Be Excellent To Each Other

The mother in law's mentioning of yet more superstitions that she believes in led me to create this;

AN BLOG

In which I shall be deliberately doing things superstitions tell you not to in order to accumulate as much "bad luck" as possible. Or not as the case actually is.

1) Have a look please and let me know what ye think.

2) Maths people - I quite fancy an ostensibly plausible equation to calculate the Micromorts. Some spurious nonsense using variables such as luck, duration of bad luck, likelihood of being eaten by a witch etc etc. Any suggestions welcome.

3) Also suggestions of stupid superstitions to mess with are most welcome.

Thank you for listening.

I think it's lovely. Please continue.

Superstitions hmm...

my Mum always said it was lucky to pick up someone elses dropped knife. (Could be from all the pit fighting she used to do). So leave knifes on the floor.*

Stand on all the cracks in the pavement (for BAD luck!), that would also be great exercise too.

*Don't.

Find a penny, pick it up, all day long you'll have good luck.

Walk under ladders.

Break a mirror.

Anyway, ace blog! I have subscribed to your RSS feed and shall look forward to future stuffs!

I broke about 5 mirror tiles when I redecorated the bathroom!

Breaking a mirror being bad luck is, as far as I can glean, largely down to the fact that they were eye wateringly expensive not so long ago and the equivalent of several years salary to the general oik. Did I say several? I meant seven

I bumped into the drummer from Kula Shaker this morning out walking my dogs (shut up, I don't consider that to be bad luck ), he told me, completely unprompted that he stumbled over on Christmas day out walking his dog and lost his house keys. He looked intently the next two days to no avail, apparently. Then his wife chanted for him to find them... you can finish that one yourself. I took that as my cue to depart the conversation, grateful I had shades on to hide the look of eye rolling incredulity.

I have a sister in law who's a member of a spiritualist church. She's 53 this year. Single as well. She's absolutely fucking convinced she's going to settle down with a lovely husband and have children of her own...

[edit] she's been pretty much consistently single in the time I've been with HC and has always maintained this delusion — did I mention that she has very specific criteria of the ideal man? She has spent a small fortune on visiting psychics in the last 18 years. I thought that would be enough time to test the veracity of their claims against real life events, personally.

I cannot for the life of me convince my mother that my getting a cold this month has nothing to do with me not wrapping up warmly enough.

I approve of this site, Trousers.

If I looked like you I would have broken them all

You need a better way of measuring your luck. Do each unlucky thing before having three goes on the online Lottery scratchcard site, or something.

You should always put on your left soak first and right shoe first according to some superstition book I read once. Took me ages to break the habit after I read that as a kid, but I often still think it.

Also, not crossing someone on the stairs.

If you cross a black cat's path it is good luck (to match up with the opposite.)

Throw salt over your shoulder if you sneeze.

I'll go read it now!

You could also look up Dave Gorman's Astrology Experiment. He measured happiness on some concrete criteria.

I had to read that a couple of times before it didn't say "Wank under ladders."

It's unlucky to receive a knife as a gift. I have no idea why this is, though.
Touching wood for luck is apparently a complete reversal of the original saying.
It's unlucky to stand on your window sill on a Sunday. Due to your clumsiness I would avoid doing this, natch.

I don't really know any others off the top of my head.

I didn't think luck was measurable, at least not easily, I thought it was more a state of mind or a perceptual difference. It definitely exists though — it's the only reason people less worthy than me are more successful than I am
[edit] waddyamean that's not luck, it's laziness on my part!?!?

A couple I know of:
Wearing green around horses
Saying "Macbeth" in a theatre
Whistling in the kitchen

Good stuff Trousers. You should have the current micromort rating on the fron page though as it would be an eye drawing quirk that would get a casual reader more likely to read some of the lengthy text.

Well, your kettle has seen you naked. I'd call that unlucky

Thanks for comments and suggestions so far folks.

I think I've just been caught on CCTV wanking under a ladder though.

You should never buy opals for yourself as the gem will bring you nothing but bad luck.

Did you throw your cock muck over your left shoulder?

Hence the change to Starburst.

Putting new shoes on a table... My nan always went mental if she caught me doing that!

What about Opal Fruits?

Just remembering a few of my mother-in-law gems....
Crossed knives — these are considered very bad — always pull the bottom one out first
Wearing a hat indoors
Umbrella open indoors
Never put new shoes on a table
[edit] read the thread before posting [1]
Never stir anything with a knife

More as I get them. You're going to be busy


[1] Don't top post.
Don't be a ramp
Don't ever post on a sensible forum in txt spk
Don't ever be grammatically incorrect on the internet.

I won't put new shoes on the table, I must confess.
I also won't take the 'I slow down for horses' sticker off my Tomcat, as my dad (who put it there) told me it would be unlucky, which I honestly think it will be.

Oh, this I like. Awesome work trousers. Will pimp this to skeptic peeps once it has a few more posts.

What about taking me off ignore?

Opening an umbrella indoors too.

...BOOM

Some kind of regression analysis involving number of magpies seen v amount of bad news received.

Just testing.

Putting shoes on the table is very bad luck. I will read it now.

Laying on top of a grenade.

I assume you will not be taking down your Xmas decorations for a while, yes?

Also, superstitious people are silly. Especially Grim...

They're bad luck too, the cunts.

Someone once took me seriously when I made a quip about how we couldn't order anything at a restaurant because there were 13 of us. Took some effort to convince them that I was joking.

All this talk of superstition reminds me of one of the older guys on my course at Uni, a white man who'd apparently previously lived in a predominantly black area of Jamaica, upsetting some folks there enough that they put a voodoo curse on him. He was convinced the curse was killing him.

He did actually finish his degree from a hospital bed and, so I'm told, died shortly after. He couldn't have been any older than early 40's, possibly late 30's.

'See a pin and pick it up and all the day you'll have a pin.'

One of the Wombles said that. Or it might have been 'See a worm ....'

It was a long time ago and my memory is hazy.

It's really bad luck to shoot a womble. Or an albatross, for that matter.

You can negate the ill effects by swallowing them whole.

It's bad luck to order computer parts from random companies you find on google, even if they are £10 cheaper.

Here's a few boat related ones.

Whistle on a boat & it'll blow up a hooley.
Bad luck to begin a voyage on a Friday.
Bad luck to change the name of a boat.
Bad luck to have a woman on board except in a harbour
Bad luck to kill a gull, they contain the souls of the dead lost at sea.
If you're fishing or trawling & brought pennies aboard your catch will be small.

I thought it was unlucky to see one magpie (unless you say out loud "Hello Mr Magpie and how are you today?") or any other odd number of them and conversely it's good luck to see two or any other even number. This is all fairly silly as when I take Dog Rixondale out in the morning, I always see a bunch of about 10 of them and they never hang around long enough to count them.

Luck implications never seem to stop Dog Rixondale trying to kill the things.

I was always told there was a poem about the number of magpies you saw together:
One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret,
Never to be told.

I didn't think I was going to remember all that!

Richard Herring has a good routine that over analyses this rhyme, I think it's on the "Someone likes yoghurt" DVD

Malc

Eight's a wish, and nine's a kiss.

I prefer the Terry Pratchett version, which may or may not be based on folklorishness:

One for sorrow,
Two for mirth,
Three for a death,
Four for a birth,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told,
Eight for heaven,
Nine for hell,
And ten's the devil, his own sel'

Or something like that.

It might be easier to take an attribute (let's go for 'silver') and keep track of how much has been received, and how many magpies have been spotted. We're expecting a mean of five, if the hypothesis is right.

Of course, I always confuse them with blackbirds anyway

What what what?

An easy distinguishing feature is that magpies HAVE WHITE BITS.

Also, blackbirds are fairly small in comparison & have a dayglo orange beak.

How can you tell if 5 magpies are "five for silver" or two separate groups, one of three and one of two?