I knew a guy who used to thank the cash machine
every time it gave him his cash. I mean wtf? It's a machine.
(mr-lizard Hell's teeth man!, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 16:35, 6 replies)

Akira
Does this count? I've watched the film Akira at least once every two months for the last 15 years. On average it's about once a month, but it used to be nearly daily.

When I was a teenager I watched it a lot because all my mates were into it, but despite seeing it several times, I just couldn't figure out what was happening in the story.

Later, when I had worked out the (admittedly not that complicated) plot, I got really into it and watched started watching it all the time. I'd put it on before school, after school, as I was going to sleep - eventually it just became a comfort thing and a bit of background noise.

But even now, if I'm ever on my own with a couple of hours to kill, my first thought is always to watch Akira. I mix it up a bit now - sometimes subtitles, sometimes the 1988 dub, sometimes the 2001 dub, sometimes the remastered version with the new music, sometimes the classic version I grew up with.

I just moved into a new flat, and it still doesn't really feel like home. I know that sometime after Christmas I'll be able to watch Akira there, and that'll be me settled in.

I do still think the film is good (which is amazing really after so many viewings), but it probably wouldn't make it into my top 20 films.
(leviticus no longer likes the cut of your gib on, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 15:51, 6 replies)

The game
you just lost it
(gordonjcp, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 15:39, 16 replies)

I don't know about David Cameron
but I can't concentrate on ANYTHING when I need to piss.

Apart from pissing that is.
( Infidel , shit and wrong, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 15:20, Reply)

OCD is just an attempt to control the random aspect of life due to fear of the unknown.
It comes from the same mental stem as religion and belief in god.

Strap on some balls, and accept that your life is meaningless, existence futile, and that one day all will be dust.

Then go and do a bungee jump, have a threesome, and do some fantastic drugs*.

*Requires leaving the bedroom and computer.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 15:11, 7 replies)

For those of you who have just arrived at work and live alone and cannot check.
YOU HAVE LEFT THE IRON ON/ DOOR UNLOCKED/ BEDROOM WINDOW OPEN

CAN ANYONE SMELL SMOKE?
( Infidel , shit and wrong, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 15:09, 7 replies)

I bet I've got tons of these.
I've got quite an addictive personality and I used to be really OCD, not a good mix, I've stopped doing a lot of them but here are a few I still do.

- Count the cooker dials when I switch it off, once on the knobs! both ways then on the numbers both ways, and switch it off at the wall and count seven presses (one for each knob)

- Very rarely e-mail or post on forums drunk.

- Stir drinks twice. (go back to a drink I know I've stirred)

- Peel of price labels on CD's and DVD's and but them over the bar code on the back of the box.

I know there is more but my mind is a blank.
(Mitchell Gant, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 15:07, Reply)

Everytime my cat farts
I have to recite poetry by Goethe, in original German, and to the tune of Erasures "Love to hate you"
(Rebooted Frazer Smoothly scrolling since, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 14:58, 7 replies)

I have toast for breakfast Monday to Friday, normally 2 slices . 1 slice marmite, 1 slice honey or jam depending on what's in cupboard. When I sit down to eat, I make a careful decision on what mood I'm in - marmite first or jam first. The toast (each slice cut into 2 obviously) must then be eaten in alternating sequence, I have never ever ever gone marmite marmite jam jam or vice versa. Never.
(Amberleaf, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 14:52, 2 replies)

Car ritual
When I was at Uni, I had a crappy car - a bright red Volks Wagon Polo.

It cost me all of £450, and to be fair, wasn't much to look at, but ran well.

--

I wasn't earning a huge amount of money - as I only had a part time job.
I saved up and bought a new CD player for the car, nothing fancy, but still £90 from argos. (£90 was a huge deal back then considering I only earned about £240 a month from my part time job)

The car was crap, but the tunes were good, and it was fun to drive again.

--

One fateful saturday morning, I woke up and headed out to work. I saw that the seats in my car were pushed forward, and the drivers door was ajar.

Some pikey bastard had nicked the CD player, and fucked up the lock on the door.

I was gutted.

--

This was 12 years ago, and to this day, I now cannot get out of the habit of performing this ritual.

Take the facia plate off my CD player,

Lock the car, then pull the door handle 3 times.

With each pull I say, Definitely, Definitely, Locked.

Then I can walk away.
(Oobla, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 14:37, 7 replies)

When Playing Championship/Football Manager Games....
.....I can't watch the matches directly. Instead I have to watch it in a mirror with the reflection of my monitor in it.

Fuck knows why.
(rhyswynne - on every social network mullarkey known to man, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 14:30, 2 replies)

Corrie Cat
Every time I watch Coronation Street with the boyfriend, I have to say "miaow" when I see the cat in the credits.

We tried a few times doing flapflapflap noises for the pigeons but it just wasn't the same.
(BearWithLittleBrain, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 14:23, 3 replies)

Ding Ding
I have to tap fire extinguishers when I walk past and hear them go ding but only if they are on my left hand side, never on my right cos that would be silly.

I also check doors are locked if I have the slightest worry that I might have left them unlocked. Getting up in the night to check all the locks is a bastard at 0200hrs just cos you've had that little thought creep into your head. Can be made worse by the fact that I work in a prison and its known to colleagues who take great delight in saying to me "Are you sure you locked the gates down reception?" just as I'm on my way out or at the end of the corridor going for my tea. Bastards.
(Tyrion, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 14:17, Reply)

Hello Mister Magpie
My wife is a scientist: she has a PhD in something or other from a proper University, has done her time at the bench (putting blue dye into little test tubes with a pipette, because that's what scientists spend all their time doing) and had papers published in proper academic journals.

She's an atheist and has no truck whatsoever with any kind of superstitious or supernatural nonsense.

Which is why I find it so funny when, on seeing a lone magpie, she recites to herself, "Hello Mr Magpie, how's your wife?" and tips her 'hat' to it. If she thinks I'm watching she does it under her breath and pretends to be scratching her nose or something, because she knows I'd take the piss out of her if I realised what she was doing.

But the funniest part is, she's bloody well got me doing it now. I think superstition is a load of old cobblers but I can't help myself. I don't even know what it's about!

FFS.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 14:11, 7 replies)

BBC, Daily Mail, Beta
Every day, whilst having my lunch, I look at the same three websites in the same order: the BBC news, the Daily Mail (I know, I know, but the qotw did ask for weird rituals) and then B3ta. Cannot do it in another order or miss anything out. Trying to go to B3ta first, or looking at the DM without looking at the BBC first, does not feel right.

God...that's a weight of my mind.

Oh, and I also scrub my cock 99 times each morning, but looking at the DM website every day is more weird.
(Cheeselog is mostly water, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 14:04, 2 replies)

Not me, but a bloke I knew.
Every week he had to go to the same place at least once. When there he had to eat and drink the same thing. That's not the strange bit though -- the strange thing is that he insisted to me that he ate human flesh and drank human blood. I followed him there one day, as I was a little concerned, and it turns out that he only drank wine and ate a little round wafer thing so I was relieved. Another time though I followed him there and he went in to this little box and told dirty stories to a man in a dress.
Bloody weirdo he was.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 13:44, 2 replies)

Above the parapet...
...we're all fucking wierd in one way or another.

AICM5P
(NoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNo, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 13:39, Reply)

when opening a jar
of instant coffee for the first time the only way I can break the foil cap is to hit it with the back of a teaspoon, and it has to be done with the 'football chant rhythm'
"da da dadada dadadada daDA"
with an emphatic last "DA" breaking the foil.

I've done this as long as I can remember, I can't open instant coffee any other way. CDO FTW.
( lord bofingham, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 13:30, 4 replies)

Not mine but some bloke I met on a forum.
Whenever I argue/flame with him he deletes the top post (thus removing all the posts underneath). It seems to be his "clever" way of trying to silence me particularly when he seems to feel as tho things in the discussion aren't going his way.
I don't think he's thought it thru too carefully tho as it could get quite time consuming. I also don't think he's considered that I maybe screen-capping our conversations - mostly when he's showing himself to be the snide, petty little prat that he seems to come across as.

Shambo, this one's fer you baby!
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Fri 16 Dec 2011, 13:13, 16 replies)

OCD = doing what the Dettol adverts tell you.
"Hands-free soap dispenser"?

For fuck's sake - grow up. A high T-cell count is a healthy T-Cell count. The number 13 is just a concept, and yes - you COULD develop cancer at ANY time - so live like it's your last day, you fucking emo muppet.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 13:06, 3 replies)

Tea bags come in pairs, joined together
I live with my partner, just the two of us. So each round of tea uses a nice neat pair of teabags. But sometimes, if one of us has a cup of tea alone there is always a spare single teabag. You still need to split a pair, but one has to go back.

I hate this, it's un-neat, but thought it was too weird to admit.

One day I told her it bugged me, and she laughed it off nicely. Next day I came home and she had split all the teabags into singles cos it bugged her a little bit too, and now everything is just rosy!

That's love that is. OCD love.
( simbosan liked your link on, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 12:50, 11 replies)

Vegetables
Not all, just two; potatos and carrots.
I count how many times I peel them. It CAN'T be 13!!
Really difficult as I'm a chef...

Oh! and I count how may items are in the cutlery basket in the dishwasher as I'm putting them away.

AND..I can't stir my tea or coffee 13 times.
(pastcaring trembling in a corner....., Fri 16 Dec 2011, 12:47, 4 replies)

Germs
You may think you are clean, but take a close look at human skin and it's a seething mass of bacteria. Every square centimeter is home to around 100 million of them. That's over 10 times the population of London on every centimeter. There could easily be 50 different species multiplying, consuming, competing and dying on the back of your hand right now.
And we've not even looked out our mucus membranes yet, they're little more than a microbial soup. In your alimentary canal there are trillions of bacteria. If you could remove them all from your body you have 5lbs of multi-colored slime to look at.

Basically, our bodies are little more than walking compost heaps of micro-biota biding their time until they can over-run and consume us completely.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Fri 16 Dec 2011, 12:37, 11 replies)

socks
After doing the laundry i have to fold socks in pairs and scrunch them up so that from the side it looks like za smiley face. When placed on top of one another in the wardrobe it looks like its full of happy faces.
(liquidspanner, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 12:31, 4 replies)

The demented headmaster
At secondary school our headmaster was lucky enough to have a house attached to the school as a perk of the job. Which also meant that he could leave home as late as possible.

One morning he was spotted by a late arrival coming out of his house and taking a weird meandering route up the driveway to the school. The next day he was observed again taking the same route and some bright spark twigged that he was standing on every manhole cover between his house and the school entrance.

The next day a number of the 6th form went out and stood on each of the manhole covers. The headmaster came out of his house, took a few steps and looked up to see his "drains blocked", and turned on his heels and walked back into the house.

He wasnt seen again for the rest of the week.
(lordofallhesurveys How appropriate you fight like a cow, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 12:24, 1 reply)

Call and response
Certain names, when said on the radio, require me to respond to them. Even if ... no, *especially* if I'm entirely alone.

"Next on Radio 4, PM with Eddie Mair."
"EDDIE MAIR!".

The former leader of the liberal democrats, Ming Campbell...
"MING!" (high pitched, that one, like Michael Palin saying "Ping")

... today commented that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu...
"YAAAAHOOOOO!"

... blamed Colonel Gadaffi...
"Gadaffi Duck. Quack."

... more on this story from Carolyn Quinn.
"Sequin!".

I *do not* have Tourettes. But some nights if you were in the car on the way home when the news comes on the radio you'd swear blind I have.
(SonofRojBlake, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 11:58, 7 replies)

Every week
I have to complain that the question isn't very good.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 11:53, Reply)

I like to make up what I think to be weird rituals
in order to gain attention from the internet.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 11:52, 17 replies)

In the pub and other places
I have to wipe up the little drips and puddles from wet glasses or spilled drinks. I do it without even really realising, and my drinking buddies often comment on it, at which point I get all self-conscious about it.

I have to open packets of crisps flat out, even if I'm the only one eating them, but only when I'm in a pub. Anywhere else, and I open one end and fish them out like normal people do.

And I don't bite my nails, but I do pick the skin off my lower lip, especially if I'm thinking or concentrating - reading is particularly bad. I've done it since toddlerhood and until someone says "stop picking your lip!", usually with a look of vague horror on their face, or until it bleeds, I don't even notice I'm doing it. Consequently my lip always looks dry and chapped as though I'm a polar explorer or something.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 11:48, Reply)

Cold pillows
I can't sleep on room temperature/hot pillows. Fact. When I was younger, I often hung them out of the window, especially in winter(!) so that they were literally ice cold.

Also, I simply HAVE to rotate my pillows three times before I lay my head on them, despite this bringing the side of the pillow that was facing me initially, back to the top. I can't settle unless I do this.

I am weird.
(Mr Fudge It shouldn't be illegal to have sex with an eagle, Fri 16 Dec 2011, 11:45, 11 replies)