I find that I do. Although I’m normally fairly even tempered (quite melancholy actually), I can fly into a temporary 3-second rage long enough to curse at the refrigerator, the dishwasher, a towel, or anything else that might stand between me and a hassle-free event. And I don’t mean stubbing my toe and cursing from the pain. I mean stubbing my toe and cursing out the chair leg or table leg or whatever was there.
For me, the amount and severity of cursing is proportional to the hassle. For instance, if I open the fridge and a bottle of something is turned with its label facing inward, only a mild expletive or two is called for as I turn the bottle around right. But if I open the fridge and a bottle falls out and breaks, then Katy bar the door! The fridge, the bottle — heck even the floor are gonna get a very thorough and intense 10-second dress-down with words that are invented out of sheer imagination and rage. And God help the poor paper towels if they don’t come off the roll just right when I’m wiping up the mess.
Unlike me, my wife is exemplary in this regard. One “Oh, shoot!” and a couple of rolled eyes is all she would need to compensate for a spilled bottle. What about you?
I’m quite patient with human beings. I’m completely impatient with inanimate objects. I frequently use words implicating various objects (such as stuck jar lids, remotes with dead batteries and things which fall out of my hands and upon my toes) as fellators and items with Oedipal tendencies.
Any inanimate object that refuses to cooperate with me immediately becomes a ‘piece of shit’. Some days it seems I should be completely covered in shit.
Definately curse at inanimate objects, where else do you get to invent and use your really creative swearing skills? The traffic cop might rightly object to being called a hornswoggling duckplucker, but the ketchup bottle certainly won’t.
Of course I do! I remember once my computer died on me…
(Okay I moved something important… my system files… I was trying to fix something and I got that bright idea from who knows where :rolleyes: )
But I was sooooo pissed off at both myself and the computer that I flipped out… cursed and screamed for about 45 minutes… boy am I glad no one was home then… before I called someone to see how much it would cost to get someone to look at it… then I remembered I knew how to fix it and fixed it myself. Thank goodness for boot up disks!
I punched a fan once because it wouldn’t work. I had been trying for what seemed like HOURS trying to restore the sound on my computer (with online tech support) and nothing was working. It was hot as hell in my computer room (no AC in here) so I finally took a break to get a fan. (I was already in a very foul temper.) It was one of those oscillating fans on a stand so it was about head high to me. I plugged it in and it buzzed and hummed, but the blades would not move a bit. So I lost it completely, called it a really bad name and punched it over!
I do the exact opposite. When I stub my toe on the table or bang my head on the freezer door, I apologize to the object. I honestly don’t even realize that I’m doing it, it takes someone in the same room to point out the fact that I just apologized to the coffe table.
For example, a few days ago I was placing my laundry into the washing machine and as I was closing the lid it slipped out of my hand and slammed shut. I blurted out “Oh gosh, I’m sorry!”
I used to work with a guy who assaulted inanimate objects. To my constant amusement, he always ended up injuring himself as a result.
I remember once when his wife gave him a ride to work. Upon arrival, he tried to get his bicycle out of the back hatch. The bike wasn’t having any of it. He yanked and cursed and finally, with a mighty heave, freed the offending Schwinn. He promptly threw it at the closest building, whereupon it promptly bounced off and flattened him. Thought I was gonna stroke out.
Of fuckin’ course I do! My telephone will not keep a damn charge and it’s become a goddamn piece of shit. My dogs, who lay around so much I might as well consider them inanimate objects, I call fucker one and fucker two (they have no clue, I say it so nicely).
My car is an bitch, my garage light is an asshole, my dryer is the loudest SOB ever heard! When a lose a computer file, all holy hell breaks loose as I cuss my way through finding it again. When this message board loads so damn slowly, I violently swear at the hamsters to motivate them.
I’m reasonably short-tempered so you’ll often see me yelling at inanimate objects (computer, cell phone, printer, chair, TV).
Around three months ago I had to replace my CPU case and motherboard because I kept hitting it (wihlst yelling and cursing at the top of my lungs) whenever something got slow or my computer crashed or whatever… but usually when the SDMB sever doesn’t respond after I press “submit,” (so that’s a hell of a lot of punching). So at one point I punched it so hard that I managed to dislodge some bits and pieces on the motherboard and I broke the casing. So we had to get it fixed.
But now me and computer are on good terms and we frequently have conversations with each other. Isn’t that right, computer?
I got a very funny look from a tech guy when I told my computer, very calmly, that its mother was a broken abacus.
He went away, and came back a while later, and asked me if I knew what an abacus was. And what relationship I thought it bore to my computer.
I patiently explained to him that before there were calculators, there were abacii. He said to me, in all seriousness, that an abacus is a toy, with a bunch of beads on wires.
The next time he came around when my computer needed telling off, I very sweetly told it that its father was a crooked slide rule. He walked away, shaking her head, and told my boss, You can’t tell Sinshine anything.
I definitely swear at inanimate objects. I have very little patience for problems and delays, so if something does not work the way I expect it to work, I will at the very least use profanity. In more extreme cases I will hit, throw and sometimes completely destroy the object. A couple months ago I smashed the hell out of my keyboard because I was already pissed off about my computer being hit with the Blaster worm and Norton’s failure to catch it. I won’t go into details, but my friend and I spent over three hours dealing with the problem and trying to restore the system. When a 70MB download we were doing failed about halfway through (we were on DSL but it still took awhile) I lost it and proceeded to reduce my keyboard to bits and pieces of plastic.
My last car had its share of damage on the dashboard because of repeated frustrations I dealt with while in traffic. I always feel bad afterwards when I damage or destroy something, but I just can’t control how angry I get at these things.
More often it isn’t the object itself (unless the cartridge gets stuck or something). Does a piece of code count as an “inanimate object?”
“Holy Fuck! That’s cheating! Goddammit, can’t I expect these gabbagabbahey drivers to follow the same physics being applied to me?! Grr…” (hit “retry,” repeat until I shut it off)
