I knew this was true, but my family said it was just an excuse for me to use bad words. Can’t wait to print this out for VINDICATION, my friends.

Swearing Makes Pain More Tolerable
LiveScience Staff

LiveScience.com livescience Staff

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.

I have nothing to say because I’m still on heavy narcotics and my brain is a big fog. I mostly wanted to push the other title down below so it’s not the first darned thing you see here.

President Obama blah blah blah. Sarah Palin blah blah blah. And so on. It’s the best I can do.

Scroll to the bottom for updates, because this is only one post and that’s it. Blah.

Breast abscess surgery and MRSA that has nothing to do with mastitis or lactating women! Sorry about the title, but G O O G L E likes titles. This is under the TMI category, and really only for people googling for this subject. I googled and couldn’t really find much. I had this surgery, and here’s the info I wish I would have had. Just because I’m obsessive about knowing this kind of crap beforehand.

Cut to gory details. Not for the squeamish because I’ll be blunt. Read more…

I always love a freebie, and here’s your chance to discover the world of the most delicious stuff in the world: kefir. It turns out it’s also really good for you.

Go get your free kefir coupon.

I’m dying to spill this, because I *know* the person behind the plagiarism. I like her and respect her, so this surprises me.

“She” (unnamed, but I know who she is) completely lifted something I wrote for publication, reprinted it and tried to pass it off as her own…but forgot to remove a line where I signed it with my full name! OMG.

I really can’t go into details for a variety of reasons, but I had to tell. At first I was a little miffed about it, but overall, it’s delicious fun. Because I’ve got a secret. What she did brought me three new lucrative clients! Bwahaha.

How’s that for karma?

Part of me wants to let her know I know what she did, but I won’t, because if she keeps it up, maybe I’ll get more clients. The poor clients had no clue about any of this, just said “I found you through so and so, your name was in x document.” It took me awhile to figure out the mystery, but I did. I wanted to confront her, but decided it’s best just to take the clients and the money.

Once I had written an article for a major magazine, and a certain tabloid we all know and love stole it nearly word for word. My GRANDMOTHER found it because she happened to read that tabloid, for the health articles. (Doesn’t everyone read it for the health articles?) I contacted the magazine and they all fussed. In the end, I got paid again, by the tabloid, and at the magazine rate, which was about ten times what the tabloid would have paid for a freelance article. Karma rocks, and seems to always make me a few bucks.

Yesterday it was a fly I smashed, and today it’s kefir. Those little things that make me happy.

I found a health-food store that carries kefir, plus had the cultures so I can make my own. Kefir is a sour-ish drink made from milk and good bacteria. It’s an ancient concoction, from Russia, the Caucasus area. I had it there, and liked the sour taste of it.

I only recently discovered that the health-food community has adopted kefir as a cure-all, and it’s all the rage in those circles. I love how old becomes new again. Before you know it, bellbottoms will be back (or maybe they are and I hadn’t noticed), and lots of people will think they’re a fresh design.

I confess I had a blast in the store. It has bulk spices and whole grains, weird dried fruits (I bought some Goji berries, which are oddly chewy and kind of good). They also had local honey in a barrel with a spigot, so I bought some honey. Don’t know what I’ll do with that, because I never use it. I don’t sweeten my tea or coffee, and I don’t bake cakes or cookies. Maybe I’ll put it on a piece of toast.

So I bought a few dried herbs and spices (about 20-30 cents each when you buy a pinch), and avoided the local mushrooms. I really wanted those mushrooms, but we’re busy the next several days and no time for that.

But the kefir - absolutely delicious. I like it plain. I like plain yogurt, too, though kefir and yogurt aren’t the same thing.

I really wanted to get my gut in better shape, because I’ve been on way too many antibiotics and worry I’ll get c diff. In googling probiotics yogurt, I discovered that kefir is the latest fad. Now if the health food people would latch onto Russian sour rye bread and unpasteurized butter, I’d be in food heaven.

They also had kasha, and I haven’t had that since dorm breakfasts in Leningrad. It will be interesting to see if it’s as good as I remember, or if I was just hungry and kasha was better than a plate of gross fish in oil for breakfast.

Reminds me of the saying: ?? ?? ????, ???? ????, which translates to shchi (cabbage soup) and kasha, our food. I was never crazy about the shchi, but borscht is good and every couple of years I make a batch.

Good times.

I killed a fly today, and it made my entire day. That fly has been in the house for three days and it would buzz you, then go off somewhere and hide. I keep a tiny can of hairspray nearby just for flies, because you can squirt them, and then their wings freeze from the hairspray. Yes, cruel, but probably no more cruel than a flyswatter.

Even our little cat, who is the best bug catcher ever, could not get this fly (and she rules when it comes to fly catching, although heaven help us if the fly lands on a bookshelf). And then…I saw the fly in the fold of a curtain. Yes I did. And.I.squashed.him.

It’s the little things like that which make me happy. I’m easy to please. Ding dong, that fly is dead.

First poor Farrah and now Michael Jackson. What a sad day.

Farrah was the most beautiful woman on earth. What else can you say? She was.

Michael was one of my first childhood crushes on a pop star. (the other being David Cassidy)

Now I kind of get the grief some felt when Elvis died. I didn’t ever get that before, because I was never a fan. Now I sort of get it. I’m sad. Most of all, sad for those three kids he left behind. I hope they’ll be okay and not raised by a bunch of nannies.

When Thriller came out, I was in pure rock and roll phase, and refused to consider any other type of music (other than classical and opera, but I was raised on that…that’s like grits to a Southerner). So I never listened to that album until years later, when I got over my “rock only” thing. It was pure brilliance and I still love to listen to it.

This has turned into a real shit day. The one bright spot - I ate a fresh cucumber from my garden and it was perfection. Tomorrow we eat squash. Monday, kefir because I found a source nearby where they sell it. Little things like this make me happy.

Ugh, why do the driver’s ed cars come down our street? It’s not often (that I’ve noticed, but then again, I’m not staring out the front window constantly), but I’ve seen them a few times. Our street is only one block long. Seriously. One end goes out to a cross street and the other end does have a little curve that goes to another side street.

I guess a very quiet street (yay) is a good street for students, and then they practice parking IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE. Ack!

In the scheme of life, this is a tiny ant, I realize. I just needed to gripe about it because I’m a little male dog who can’t stand anyone near his hydrant. I believe this comes from being an only child and never having to learn to share.

Now I have to go to the front and lift my leg, and remark my territory.

I find it kind of ironic that CBS News did a segment Friday about kids and bullying, reminding viewers that most of the school shootings were done by kids who were bullied with no mercy.

At the same time, on the same network, David Letterman was frantically trying to cover his ass with excuses about a tasteless joke that mocked Sarah Palin’s daughter. Today, he’s kind of apologized, said he’s sorry people didn’t get the joke.

It’s hard to get a joke that involves bullying a child. I haven’t called Gallup, but I would guess that only the most rabid Letterman fans and Palin haters believed his very poor attempts to weasel out of responsibility. I doubt he even gave a moment’s thought to which of Sarah Palin’s kids went to a ball game, nor did he care. Until he was slammed. Then all of a sudden he says of course he would never make fun of a girl being molested by an adult. Sure.

Whether it’s David Letterman, Saturday Night Live or Perez Hilton, people love to bully kids whose parents they dislike.

It’s not really any different from playground bullying. Well it is, in some ways it’s worse. At least at school, the kids can go home, or fight back. If it gets too bad, a sympathetic parent might even send them to a school with higher-quality students.

There’s no escaping the nasty remarks Perez Hilton makes about the children of celebrities, from Rumer Willis (before she set out on her own acting career, and before she turned 18), to the toddler of Adam Sandler, whom Perez continually calls ugly.

David Letterman is more famous than “Hilton” (though Hilton lives for his pseudo fame and might disagree) and a number of people thought the joke was funny, until they were smacked in the face with how nasty and crass it was.

The Chelsea Clintons, Jenna and Barbara Bushes, and Palin kids of the political world didn’t ask to be born to parents in the public eye. But they have to live with the bullying in the press and on the alleged comedy circuit.

If you’ve ever had a child who was called a name at school, made fun of because she had crooked teeth, was chubby, or had frizzy hair, you know the pain of school bullying.

Every parent and every person who has ever been bullied in school ought to know better. David Letterman ought to know better.

And CBS? The irony of a segment on bullying while David Letterman scampered around was indicative of how out of touch CBS News has become.