Time on your hands is like a loaded gun. It can either be used for good or for evil.

Gameboy Josh Smith apparently has a lot of time. But for the life of me, I can't figure out in which category the way he chose to fill it falls.

Josh, who gets mad props for creativity, devoted nearly 34 hours of Halo 2 play the last couple months not by simply mashing away mindlessly on his controller but by listening to other players and then writing down what they said.

The burning question he needed answering: How potty-mouthed are Halo players?

(Before I even begin to ponder this with you, I think it's necessary to lay down some ground rules. As with GamerAndy's podcasts, this dispatch will likely offend. So if you ears are particularly sensitive to foul language, you may want to stop reading now.

Or to borrow the words of Hawkes, stop listening NOOOW.)

As an MMO gamer who not only communicates via chat boxes but also Teamspeak, I am a frequent user and target of obscenties. So this study, though rather limited in its scope, brings up an important aspect of the gaming world.

We use the f-word with reckless abandon, we gamers. It rolls off our tongues without forethought or afterthought. We tell someone to commit improper acts with his mother in hostility and jest. S**t is a form of alarm ("Oh, S**t") or congratulatory exclamation ("S**t! Gratz, dude").

Obscene talk is something that we bring out like swords at a duel, and the man with the sharpest weapon wins. But it also is a way to reveal our comfort within a group of friends, as if to say, "I don't talk this way to my mother, but I'll talk this way with you."

But as we so casually use words that were one strict taboo, are we robbing power from those words so that they no longer carry the zing they once had?

Let's face it, F*ck doesn't hold the same sting it used to. It wasn't so long ago that telling someone to "F*ck off" was the precursor to a fight, one likely to include a broken beer bottle or four. No one would dare tell a friend to have sex with himself without expecting some retribution or at least the creation of a rift in the friendship.

Yet now we toss that phrase about as if it were almost a salutation. "Oh, you kidder" has been replaced with a jovial "F*ck you, d*ckhead."

They've become so friendly to us, these words -- so much a part of our vernacular -- we've accepted their acronyms with hardly a second thought. Who hasn't used "stfu," "wtf" or "lmfao"?

And let's not forget my favorite bit of helpful advice for the noob: "rtfm."

I can't help wonder what our parents or our parents' parents would have thought had they been around to hear us talk.

There was once something rather cool about obscenties. When we used them, we all knew exactly what we meant. Thems were fightin' words.

But with the frequent use of such centuries-worn standby phrases, we've robbed them of their power, their sting, their effectivness. The edge has become dulled to the point that we hardly notice when they're used.

At first glance, we might think this is great. The less potent the aggressive barbs in our arsenal, it's a logical conclusion that we might be less prone to fight. Without the effectiveness of weapons, we'd get along much better.

But it occurs to me that, in real life, no army has every been defeated by taking the edge off its bayonettes. There's always something else that comes later, something even more lethal, that takes over from weapons that are no longer effective.

Rocks became swords. Swords became guns. Guns became bombs. Bombs became nuclear devices.

Similarly, we've manufactured more punch to these grand old fightin' words. We've gone back to the drawing board and developed a new set of obscene chimeric creations: "A**" became "a**hole," "f*ck" became "motherf*cker." "D*ck" has become "d*ckhead" and "d*ckweed." We even go so far as to double-up on our obscenities, as if combining them makes them double-strength. "F*cktard" and "f*cking a**hole" top the list.

And we have used those words, oh yes, we have used them with great abandon.

Now they too have less edge. They too have become dulled.

Without fightin' words -- real fightin' words that were unmistakable in their intent simply by uttering them -- what words do we escalate to in order to convey anger? Where do we go when George Carlin's "seven words you can't say on television" no longer mean what they once did.

Only a few of those words are left, my friend. There's a few showstoppers, and most refer to the female anatomy, though one standout is strictly a racial thing. The c-word will still get you punched, unless you live in Ireland where it means something else. And there's another one beginning with "T" that will make a room quiet down pretty quickly, even in Teamspeak.

The mother of all swear words, however, is the n-word. Even in our obscenity-obsessed culture it is un-utterable. It will get you banned. It will get you killed. And it should, because it so embodies the worst, most vile essence of hate, despite attempts by the African American community to reclaim it, that it can't even be used to express displeasure.

For all intents and purposes, it's really the last real fightin' word we have left.

Now, I realize that each game is different and thus carries with it unique demographics. Halo 2, for some reason, attracts young boys. And like tiger cubs wrestling each other in play as a prelude to more serious fights in the future, young boys like to spar with fightin' words. They enjoy crossing the line, knowing full well that they are doing so. Obscene words and racial epithets are reportedly more frequent in Halo 2 simply because the chat is proximity based.

Which means that many of these players are talking as if no one is listening. Like the tree falling in the woods. This is their internal dialogue turned external.

So, while the Josh study is humorous on its face, we have to look at it more closely. This is how boys are talking to themselves. With f*cks. With sh*ts. With a**holes. Even with the n-word.

What will these young cubs use when they get serious with their sparring? The same? Or will they find other, even more deeply offensive terms? Or, as some of the more knee-jerk reactionary types might conjecture, will they find other, more demonstrative, ways to express displeasure or anger?

Studies and columns like this have something in common: they're supposed to end with a conclusion. But I don't know what conclusion one can draw either from Josh's results or from my questions.

But the questions, and the study, remains -- like a glistening open wound which repulses us but from which we can neither deny nor turn away.

Where do we go -- and where are we going -- when STFU doesn't work anymore?