Word: swearing
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Chile's Herrera was not copycatting anybody. He was middleaged, had painted a lot before he ever saw Rousseau's work. His father, a successful businessman, called all artists "monkey drawers," made his son swear by the Holy Virgin that he would not take up art as long as his father lived. Young Luis kept his oath till he was in his middle 30s. But when he was a schoolboy he made such beautiful maps that his geography teacher told the other children to copy them...
Mormons didn't smoke and didn't chew and didn't go around with the boys that did. They didn't have to because they were almost always an overwhelming majority. Neither did they swear. But they were a great people for dancing, which was secondary only to a religion of revelation and thundering oratory on damnation and brimstone...
...swearing there is no specific contraction of the diaphragm [as in laughter and weeping], but there is a general increase in neuromuscular tension, an increase in blood pressure and an acceleration of its flow, and a rise in the amount of sugar in the blood, respiration is accelerated, and there is a general feeling of tension which is gradually reduced as the swearing proceeds. ... [It] is a psychological means of keeping the organism physiologically clean." Dr. Ashley-Montagu approves swearing among females. "Today, instead of swooning or breaking into tears, [women] will swear and then do something useful...
...feature of Dorothy Donegan's swing piano playing is her footwork. Newcomers at Elmer's Cocktail Lounge sometimes swear that she has a drum concealed under the piano. She has not. That incessant triple-fortissimo thud that punctuates Dorothy's improvisations comes simply from Dorothy's ample feet, hitting the floor boards in loud, unconscious ecstasy...
Inside the thickly armored walls of a light tank, with the traps buttoned up and only tiny periscope slits for ventilation, the temperature reaches fantastic heights -some tankers swear to 180°. Through the slits swirls desert dust, caking on the sweating faces of the four crew members into a brown paste. Beads of sweat trickle down from under their leather helmets and goggles, curl around their noses and cheekbones. Even dust masks, that they wear to filter out the dust, do not save them from coughs and rasping "tank throat...