Weird tradition of mine
Every time I see a herd of cows I always say to whoever is with me "look a flock of cows" and await the response of "herd of cows" only to reply "yeah of cause I've heard of cows, there's a flock of them over there" sad but has kept me entertained for years.
(creeper Hiding under your bed with a teaspoon, Fri 29 Jul 2005, 10:14, Reply)

xmas tradition
I live in a city with a large transient population of workers who travel up mon morn and sod off fri afternoon. Most works do's are therefore organised for a thurs night so they can attend otherwise no b*gger would be there.
There was a tradition at one place to pick up and take the biggest horror to the xmas bash, the winner getting a prize.
One year a new guy chatted up a pig-in-knickers in a local bar at the start of decemebr, they were getting on like a mouse on fire till he dropped the question of inviting her to said do, when she decked him and said "You C***, I won it last year"

Its small but it works quick
(montyzuma, Mon 1 Aug 2005, 12:02, Reply)

Stealing the Christmas Tree. It's traditional!
We never used to buy a Christmas tree. We always stole ours from the local wood. My dad, as mentioned in a previous post is ex-special forces and would set this up for us as a 'mission' (us being three small children - I was the youngest of the (not very) l33t four person team, aged 7).

My dad would take us for a recce in the daytime to locate a suitable 'target'. After a suitable tree...I mean target, had been selected my dad would post all three of us as look outs, one each of us a suitable distance in both directions down the track and one by him to relay our signals in the event of 'enemy contact' (i.e. normal people out for a stroll, forestry workers, other tree thieves etc).

Once he had set us all up, he would whip out the saw he was carrying inside his jacket, quickly saw the tree down and take it a bit further back into the undergrowth to hide it for later 'extraction'. He would darken the remaining tree stump with mud to hide tree felling activity and we then went home.

After darkness fell he would reassemble the team and we would drive back to the woods to extract our target. After waiting a suitable period to adjust our eyes to night vision, we would head into the (totally dark and bloody scary if you're seven) wood, where the sentry tasks would be replayed and we would then bundle the tree down the track into our car then go home with it.

It's probably worth pointing out that although my upbringing has given me a liberal attitude to property (I saw it, it's mine, I'm having it) and I am on the wrong side of sanity as far as ownership of medieval weapons goes, I luckily remain alive and lacking in serious criminal convictions.

I don't know if this started a tradition of theft in my family but I *did* try and steal a helicopter a year later, at a regiment family day (when I was eight, long story but the reason I failed to get it off the ground and why I'm therefore still alive to tell the unlikely but true tale, is that I didn't know how the collective worked - got the engines started and the rotors going round nicely though - you've never seen an RAF helicopter pilot leg it so fast from the beer tent to bodily smack a small child out of a helicopter).
(Wascally Weasel now with 100% fewer jokes., Mon 1 Aug 2005, 14:17, Reply)

I own a disabled dog...
Whenever I hear "My Generation" by The Who, or if I see an ad for the RSPCA, I sing:

"PEOPLE TRY TO PUT HER DOWN...TALKING 'BOUT MY BLIND ALSATION".

If she's in the room at the time, I sneak up on her and we have a wrestle.

Apologies to anyone reading this in Braille.
(skindley, Thu 28 Jul 2005, 14:56, Reply)

The Annual Pictionary Tournament
Every Boxing Day my immediate family (parents, brother and 2 sisters) visit my Aunt's house for a post-christmas dinner and (now that everyone is of legal age) a general piss-up at some point during which we will play the dreaded Annual Boys vs Girls Pictionary Tournament.

At some point lost in the grand mists of time (early nineties I think) my Aunt got a Pictionary game at a car boot sale and now, every year, we have to endure this travesty of an event.

Not that Pictionary is a bad game, of course, its just that we (the boys) the never lose.

You see for some reason my Dad, Uncle, Brother and Myself are the motherfucking A-Team of Pictionary.

What my Dad lacks in mental faculty and ability to draw, he makes up for in his uncanny ability to roll a 6 on demand. My Uncle may think that "only poofters draw" but for some reason God has blessed him with the ability to completely shit on women's thought processes with a single word or gesture, turning their minds to jelly when they are on the verge of getting the right answer. I've seen him prevent them from guessing the word "Window" with only an Obi-Wan style wave of the hand.

The grunt work is done by myself and my brother, who seem to share exactly the same kind of bizarro mental processes. This enables us to guess exactly what the other one is trying to convey within 10 seconds of it being put to paper - stick man holding a frying pan with his head on fire? That'll be Andre Agassi then. Stick Man with a blob on his head? Gorbachev! Five Stick men in a row wearing flat caps? The Jarrow Marches!

It used to be funny, it used to be enjoyable, but you know how something is funny at first, but after endless repetition it stops being funny and just starts being downright embarrassing?

After 12 years that's what its like.

For the last 4 we've given them a half-a-board head start for fuck sake!

Every year, the female members of the family give this event a bigger build up than the bloody FA Cup, we've ever caught them practicing for god's sake, yet every year we win and the whole saga ends in tears and recriminations.

We can't even let them win - we tried that in 2003, but the plan fell apart when my dad turned out to be as about a convincing actor as Keanu Reeves. The controversy alone was almost enough to end my aunt and uncle's 25 year marriage until both parties agreed to strike 2003 from the the Pictionary record and never speak of it again.

Of course we can't just not play though - its tradition...


-- insert shitty length joke here ---
(gluskap, Fri 29 Jul 2005, 19:58, Reply)

Criminals
When criminals (such as people who try to blow up London's public transport), went to other countries (Italy, say), we used to go through a legal process to get them back to Britain where they could be questioned by police and subsequently tried.

We don't do that any more though, so I suppose you could say it's an ex-tradition.

/coat
( Pachey, Tue 2 Aug 2005, 13:27, Reply)

every christmas
...we have a robot pub crawl around Reading. It generally involves dressing up in Duck tape, tin foil and egg boxes, then touring the three (count em) Wetherspoons pubs.

Robot drinks are limited to: ladyboys (lager, G&T, Baileys), turbo spritzers (white wine, Smirnoff ice and double gin), and loudmouth soup (Tennants Super and cava). It normally ends with us being sick in our helmets (fnarr fnarr).


(spastic_lequeer, Fri 29 Jul 2005, 10:37, Reply)

dib dib dib! nob nob nob!
As a kid, I used to belong to the cubs, in a particularly dodgy council estate in the wonderful town of Slough.

Every year we'd all go on pack holiday to the new forest, and stay in the church hall in a small village. About 30 cubs, Akela, and the various other adult helpers who Akela had told us were his sons.

The first ever night, on my first ever pack holiday, Akela told us we were going to play football in the church hall before we went to bed.

Hooray!

Then the cubs started taking all their clothes off.

As us new kids froze in fear and bewilderment, some of the older boys kindly told us that it was "traditional" for us to all play football stark bollock naked. As all the adults, i.e. Akela, and his "sons" (not all of whom, with hindsight, actually looked much like him) stood around and watched us.

Afterwards we had to queue up and file past them, still naked, on the way to the showers. Any boy who displayed a state of erectiveness was taken to one side because this was very naughty. I don't know what punishment they received, but they tended to look a little shellshocked afterwards. Thank christ it never happened to me...

Needless to say, Akela told us all that this "tradition" was a special cub scout secret and so we must never tell our parents...
(Ali Bongo 9000 Ali Bongo 9000, Thu 28 Jul 2005, 13:42, Reply)

Buerk Biscuits
A few years back, I worked in a touring theatre company with a nutter called Matthew Davey. During the tour, to help pass the time on those long winter evenings staying in digs light years from the nearest pub, he introduced us to a traditional game he used to play with his flatmate. Each week we would buy a packet of really nice biscuits, which would be known as the Buerk Biscuits. At ten o'clock we would all sit down to watch the news on BBC1, and if - and only if - Michael Buerk opened proceedings by tapping his pen on the desk, we would all be allowed to eat a biscuit.

This may not seem like a big deal, but believe me, after a few weeks of being on tour to to furthest reaches of civilisation, a really nice biscuit can become a seriously big deal. I shall never forget the bitter disappointment of the evenings when the news was read by someone else, the tension in the air the nights Michael B appeared on screen, and the way we whooped and cheered when he tapped that pen.

Thanks Michael.
(Tyrebagger, Tue 2 Aug 2005, 20:43, Reply)

Freshers

Had to think long and hard about this QOTW but finally came up with something.

When I used to live in Manchester it was a tradition of the pack of reprobates I knocked about with to have an annual bet on who was first to Fuck-A-Fresher. The competition was quite keen and we all bet a pint, the winner taking all. As there were about 15 of us in the competition it was worth winning. ( To be honest though, there were only ever about 4 of us in serious contention every year. The rest of the lads weren't really much cop at chatting up the ladies...)

The year that stands out in my mind for sheer class was the year Bob won it. Bob was a part time barman in one of the Halls Of Residences for Manchester University so he had a natural advantage in the annual competition but this year he excelled himself. He saw some random slapper on the first Sunday of Freshers Week who was being dropped off by her parents. As she and her folks were struggling with her luggage Bob , being a gentleman (yeah, right,) pitched in to help. After a couple of hours all her luggage had been stowed away (with Bob copping the odd feel here and there to which the young lady didn't object in the slightest) and her parents kissed goodbye to their lovely daughter and headed back to the car for the long drive home.

Before they had even started the engine good old Bob was up to his nuts in the guts of their virginal young sweetie and easily won that years competition. He'd scored before we'd even gathered for the hunt.The cunt.

I know that he didn't cheat and his story was true as he brought said fresher out with him that night to verify his story.

I remain,as usual
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Mon 1 Aug 2005, 11:23, Reply)

Not tradition but habit
My mom (mum) is an aggressive driver. When I was a baby if someone cut off my mom she would honk and yell "Asshole!" Cue me and my at the time 2 year old sister driving with my mom and her mother-in-law, my very proper english grandmother (Im American). Gran honks to say Hi to a friend and two year old sister yells "Asshole!".
Grandma didnt like that too much
(WangerPeter, Fri 29 Jul 2005, 5:27, Reply)

Double Entendre spotting
Every time my housemate or I hear something that could be considered "a bit rude", we have to say either "Euuuuuooogh" in the manner of Kenneth Williams or "Ooooph!" in the manner of Frankie Howerd:

"It's very long, isn't it?" - "Euuuuogh!"
"Is Carl up?" - "Oooph!"
"How long have you been doing it?" - "Euuuuogh!"

If something doesn't sound rude to start with, the same effect can be gained by rephrasing the sentence to sound rude:

"It's the flag of the United Arab Emirates" - "I wouldn't mind uniting her Arab Emirates!"

"There's a medal on the floor." - "I wouldn't mind having a meddle on the floor with her!"

If neither of the above can be applied, one must resort to the use of "... in the nude!.... Twice!" to lend rudeness to any sentence.

It passes the time.
( giant_squid, Tue 2 Aug 2005, 21:02, Reply)

Medical school
We have the oldest medical school society in the country at Liverpool and tradition is basically the whole point.
For example,
The secretary has to read the minutes from the last meeting inaudibly, wearing a charity shop dress while everyone hollers "garter" at her (this one leaves me feeling dirty).
If the treasurer speaks he (and it is always a he) has to wear a specially stolen 1st world war helmet and the audience is obliged to bombard him with lose change at a rate that would be pretty hazerdous without the protective head gear.
Ladies with particulaly high voices wishing to make a point at the meetings generally shouldn't cos the whole crowd will sing "mee mee mee mee mee" at an equivelent pitch.
The president is contractually obliged to get naked in front of several hundred people at the initiation party as part of a nicely choreographed full monty routine (which explains why presidents are rarely shrinking violets)
...Oh and countless other amusing mysogynist shenanigans which have all been going on since time began.
(donksta, Thu 28 Jul 2005, 22:04, Reply)

Best tradition ever...
is the so called "Clausen-Treiben". Saint Nicolas Day (Dec 6th) evening young men in our village dress up in wild costumes made of fur, animals heads and antlers, wearing large cow bells around their waist and carrying wooden sticks. After dark they start roaming the village beating up EVERYONE they see on the streets. They go from house to house, ask for a drink (which they usually get) until they are drunk (which takes quite a while). It is based on a medieval tradition meant to fight the ghosts of winter.
It is quite a shity tradition if you are the one who gets beaten up though.
To give you an idea:

( RedWine President of the S.C.U.M., Thu 28 Jul 2005, 21:12, Reply)

The Game
Tradition amongst a group of us for the past few years. The whole point of 'The Game' is that you don't think about 'The Game'. If you think about it, or remember that it exists, you have lost The Game. You must then let everyone else who knows about it know that you have lost the game, therefore reminding them of it and making them lose too.

The number of texts I've had saying "I just lost the game", for me to then think, damn, I hadn't thought about it for months!

Oh, and by the way, since you all now know about the game, you are automatically included in it, whether you like it or not, It's too late to stop reading now, it's been done. You're playing...

oh yeah,

I just lost the game
( Hampster Squared has stuff at www.tilla.co.uk, Thu 28 Jul 2005, 19:17, Reply)

animal noises
I like to impress my kids with a stunning array of wrong animal noises. Nothing makes a five year old laugh as much as when I point at a cow and say "look a sheep"..."oink, oink". Can't help myself. Its traditional.
(dukefukem, Thu 28 Jul 2005, 12:25, Reply)

and the winner is....
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/4337475.stm
(The Duke of Pontefract, Thu 28 Jul 2005, 16:04, Reply)

factory.
i used to work in a factory that used a steam boiler for various operations. if anything went wrong with said boiler, an alarm used to go off.

every single time i was compelled to run around with my arms in the air shouting "Weeeee!! Playtime!!"
(robotrobotROBOT, Mon 1 Aug 2005, 11:04, Reply)

milk lorries painted like heiffers
When spotted, one must cry "A HUGE MECHANICAL COW! WE'LL ALL BE KILLED!"

Best shouted from the backseat of a car when the driver ain't in on the joke.
(FiftyFour, Thu 28 Jul 2005, 19:26, Reply)

I'm obsessive compulsive, with anxiety and other phobias (according to my NHS Mental Health TEAM ( /!!/ GO MENTAL HEALTH TEAM /!!/ ))..
At school I was very.. bad;

Night before;
- Kick a pink tennis ball against the left radiator pipe seven times

- Wash, Brush teeth, get drink, sleep - always in that order; else I'd do it again

- Count from 1-60 (seconds) during the 13th minute of whenever I went to sleep

- If I opened my eyes I'd say "1,2,3" and shut them again

- Has a near-script I'd say to my Mum every night

- Add 10% onto a "luck scale" thing every week, which would be said aloud before I went to sleep. Hard to explain. I got to about 5000%. Extra 10% on Wednesdays.

- Wednesdays were unlucky days (namely because I got my head pushed through a display cabinet, kicked down the stairs, and chased around the school in two weeks ALL ON WEDNESDAYS :O!)

- Always sleep on my right side

- Only have ONE sip of water; no matter how thisty I was

- If I got into bed and it was say; 10:20, I'd wait until 11:13 so I could count it through and then go to sleep

...

In the mornings;

- Early days: Sing "I believe I can fly" at 07:11 (I don't know why O.o)

- Stand completely still and constantly say "quit that" - as if to end the thought incase it came true - at 7:13, and 7:14 just incase ( yes! )

- Kick that pink tennisball around infront of me the whole time I was getting ready

- Goodbye script again to my Mum

..

And many many more! But that was just for School. I'm at uni now (ART PHOTOGRAPHY /!!/) and am quite a bit better. But I still find myself doing random stuff now and then.

So uh, yeah. I don't know if that's amusing or not - but I think in terms of weird tradiations and routines; I have quite a few.

x

edit: and piles of paper (or things on desks) that aren't perfectly straight edged with each other annoy me more THAN ANYTHING ON GOD'S DAMN GREEN EARTH :@
( stevierar, Thu 28 Jul 2005, 14:19, Reply)

It is my own little tradition
to do fuck all at work before 10:30am.

It's mad, but I like it (and stick to it religiously)
( Zak McFlimby Twibbling @McFlimby, Thu 28 Jul 2005, 11:22, Reply)

Miltrary is grand for Tradition
And I was fortunate to be in the oldest surviving Army Regiment in the world, namely the Honourable Artillery Company. Our lot beat the retreat (snigger) at Oliver Cromwells Funeral, so it gives you an idea of just how old they are.

Now the fun thing about the TA is they don't teach you always everything and you have to learn it as you go - things like asking the Senior officer permission to join him for a drink, just to be allowed in the PSI Bar, or saluting the roll of honour. But by the strangest of them all was a decision making process for cleaning up spent shells when on exercise. We were in Germany on manouvres and had just shot a few thousand rounds between us, with spent cartidges littering up the shooting bays. The method of deciding which half of the squad had to clean them up was simple - all the grunts would lie on their backs, kick their legs in the air and the first one to fart would be the team who got first back to the NAAFI for tea, whilst the rest would be on their hands and knees for the best part of an hour picking up spent ordanance.

Happy days....
(Waynster James Joyce is fucking my sister!, Thu 28 Jul 2005, 11:14, Reply)

School
Background (fast-forward past italics for the real stuff):

In my disgustingly middle class masons' club of a public school I was in the 'gay' house. Everyone knew our reputation was just a mud-slinging campaign encouraged by the unimaginative 'sports/ned' house (St. Dai's - we were better than them at sport, as well as music and academia, and they knew it) and much to their consternation we played up to this and my year in particular became renowned for being total queens. We even had a song which the aforementioned cretins 'made up': 'School-House Gays, la la laa' (repeat ad infinitum. If you're musical, and just to give you an idea of how fucking boring these people were, it had a straight 2/4 feel, starting on the mediant for the first syllable, descending to the super tonic for the second half of the first beat, and then down a further tone to the tonic for the third syllable which was held for the second beat; repeat for the 'laas') They gleefully chanted this at us for about a week, and then I added my own flair to it, and we sung it in five part harmony back at them whenever they started up, with the two topmost voices in a screeching falsetto. They soon stopped.

This amongst many other things led to our reputation.


Probably the best tradition we had was the 'Radox Game'. A highly competitive competition, it involved suspending a shower-gel (originally of the 'Radox' brand, hence the name) bottle in mid air on your genitals, either by hanging it on an erect penis, unscrewing the top and stuffing the bell inside, or actually pulling the foreskin around and over the end, and swinging it to and fro 'twixed bandy legs until such time as it flies off. The aim was to get it to go the furthest. We even marked the wall of the communal showers with dates and names of various champions. The trick was to achieve a balance between the predictability of a light (empty) bottle and the travelling distance and knob-stretching properties (you get more swing) of a heavy bottle.

Also our Head of House, who had a rather too familiar relationship with the new third-formers coming in, glued a £1 coin to the floor of the communal showers where it stayed for years until some tight bastard chipped it off with a hockey stick and spent it.

This did not go down too well with a vehemently homophobic headmaster (he refused a well-known historian from London and his partner a bed for the night in his house after they had travelled all the way to mid-Wales as a special favour for the school) and he loathed us for the 'image we brought to the school'.

We gave it a better image than he did, the stupid fuck-stick that he was (he liked rugby).
(digestive, Wed 3 Aug 2005, 16:37, Reply)

should have gone....
Every time I walk past a police officer, I immediately scream the word 'CARGANTUA!' and vomit searing hot bile into my cupped hands. I drop to my knees and hold my breath and squeeze my face muscles until my eyes are protruding from their sockets and my tongue hangs out limp, like an old man's old man.
Both my arms grow up to several feet in length and my knees snap back inverting themselves so I begin to resemble a kind of long armed bile spewing dog-man!
My ears take on a 'hybrid wolf-face' shape and begin to spew dark blood all over the Tarmac in front of me. By now the officer of the law is either looking at me sheepishly or cowering on the ground, hands clutched to his heart, gasping for breath.
My head is twice its normal size and much more 'angular', My eyes are protruding on their stalks and my groin is a mass of writhing bore-worm.
The smell of burning faeces makes the officer's eyes water. He can feel something burrowing deep into his neck, My tentacles have speared him and my spindly fingers are now firmly clasped onto his ankles.
There is a look of shear panic in his eyes as my foul breath beats heavy onto his quivering face.
I clasp the scruff of his muscular neck and move his head so that his petrified eyes look deep into mine and I cant hold it anymore....
We kiss passionately and make love then and there, him squirming with ecstasy and me heaving with delight. I take his full manhood deep inside my gaping wound, puss oozes from both of our fat fucking faces and i begin to weep with pleasure.
My clown tears drip down my face and onto the melting corpse now lay in front of me and I begin to vomit with fury at my actions. Both the stillness and I share a vacant glance at one and other and my need for fresh flesh begins to take over. My wobbling legs are now so unsteady and misshapen that they can hardly hold my massive bulk and they begin to buckle under the weight as I bob up and down like a demented jack-in-a-box.
Jacques 'O Box.
Alas we forget.


Every blooody time!

but then again i was

Legless

p.s i will havee 2 of whatever jindod had!
( MagicallyInept Bored Sig., Wed 3 Aug 2005, 16:30, Reply)

for some reason
a couple of years back i super-glued a cowboy hat to the helmet i wear when im on my scooter. which resulted in me acting like a cowboy whenever i am in reaching distance of my scooter e.g. saying "howdy ma'am" to any body who walks across the pedestrian crossing while i am waiting foy the lights to change.
sadly last year,whilst drunk, i decided to ride around the pub car park with my cowboy hat aflame resulting in just havind a burn mark on top of my scooter helmet. i still act like a cowboy on my scooter though.
which is fun.
sorry for length and what-not
( DR Mexico Hunt, Hunt, Hunt, He's The Huntsman!!, Mon 1 Aug 2005, 13:04, Reply)

Not funny
Every Sunday lunch, ever since I was about seven or something, my dad always tries to hide a sprig of mint from the garden in my dinner. He tries to find ingenius ways of hiding it, like piling the meat on top of it so I 'don't know it's there.' He then spends the duration of the dinner looking at me and chuckling to himself, the chuckles getting louder and louder when I go near the hiding place, until finally bursting out into fits of laughter when I discover said treat. It's been over ten years and he's still doing it, and it's still not funny now. My dad's a bit mad.
(Funty, Sat 30 Jul 2005, 22:41, Reply)

Peas
My mum's a stickler for tradition.

Every time a pea falls from the plate, she's the first to announce that someone's 'peed on the floor'.

We live in a rural area, and there are a few signs bearing the legend 'CAT'S EYES REMOVED' to which she invariably replies 'BASTARDS!'
(dungeoneer, Sat 30 Jul 2005, 11:59, Reply)

Tradition
I never light a cigarette from a candle because it means a Norwegian sailor will die. I have nothing against Norwegian sailors (with their cool roll-neck pullovers and their pointy blond beards) so i use a lighter instead.

Unless I don't have a lighter. In which case I'll quite happily murder 20 sailors a night.
(donksta, Fri 29 Jul 2005, 12:01, Reply)

Quite how I'm not sure
For the past 9 years, myself, my Dad and my bro and his wife have always met up at 11am for a Christmas breakfast. Perfectly normal behaviour...

Except when you come in and hear the music playing.

Yes for nine years in a row, our yuletide festivities have always been accompanied by the sounds of Radiohead's album "The Bends".

This has now got to the point where "Street Spirit" has now become the first track that comes to mind whenever anyone mentioned christmas music.. hmm.
( MCQ Cartoons n' shit: bagowank.com, Thu 28 Jul 2005, 15:07, Reply)

Also sad
Trying to miaow at the same time as the cat in the credits for Coronation Street. Haven't managed it yet despite extensive coaching from the b/f.
(BearWithLittleBrain, Thu 28 Jul 2005, 13:32, Reply)