he wanted to use three "cunts" in an episode he had to get the "fuck" count below 100). Andrew delights in telling of his dad shouting "You wall-eyed trestle-legged fuckpig!" at fellow drivers. This and Malcolm Tucker both show that there's a lot to be said for being creative with your profanity, whereas I overgeneralize Americans into mostly stringing together as many "fucks" and "motherfuckers" and "cocksuckers" as possible and not really delving too much further into the possibilities of linguistic weaponry.
Were I to do something like hit my thumb with a hammer, the word I'd say is probably "shit." How about you?
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 11:17 am (UTC)I love creative swearing. My ex-husband used words like "gitface" and "arsebadgers" and other things I can't remember just now.
I think my thumb-hammer word would be "fuck" or "bollocks". I don't think I say "shit" very much. I can put as much emphasis into made-up swearwords and often use those (or combinations of made-up and real swearwords).
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 07:43 pm (UTC)(Also you're the only one to notice me saying I felt rubbish; so whatever your absence, sufficient attention has been paid that I feel well attended-to :)
"Gitface" makes me laugh. "Git is another word we don't have in the U.S. (far as I know, anyway: A Monkees song that Andrew loves is sometimes called "Alternate Title" because its original name was "Randy Scouse Git," which wouldn't have caused any problem in the states but is a little more problematic here.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 11:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-13 10:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 12:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 12:47 am (UTC)However amongst the programmers at my work the word you least want to hear is a flat and somewhat shocked, "oops".
An 'Arse! or 'Bollocks' is the result of an afternoon following the wrong lead in a bug hunt.
A quiet and unbelieving 'oops' is the accidental deletion and overwriting with garbage of the past months code changes for the whole department.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 08:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 02:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 03:09 am (UTC)"farkin-doodle-gravel-cheese" as one word. The ability to swear without using actual bad words became a skill I mastered after hearing our then four-year-old say "bastard things" to some blocks when they fell over.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 08:40 am (UTC)Though this doesn't diminish my sympathy for your farkin-doodle-gravel-cheese plight.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 08:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 08:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 09:11 am (UTC)Really not work safe, makes me cry with laughter nearly as much as reading this did.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 10:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 02:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 10:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 10:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 12:30 pm (UTC)When I was in labour, my memory is of shouting "Jesus CHRIST" a lot - something I very rarely say. OldBloke tells me I didn't say it all that much. It definitely helped though. Thumb-hammering definitely warrants a loud and firm "shit".
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 07:44 pm (UTC)(I think there must be some explanation to do with agency, as well as this "shock"/adrenaline theory the show talks about; I know when I swear at something bad happening to me, I feel like I am doing something, which is satisfying in a way that doing nothing, or saying a random word, is not.)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 03:37 pm (UTC)This was a fun bit of writing to read this morning.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-14 07:46 pm (UTC)