where do you draw it?

I wince and thinking about reading something else whenever they're discussed.

Never been hit in the liver (that I know of) and don't really think I'd like to be

Oh, you'd know. I've been tapped in the liver, and I had to take a moment and contemplate my mortality. Jumping spinning back kick, to boot. Stupid hyper-talented no-good sparring partner. Even holding a focus mitt in front of it to let your partner get the punch angles right is an un-fun experience (though I try -- I really do -- but they only get one try and then it's back to the more mundane).

Invalid targets for sparring are the face (because broken noses are no fun) and the legs (because they don't anyone getting their knee blown out/shattered/insert bad thing here.)

While we don't compete, everything's good for us -- as long as you don't blow joints out. Not quite any precise rules, but injuring your partner is severely frowned on. We've only had the one broken nose recently (and he ducked into it), and no blown joints that I can remember. Legs and faces are popular targets. But if you go for the knee or deliver strikes to the head you can't pull if they're going to hit bone, you'll also become rapidly ... unpopular. And there are myriad reasons to not want to be an unpopular sparrer.

I wince and thinking about reading something else whenever they're discussed.

Fair enough. It hadn't occurred to me that men would wince at bras.

It's HST - Harmonized Sales Tax.

I'm picturing a tax on barbershop quartets.

My karate instructure used to say that getting kicked in the balls wasn't all that big a deal, once you'd had it happen to you several times and realized it wasn't going to kill you. I have no way to verify this statement, although I can say that shots that would have put me down early in my training I was able to shake off later.

This. Has. Got. To. Stop.

It is 96 degrees out there. It's supposed to be 76 tomorrow. I'm not buying it. It's so hazy, the sky looks white, but I'm not seeing anything in the way of clouds that would indicate a major change in temprature is coming.

Please let them be right about tomorrow. They've been right all week about this inferno (except that it wasn't actually humid yesterday), and for once they're not putting off the relief until the day after tomorrow like they usually do.

I guess I'll believe it when I feel it.

My karate instructure used to say that getting kicked in the balls wasn't all that big a deal

I'm going to try and sell that to some folks at the centre. I don't think it'll work, but it's worth a shot. In fact, I'll offer to help them get used to it.

I'm not sure I understand this. People intentionally hit you in the nuts if you're wearing cup?

No, you just get kicked in the balls a lot as a matter of course playing soccer, and most people don't wear cups because they are restrictive in a game where you have to run a lot at speed. Ball bouncing around between feet means that there will be a fair amount of incidental contact, not to mention the intentional stuff.

I've never been hit in the liver or kicked in the balls. I hope that by saying this I don't incur the wrath of the ball-kicker god....

I've been hit in the balls, and it isn't just painful, but debilitating. Your body is suffused with a deep, hard, spreading nausea that seems to radiate out from your kidneys, whilst you lay there in a gelid gibbering state.

Frank, I'm feeling the same way. And I like hot. This is just getting....uhg. Mainly because I don't have good cool-down options. I don't even want to know how hot my apartment will be when I get home. It was 75 when I left. The a/c ran all night.

The birds outside my window right now? Are panting. That's not right.

I've been hit in the balls, and it isn't just painful, but debilitating. Your body is suffused with a deep, hard, spreading nausea that seems to radiate out from your kidneys, whilst you lay there in a gelid gibbering state.

Huh.

Well it seems that I've lacked one or two quintessentially male experiences, but I think I'll survive without this one.