You're mad. Absolutely upset. Got your knickers in a twist. Gone berserk. You just found out that your significant other has been cheating on you. Your work/school project is stressing you out. A bird pooped on your newly washed and polished car. Your sister finished the milk and didn't bother to mention it nor buy another carton. Your mother-in-law is coming for a month-long visit. Pent-up road rage. Anything that flips you inside out. You get the point.
It's okay, be angry! Just hop in your car and drive to your nearest ARRRRRGH'S!!!, sign an agreement stating the establishment you are in will not be held responsible if you get hurt, grab a pair of safety goggles, and storm into a private soundproof room filled with things you can break, shatter, beat, smash, throttle, kick, and rip. The room is stocked with glassware, wooden furniture, a punching bag, padded walls, male and female dummies, baseball bats, lead pipes, down pillows, etc. Go ahead and scream, cry, wail, and curse to your heart's content, the room is soundproof! When you've worn yourself out, go back to the service desk, pay your fee, drink a glass of soothing, refreshing iced-tea, and be on your way. A cleaning staff will tidy up the room you left in shambles and prepare it for the next irate client.
Rooms are equipped with security cameras and intercoms in case someone does get hurt. One person per room. Ages 18 and over. Open 24 hours, 7 days a week.-- Machiavelli, Oct 07 2004 Anger Gym http://www.halfbake...om/idea/Anger_20Gymsimilar idea [ghillie, Oct 07 2004] Wreck stuff for fun... http://news.bbc.co..../europe/4030795.stmDamn Spaniards - trying to usuro the French as inventors of everything! [Jinbish, Nov 22 2004] Smash-up Derby radio http://www.halfbake...-up_20Derby_20radioPerhaps this device could be used. [Acme, Nov 23 2004] How to Stop Losing Your Life to Anger http://www.grandtimes.com/Anger.html [robinism, Feb 01 2005] "Does Venting Anger Feed or Extinguish the Flame?" published in "Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin" June 2002 http://www-personal...bbushman/PSPB02.pdfBy Brad Bushman [robinism, Feb 01 2005, last modified Apr 01 2005] Recorded interview with Brad Bushman http://www.npr.org/...php?storyId=4569419 [robinism, Apr 01 2005] Community Minded ARRRGHing Riot_20Act [k_sra, Jun 06 2005] Puppymania Puppymaniaby earl. [calum, Aug 10 2005] (?) Isdaan Restuarant http://news.yahoo.c...lippines_anger_dc_1Someone Baked it! [Zimmy, Mar 31 2006] Hotel to be demolished lets 30 rampage http://www.cbsnews....d/main3012173.shtml [jutta, Jul 21 2007] The Scrap Club http://www.scrapclub.co.uk/why.htmlDestructionism [theleopard, Aug 31 2008] (?) sarah's smash shack http://www.smashshack.com/San Diego, CA. Buy smashables there at about $2-$4/piece, or bring your own ($2 corkage fee, approval required). [jutta, Mar 26 2009] Baked. It's called a hotel room. Ok, maybe not.
They're going to need to buy glue in bulk.-- Worldgineer, Oct 07 2004 There are family-oriented rifle ranges where you can rent any variety of heavy ordnance to vent your frustration on any number of household items (tvs, fridges, sofas, etc.) (but not grannies). I used to have a link to an article, but it expired.
Anyway, croissant, and I would suggest a bull in a china shop as your logo.-- DrCurry, Oct 07 2004 I was with you,[ yeah! yeah!], right up to the security camera part, I don't let it all out in front of any audience, least of all the law.-- dentworth, Oct 07 2004 Big China Croissant and Baseball bat combination. Love the idea, premium customers could have rooms that are exact replicas of familiar places at home or work in which to go mental.[+]-- zen_tom, Oct 07 2004 [dentworth], you're right, it would be a bit weird letting loose with people watching, but I'm so clumsy I'll probably feel better knowing that if I accidentally knock myself out or get a shard of glass lodged in my jugular someone would be there to help me. Ah, what the hell, we can make the security camera optional.-- Machiavelli, Oct 07 2004 Do you pay by the pound, for how much you destroy? Or is it a flat rate?-- phundug, Oct 07 2004 Yes [phundug], payment is by how much you destroy. But since everything that is breakable is either from the junkyard or second-hand stores, the cost isn't very expensive.-- Machiavelli, Oct 07 2004 That idea has been baked, groups or individuals use the rooms to vent frustration on second hand vases and old furniture. It was shown on television on Real TV a year or so ago. I'll try to find a link to it.-- -lines-, Oct 07 2004 In the factory shop of a pottery in Poole they sell 'flawed' items for half price. Outside they have racks of 'severely flawed' items that you can have away at with five cricket balls for a pound. It's indescribably great to wreck new china, especially as it looks perfect from ten feet away.
Still, croissant.-- wagster, Oct 07 2004 Wait, there was a similar idea like this somewhere... I think it was in the home category. Called, the "Angry Room", or something. I'll look for it.-- ghillie, Oct 07 2004 I must say, I think I'd croissant the name, even without a good idea attached.-- wagster, Oct 07 2004 Great idea! I was a foreman at SCRAP YARD a number of years ago. It can be quite satisying driving a dozer, front loader or crawler crane over a car just like (well sort of like) the one that cut you off on the way to work.
The best though, was a LaBounty demolition shear on a big @$$ Cat 245 crawler chassis. Pick up a tractor trailer and tear it to shreds, as if you had one of the Iron Giant's arms at your command. Perhaps this can be a Zwieback - that is re-baked - version of your idea.-- TD3, Oct 07 2004 Damn! For f*ck's sake, someone beat me to it 3 years ago! Oooooh, this makes me so mad i could break something. *sigh* Thanks for the link-o, [ghillie]. Ah, but I'm happy to point out that the "Anger Gym" sounds like kittens chasing butterflies compared to the satisfying destruction one can create at ARRRRRGH'S!!!. But I do like the idea of having a mask of the person's face you're hating at the moment attached to the dummy's head.-- Machiavelli, Oct 07 2004 Inspired. Here's my crust: +-- vigilante, Oct 07 2004 One of my sibling's friends introduced her to the expression, "Bloody McHell!" a few years back, and I've always wondered what manner of establishment would be suited to such a name. This would be perfect +.-- nick_n_uit, Oct 08 2004 Add representations of sundry office devices and I'm sold.
We did something like this during college for a fund raiser each year before finals. 3 bucks gets you 4 swings at a junker VW.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 08 2004 Ha! Bloody McHell! I'm lovin' it. Would you like to super-size that? [as a side note: I'm hatin' the McDonalds "I'm lovin' it" campaign. But it was so appropos to my sentiment right now, I had to use it. Sorry.]-- Machiavelli, Oct 08 2004 This idea's fantastic! Please accept a squashed and beaten croissant.-- Nontaigne, Oct 08 2004 I remember watching a Tommy Cooper gag about this idea back n the 70's. Basically he was a waiter in a resturant. Every time a customer gave him a hard tome he went out the back into a special room to smash plates. Inevitably he got confused as to which room he was in. I also think there were some swinging doors that got involved too.-- blammo, Oct 08 2004 [UB]'s anno reminds me of an old arcade game called "Final Fight" where the player controls a character to fight through various gangland levels to save a girl (girlfriend, daughter or frend's girlfriend depending on character chosen). Anyhoo, there was a bonus round where the player had to demolish a car by kicking/punching/battering it with big piece of pipe.
It was great fun and stress relieving in its own way.
(This bonus round idea was then used again in the game "Streetfighter 2")-- Jinbish, Oct 08 2004 Gotta watch them hard tomes.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 08 2004 I just like to break stuff. Bun.-- shapu, Oct 08 2004 sp: ARRRRRGH!!!'s ?-- phundug, Oct 08 2004 Is this going to turn into another bees' knees thing?-- shapu, Oct 08 2004 I guess I have a small scale version of this at work. If someone returns a defective product we can sometimes just write it off then attack it with feet, screwdrivers, or just a big hammer. If one of the staff are having a particularly bad day they get first crack at it.
BAKED. It's called UPS. From time to time I think the transport company does this with my shipments: )-- Canuck, Oct 08 2004 They have been doing this for years in Japan. The business men go into a room and break a bunch of breakable things.-- dhousman, Oct 08 2004 Every office should have a break room. Oh wait...-- Worldgineer, Oct 08 2004 This is a great idea, and has been baked in a way by me & a bunch of other students at the end of 5 gruelling years of architecture school. We set our drawings on fire & stomped on our models (a bad idea looking back, because the photographs I took for my portfolio didn't turn out great). Should have vented my frustration on someone else's model.
Still (+).-- energy guy, Nov 22 2004 Can I get in today? I'd love to blow off some extra steam before I leave for vacation.-- Noexit, Nov 22 2004 I'm sorry this has nothing to do with the idea itself, but I cannot begin to describe how perturbed I am by the whole pandora's box of american culture horror opened up by dr curry's phrase "family-oriented rifle ranges"-- goff, Nov 22 2004 It is quite common (in the US) to do this as a fundraiser. Works as follows:
1. You donate an old car to charity, and get a $2000 tax deduction. 2. The charity can't possibly use so many junkers, and so they use, fix, or resell a few, and then the worst get sent to..... 3. Fairs, where you let folks pay a small fee to have some time to spend with just the car and a sledgehammer.
For safety, they remove the windows & glass before you start.
VERY satisfying, as I can attest to, having spent my 1 minute last week with one as part of a food drive around here, and am still fondly remembering it.
Oh, and enjoying breaking things is not always rage-related. I wasn't angry the other day, but it still felt wonderful after months of abstract office work to do something so real & forceful.-- sophocles, Nov 22 2004 Oh dear. UB what sort of car do you drive? My girlfriend is going to Oz and I want her to come back in one piece.-- etherman, Nov 23 2004 I wondered how Mr DeGroof thought the exclamation marks would hold together.-- PeterSilly, Nov 23 2004 It's a great idea - unfortunately it is ruined by lawyers, since from what I understand, any agreement you sign that you will not sue is worthless. You cannot sign away your right to sue somebody. It may not hold up to a jury, but it would get to one just the same. Maybe after some tort reform - other than that, the idea rocks.
Does anyone remember in Pinnochio on the island for bad boys or whatever it was - there was a model gorgeous home for kids to break apart. It was weird because they show them tossing a piano out the front door, but there is a stained glass window in the front which is not broken.-- trekbody, Nov 23 2004 "Stupid Girl", Malcolm in the Middle, Season 4, "Hal wins $1000 and rents a steamroller causing him to become addicted to crushing things"-- DrBob, Nov 23 2004 Bake IT!-- skinflaps, Jan 30 2005 Venting rage like that feels good in the short run, but makes you more prone to rage in the long run.-- robinism, Jan 30 2005 My pleasure: "For the last 50 years the world has been saying, "Express yourself." "Let it out." "It's good for you to express your feelings." "It's bad for you to repress your feelings."
"Seymour Feshbach, an early pioneer in anger research, explored hostility and aggressiveness by taking a group of young boys who were not especially aggressive or destructive and encouraging them to kick furniture and play with violent toys. They did so enthusiastically. Instead of draining these boys of aggression, the aggressive "play" actually increased it. The boys became more rather than less hostile and destructive. As opposed to letting off steam, expressing hostility toward another person may increase rather than decrease hostile feelings."
"My work agrees with Feshbach, and it has led to this radical principle: Abstain from the expression of anger."
See link for more.-- robinism, Feb 01 2005 From the paper "Does Venting Anger Feed or Extinguish the Flame?" published in "Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin" June 2002
"Does distraction or rumination work better to diffuse anger? Catharsis theory predicts that rumination works best, but empir-ical evidence is lacking. In this study, angered participants hit a punching bag and thought about the person who had angered them (rumination group) or thought about becoming physically fit (distraction group). After hitting the punching bag, they reported how angry they felt. Next, they were given the chance to administer loud blasts of noise to the person who had angered them. There also was a no punching bag control group. People in the rumination group felt angrier than did people in the distrac-tion or control groups. People in the rumination group were also most aggressive, followed respectively by people in the distraction and control groups. Rumination increased rather than decreased anger and aggression. Doing nothing at all was more effective than venting anger. These results directly contradict catharsis theory."
See link for more.-- robinism, Feb 01 2005 I still love this idea.-- dentworth, Apr 01 2005 Thank you.-- Machiavelli, Apr 01 2005 Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Psychology is like that. Reminds me of the Douglas Adams riff about the insanely aggressive species who decided that, instead of taking out their aggression punching a sack of potatoes, it would be much more time-efficient to shoot them, instead. This led to renewed enthusiasm for shooting all sorts of things, and the [insert species name here] were able to look forward to their first major war in months.-- moomintroll, Apr 01 2005 Well, I can't disagree that shooting something is a quicker, more efficient way to destroy something. I've done some shooting and I've done some of the stuff I've described in my post above--both are satisfying means of relieving stress and aggression, but they both have their place. More often than not I'd prefer to kick and beat something rather than shoot something, which is why I like kickboxing.-- Machiavelli, Apr 02 2005 "Dr. Bushman and his team advocate taking a breath, then avoid seeking catharsis. "
""It's better to control anger by doing something calm - expressing it just makes it worse," says Bushman. By expressing their anger, people were effectively practicing at being upset and this raised their discontent. "
""After people expressed their anger, they said it made them feel better. But that didn't last and overall they got more aggressive. There's no evidence that getting it off your chest has any beneficial effect at all," said Bushman. "-- robinism, Apr 02 2005 The idea could be expanded into a destructo-theme park with rooms based on celebrities or musicians.
The Trent Reznor room would have smashable keyboards and other electronic instruments.
The Keith Moon/John Bonham room would be a motel room with drums, and an adjoining parking lot with car and plenty of dumpsters to hit.-- moPuddin, Apr 02 2005 Clay shooting works well.-- wagster, Apr 02 2005 Playing music works very well for me. So does sex.-- daseva, Jun 06 2005 This would be a very popular establishment. When I used to live in Ukraine I had a chair that I would occasionally smash to bits, and glue it back together again. I dont recall anyone ever using it for sitting. [+]-- maximus5, Jun 06 2005 "I felt like putting a bullet between the eyes of every Panda that wouldn't screw to save its species. I wanted to open the dump valves on oil tankers and smother all the French beaches I'd never see. I wanted to breathe smoke."
I'm having a bit of an off day myself actually - I really don't deal with anger very well, and could definately do with a local ARRRRRGH'S!!!, are there franchise arrangements?-- zen_tom, Aug 10 2005 I agree with [daseva] both music and sex work wonders on my stress and anger modes. But every so often, emmersing myself in a good book and pretending my life doesn't exsists works too.-- babyhawk, Aug 10 2005 //are there franchise arrangements?// You slept in. There were crumbs in the butter. There was butter in the jam. There's jam all over the car seats. You were hit by a learner driver on the way to work. Three quarters of your staff called in sick today. A supplier ran out of glassware. You got a twelve skelfs from some splintered furniture. A giant meathead client punched right through a wall, damaging the water pipes. Your haemorrhoids have burst and you feel the blood simultaneously dripping down your legs and scabbing up in your pants. Your lawyer called and said the client waiver wouldn't hold water. You are an ARRRRRGH's!!! franchise holder, you hate the place and you're one final straw from going absolutely balls-out batshit berko because of it. Where the hell do you go?
Puppymania, probably. With a hammer.-- calum, Aug 10 2005 //Ages 18 and over//. Why? I would enjoy watching an angry 8-year-old pumped up on sugar, then taunted into madness before released on a room full of china and breakables.
OK, you can lock me up now.-- dbmag9, Aug 10 2005 Aw, tom-tom, bad days really suck. Hope everything turns out alright for you! *note to self: open new store on the island*
[calum], I can always count on you for a good snigger.-- Machiavelli, Aug 10 2005 even if i was having a perfectly good day i would still go there.
bun +-- seventhinline, Aug 11 2005 [Pa've] there's been a terrible mistake - your link to \\the best in the West\\ was somehow transformed into a link to the US Army's recruiting page!-- DocBrown, Aug 11 2005 baked in japan, I believe...-- Eugene, Aug 11 2005 They could make a side profit selling you the videos of your pent-up rage.-- RayfordSteele, Nov 01 2005 //There were crumbs in the butter. There was butter in the jam. There's jam all over the car seats.//
No wonder [calum] is so angry. He has crumbs in his car seats.-- DesertFox, Mar 31 2006 I just read in The Other Side magazine the following article:
The Scrap Club Got some anger to vent? Well the Scrap Club is the ideal place to do this. We are not exactly sure how it works but if you turn up and are one of the lucky 120 who get in you can smash up stuff with hammers, spades, bats, whatever you like! 7 Torrens Street EC1V London £5 Fri 27th April.
I expect London dwelling bunners of this idea to attend. Field research and such.-- theleopard, Apr 20 2007 Somehow this reminds me of the Monty Python sketch where the argument room is next door. I would hate to smash up a room and then find out it was the wrong room.-- Ling, Apr 21 2007 Frank, watch your langange sir.-- evilpenguin, Jul 21 2007 Yikes, how about chopping wood or crushing aluminum cans or busting up pallets with a sledge hammer instead?-- quantum_flux, Oct 23 2007 Baked. It's called Goodwill Stores.-- elhigh, Oct 23 2007 It's not yours, it's ARRRRRRRRRRRGH's.-- vincevincevince, Oct 23 2007 I'm booking/ boxing in.-- skinflaps, Sep 01 2009 random, halfbakery