NT 022 - Fixing Romantic Traditions

Hello everybody.

Hello.

Yes, we have Stitch with us.

Hello.

Okay, or not.

By the way, even though it will not be this day when you hear this, it is this day when we're recording this.

So, sir, happy Valentine's Day.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Happy day where we celebrate somebody getting killed in the third century with chocolates and candy.

Yeah.

Decapitation is romantic.

Yeah, obviously.

That's why you bite the head off of a chicken at every wedding.

Wait, what?

When did this start?

There are some strange wedding traditions.

And yeah, I think people don't realize it.

We'll get into that in a second, but also happy episode 22.

We've survived almost a whole year of this shit.

Yeah.

I mean, we've enjoyed it for the most part, but still.

But bringing up, biting the head off of a chicken at a wedding,

I think you've opened up a topic of discussion here.

I don't know.

Weddings have a lot of traditions from all over the world.

I mean, in some cases, there are still arranged marriages where people don't even really know each other very well

before they're put together and told go start a life.

You have the tossing of the bouquet.

You've got the bride with her white dress and the veil that has to get lifted up.

You've got obviously the tradition of having the reception where it's just like absolutely insane.

By the way, receptions are fun for everyone except for the bride and groom.

Because it's like as the bride and groom, it's your job to do all of the dances.

Like, oh, you got to do your first dance together and you got to go through the whole introduction

of coming in with all of the bridesmaids and groomsmen and best man and lead bridesmaid.

I forgot what she's called, best woman.

I forgot what it's called.

What is the lead bridesmaid called?

Made of honor.

So we've got all of these traditions.

And then people clink the glasses with a spoon and force you to kiss.

And then you got the cake and like sometimes people smash the cake into each other's faces.

You got the whole garter belt thing.

You've got all these different garter, sorry not garter belt, but you've got all these crazy traditions around weddings.

And you know what?

Again, the reception, not fun for the bride and groom.

Basically they sit down, eat as quickly as they can and then run around to every table, say hi to everybody.

Yada yada yada.

It sucks.

So I posit to you, sir.

What might be some ideas for wedding traditions that might be more fun, legitimately speaking?

Like what would make a wedding exciting or fun for everyone?

Mud wrestling.

Mud wrestling.

Do go on.

Please explain.

What do you mean?

Well, who would be doing the wrestling?

Is it just the bride and groom?

Is it the bride wrestling with all the bridesmaids and the groom and the groom's men watch?

No.

Is this bikini mug wrestling?

Like we need details.

Oh no, you see anyone conjoint and tackle each other into the mud.

So your idea of a good wedding, a new wedding tradition is a brawl in a mud pit.

I love you honey, now I'm going to tackle you into this mud.

I mean mud is good for the skin supposedly.

So I mean it could work out.

And some people like mud wrestling.

Yeah, is there some initial order to the, like is it a competition or is it just, hey, you've said your vows or you've gone to the town hall, here's a mud pit, everybody just do whatever the fuck you want.

Hmm, maybe there's like something buried in the mud.

Okay, so what are we trying to find in the mud?

So this is now gone from mud wrestling to…

I mean it is still mud wrestling.

It's going to be mud wrestling because everybody's fighting to get this thing, but what are they trying to find in the mud?

What would be unique or fun?

Hmm, I don't know.

So…

I'm thinking something similar to like a bouquet of flowers, like something that has an equivalent effect to that.

I'm reminded in this moment of the movie UHF where the kid found a giant marble in the oatmeal and then he got shot with the fire hose, which is pretty awesome.

But yeah, like maybe you have some kind of token or something in there that the person gets to keep.

Maybe it doesn't have to be overly valuable, but I think it should be something customized.

Like maybe it's like some kind of like custom plaque or metal plate that has like the wedding date and stuff engraved and then like underneath it it says mud champion, you know?

So people… and the thing is this cannot be a small little like waiting kiddie pool of mud.

This has to be a pit that could potentially be let's say 6 to 8 feet deep.

So people can't touch the bottom of it just with their feet and try to feel around for the plaque.

Like you gotta go and try to fight for it and dive for it.

Although then it's kind of hard to stand up and fight with people in a mud pit that that's… maybe it has to be sloped like a pool, you know?

It slopes from 3 feet deep to like 10 feet deep and nobody knows really where it is.

I mean eventually the mud will get splashed out of the pool anyway.

I mean, presumably it's a pool. I mean either that or you could take an excavator and just like find an open site and just build it and then fill it in after pit and whatever you want to call it.

Alright mud wrestling, mud competition, the new tradition that's sweeping the nation in weddings.

I don't know about coming up with like great new wedding traditions.

I'll tell you this much, I like the idea of an open bar. That sometimes is part of weddings.

Being able to get whatever alcohol you want, yeah, that's definitely a good one.

That one I would keep, I would keep that tradition.

Granted I'd have to pay for it but still it's worth paying for unlimited alcohol.

Yeah. Let me think.

I think that first of all, I would not ever do a religious ceremony again.

Like that's just me. I just… there's too much emphasis on that aspect of things.

But I think there should be like activities that are more meant to bring the people that are there together rather than to make the bride and groom a spectacle.

Imagine you go maybe to a restaurant that has a hall or something and you do activities with your friends and family that help to bring them together.

Maybe you do some kinds of games together.

You do a D&D campaign that's based around the wedding or something.

Or a Hunter the Reckoning campaign that's based around the wedding where zombies are showing up and the wedding party has to get together and has to defeat them.

I'll throw karaoke out there. I'm fine with that.

A lot of people don't necessarily like singing or like hearing me sing.

But I'm just saying, or having an epic LAN party, you find a game where you can have 20 different people playing at once,

even if it's a 10 vs 10 like a PUBG or some other game that I can't stand.

But still, you get the point. You find some kind of thing. You could do a Smash Brothers tournament.

Oh no.

You do a Smash Brothers tournament.

Oh no.

Yeah, that's what you do.

That's the perfect way to tear family apart.

Well, unless you do Monopoly.

No, that's even worse.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. There are things worse than a Smash.

Well, or you do two tournaments.

Okay?

You do Smash Brothers on one hand.

So you can be part of the Smash Brothers bracket.

Or you can do on the other side, GoldenEye.

N64. Let's go old school. We're going to go GoldenEye.

Or you can do Doom.

Like not original Doom, like the new Doom.

So you do Doom Deathmatch versus Doom Deathmatch group.

And you have the other group that's doing the Smash Brothers.

But then what you do is as you're losing out of one tournament,

you have to switch places and get into the bracket on the other.

So at the end, instead of having it just be like one person versus one person,

you have to actually have a pair of people.

You have to have the top two from Smash Bros. and the top two from Doom.

And then what you do is you have both of those teams play.

So they weren't a team before, but they'll be a team now.

You have the top two Smash Brothers players and you have the top two Doom players.

And they're going to play each other in both games.

And then whoever, out of all four of them, does the best across both games,

is the winner.

But everybody gets the bond over that.

And to me, if I'm thinking about eventually getting married again or whatever,

I don't want to have to wear a fancy tuxedo.

I want to have to worry about having 500 people there.

Like, I really would just want a very small group of people,

like just going to a restaurant after we go to the town hall or something,

and then having a really nice honeymoon.

Like, that to me is more valuable because then you're sharing it in a more intimate way

versus you have like 50 people at your wedding.

Like, how many of them are you going to see again?

Like, I had people at my wedding that I haven't seen since my wedding.

So, you know, like because friends move apart and local people move apart and all of this stuff,

and it's, you reach a point where you invite a bunch of people to help you celebrate something

that you don't really care about them celebrating.

So those are some ideas for new wedding traditions.

Great job.

I am biting the heads off chickens, of course.

That is the ultimate new tradition.

It's like from Deadliest Catch where on the Northwestern they have to bite the head off of a herring

at the beginning of each season.

You have to bite the head off of a live chicken, which I can't imagine being easy.

Maybe not a live one, then it would struggle.

That's the point.

You're trying to demonstrate the resilience of the relationship over adversity.

The chicken is adversity.

What if you're vegan though, or vegetarian?

No.

Just no.

You don't get that option.

If this is becoming a new wedding tradition, it is a tradition.

Damn it.

Throw your other sensibility.

I don't want to hurt the poor little animal.

Fuck you.

Bite its head off.

It deserves it.

It's the only way to ensure that your relationship will be able to fight and struggle through adversity.

You gotta.

Well, while we're on new traditions, so we spoke about traditions at weddings.

Yeah.

Today is Valentine's Day, sir.

Oh, no.

And as I mentioned before, it's the day before Markdown Chocolate Day.

Oh, yes.

That's right.

International Discount Chocolate Day.

That's tomorrow.

You know, those are the best holidays, okay?

The best holiday is not Christmas or Easter or Valentine's Day.

The holiday is the day afterwards where they discount all of the candy and goodies from that previous day.

Yep.

So tomorrow is the real holiday.

But that said, we have a bunch of commercialization of many holidays, including especially this one.

I mean, this one is referred to anecdotally as the Hallmark Holiday.

It's where everybody's buying cards.

It's where everybody's buying chocolate.

Although, funny enough, I went to Five Below earlier this week with my girlfriend, who I'm not sure if she wants her name known on the podcast or not, so I'm not going to share it.

But that said, we went there and like all the shelves were empty in the front of the store and we're like, what the heck's going on?

And you see, it's just pallets of Easter stuff.

Like we didn't even get over to Valentine's Day yet and you're loading up with peeps.

Yeah.

Peeps, the most, like, I used to like peeps.

I'll be honest, I liked peeps around Halloween because that's the only time they showed up.

Now you've got Halloween peeps.

You've got Christmas peeps.

You've got Valentine's peeps.

I thought peeps were related to Easter.

That's what I meant Easter peeps were the original.

Well, then why'd you say Halloween?

Because they started coming out with Halloween peeps.

But if I messed up in the beginning and said Halloween instead of Easter, I'm sorry.

Anyway, tangent over.

We already fixed weddings and receptions with mud wrestling and game tournaments.

Now, sir, we need to fix Valentine's Day.

Oh, no.

Because again, the point of Valentine's Day was there was a guy who was...

This is historically so old they don't even know.

Like there were two people that may have been St. Valentine around the same time.

I just looked at this on Wikipedia before we started recording just for my own edification.

So in the 200s, back when I guess being Christian was still a big no-no in Rome,

there was evidently a guy who was marrying people.

He was either a priest or a bishop.

We don't know.

He was marrying people under the radar because the government had told people

not to get married for some reason or another.

I'm like, okay, maybe there were wars going on so they didn't want young men getting married

because we're going to need you to fight.

And then he made the emperor mad and the emperor beheaded him.

Yep.

Chocolate!

Romantic!

Yeah, it's so romantic.

Well, because he helped to marry people.

See, that's why biting the head off of a chicken is romantic.

Murder is romantic.

So how would we go about...

Now, I will say there were other pagan traditions that obviously Valentine's Day kind of superseded.

And those pagan traditions were more of what you would traditionally think of.

It wasn't about romance.

It was about sex.

Lots and lots of sex.

You know, even amongst people who didn't really know each other that well,

there were these big parties, these big orgies of people just celebrating the coming of spring

and having sex because in the middle of February,

when it's cold outside and snowy and whatnot,

what the hell else are you going to do?

Especially in an era where there was no electricity,

there's no, like even pre-printing press, like what are you going to do?

You're not going to read because you probably can't read.

Like, you're not... what are you going to do?

Go out and farm?

Well, no, it's the middle of winter.

You can't farm.

Chop wood.

Yeah, chop wood.

That's what we do for fun.

So that was... there definitely were pagan traditions that overlapped with St. Valentine's Day.

And Valentine's Day became the, shall we say,

G or PG rated version of the holiday,

when of course the rated R or rated X version was much better.

So, with all that backstory in place,

how... what new traditions do we bring to Valentine's Day?

They don't necessarily have to be romantic,

but like, should we honor some of the traditions?

Ah, yes, the tradition we should honor.

Chop off someone's head.

What's with it with you and me heading things?

Like, how do we improve weddings?

Bite the head off a chicken.

How do we improve Valentine's Day?

I mean...

Beheadings.

I mean, you're the one who said to make it relevant to the original thing.

I meant relevant to the overall tradition,

not relevant to the beheading of the guy.

You know, you would do well in Revolutionary France.

You know, you would be the first person,

the first person like screaming for the heads of the bourgeoisie.

Bring me...

Bring me the royals.

But, but, but sir, it's your birthday.

Exactly!

I want to be head some royals on my birthday.

How better to celebrate my life than to take away the lives of others.

You're a cold, cold man, sir.

None of this romance for you.

Just cut off people's heads.

I mean, blood is red and red is the same color as Valentine's.

Exactly.

I guess.

Again, it's hard to get away from the feeling that's tied to this holiday like...

Well, I mean, if we fix Valentine's Day,

then there might not be a discounted chocolate day after.

Well, you know, we're just coming up with new tradition ideas.

It doesn't mean you have to burn the old ones to the ground.

But I think that Valentine's Day is now forever like entrenched in romantic love.

And I'm not saying we need to get away from that,

but how do you make it more personal and meaningful than, you know,

not that I won't do this,

but like, here's a card in chocolate.

I love you.

Or flowers.

Or flowers.

Or marriage proposals.

Or going out to fancy restaurants.

Or a really fancy car if you're rich enough.

Yeah, like what...

What could replace some of this stuff

that actually would bring more meaning back?

I mean...

It eats me.

Well, we already know that you want to be head people.

No, that was because you said that you want to keep tradition.

That happened once to one, maybe two guys on Valentine's Day.

Not...

It wasn't like every Valentine's Day everybody got together and said,

hey, let's be head some religious people.

Although that could be a good idea.

We'll get some of those like really like super rich,

like mega church pastors who have done nothing but make lots of money

and abuse people and will cut their heads off.

I don't know, like maybe emphasizing instead of like giving

something as a gift, as, you know, a way of showing love,

maybe just like taking time to go and do something with the person.

Like spending time with the person going for a walk.

You know, obviously the, you know, having some fun romantic times behind closed doors

is a good thing too, but that's beside the point.

Like I'm trying to think like, you know what?

I don't know why this popped in my head but I'm going with it.

Valentine's Day chili.

Look, it's a brilliant idea now that I think about it.

So chili, you could do a fast chili,

but the best chili is cooked slowly like in a slow cooker throughout the entire day.

And so you have this build up.

Now, first of all, it's February.

It's still like right now.

Actually, it's not bad out.

It's like 40, but like generally speaking, the temperatures in February are super cold.

It is soup and chili weather.

So what you do is you work with the person that you care about or that you love.

Early in the morning, like not super early, like, you know, 7, 8 a.m.

Whatever you normally wake up, you have your coffee, maybe exchange a card

or some chocolates or whatever.

Oh, nice. Thank you.

And what you do is you decide we're going to cook this chili together.

And you come up with different ingredients that you both want to have.

So for example, like I know you, you are a spice lord.

You love the spice.

So you're going to bring either a hot sauce or some kind of red pepper to add.

Or some kind of super spicy pepper, maybe even pepper acts who knows.

And like me, I like chili that has meat in it.

I know some people don't like chili with meat in it.

They just want the straight up like beans and onions and whatnot.

But me, so I'm going to bring either like some kind of ground meat.

Maybe I'll go exotic.

Maybe I'll go with ground elk or ground bison or whatever.

But I'm going to bring some kind of meat to the table along with some other, you know,

typical beans and maybe, you know, your significant other.

They want, you know, the beans and they want to add some vegetables.

They want to add a little bit of additional stuff to it.

They have some spices they want to add to.

So you have to throw all of this.

You cook the meat ahead of time.

Obviously you undercook it a little bit, just a little bit because it's going to cook in the

crock pot along with everything else and sauce and whatnot.

You get your tomato sauce or paste.

You get all your stuff together.

First thing in the morning.

You dump it all into crock pot.

You mix it up and then you let it sit all day and you go off and you do something together.

Maybe you play a board game together.

You watch a movie.

It doesn't have to be romantic.

Hell, just watch Jurassic Park for crying out loud or, you know, another classic movie

that you both enjoy.

It doesn't have to be romantic or it could be like a movie that has romance in it,

but it's not necessarily the focus of the movie.

There are plenty of movies out there where like people, you know, overcome obstacles together

and they end up in love by the end of it, but it wasn't a love story.

Or if you're all into romance movies, you can watch a romance movie, but you don't have to.

That's the point.

And then at the end of the day, you come back and you have this amazing chili

that you all poured your love into.

The Valentine's Day chili.

You know, I think that, you know, I think it has merit

because you're combining aspects of each other into a smorgasbord that then has to sit and gel over time

to become something new and amazing, just like relationships do.

So there you go.

I think that that is a good new tradition.

So we have new wedding traditions of mud wrestling and game tournaments

and we have some new Valentine's traditions of, well, decapitation again

because that's, unless you have a new idea, do you have a new idea?

I want to know what everyone should have on Valentine's Day.

What?

Cheese quesadilla.

Oh, I didn't even see it coming and I should have.

I should have seen that shit coming.

So we've come up with some new tradition ideas.

I mean, it doesn't mean you throw away the old ones, but the new ones.

Also, if you make the spicy chili, like you refer to romance as being red hot romance, you know,

or like people being hot.

Oh, yeah, like she's hot, you know, like, oh yeah, she's a spicy lady

or a spicy man if you're, oh, if you're attracted to men, like whatever.

But the point being that chili is a good representation of love.

I think it works.

And wait a minute, if you're really, really on top of things,

you could be responsible for slaughtering the cow that makes the beef for your,

then you could get your decapitation too, sir.

Say it all works out.

So we've got some great new wedding traditions.

We've got some great new Valentine's traditions and we want to hear from you.

What are your ideas for better wedding or Valentine's traditions?

If you want to let us know, first of all, we are on the Fediverse.

So if you look for at non-topical at non-topical.com on a federated platform such as Blue Sky,

Mastodon, et cetera, you can find us on there.

We have two followers on the federated spaces and they're both me

because I have two different accounts.

Yeah, yeah.

But also, another way you could contact us is feedback@nontopical.com .

That's where you can email us using email and let us know what you think of the show,

what you'd like of the show, or your great wedding tradition or Valentine tradition ideas

that are not in the normal circle of ideas.

We would love to hear those.

Also, this is a value for value podcast, which means if you get value out of it,

please show us some value in return.

It could be any number, anything from $1 to $5 to $10 to...

A hypothetical $1,000.

Or more if you have it.

But the point is, whatever you get out of the show,

please feel free to show it in return.

We definitely appreciate it.

The place to do that is ko-fi.com slash non-topical.

That's https://ko-fi.com/nontopical.

And that's about it for episode 22.

Unless you have anything to add, sir?

No.

No? Okay.

Well then, until next time, thank you for listening and bye.

Happy day.

Happy day.

Bye.