irishmercutio

Cocknotching is a time honoured tradition of one of the finer points of that ancient ideal of chivalry. It entails the mutilation of one's own genitalia for purposes of penance. It originated on ships; at least i assume so because I was informed of this concept by my former housemate who was a sailor for sometime and that's where he heard about it. anyway, what happens is when a man makes a mistake - a serious, usually life threatening one mind you - he takes out his knife and inflicts a small cut on his member, the idea being with consequences like that you will never make the same mistake twice. On ships it usually happens to deal with fucking up some kind of rigging. At sea mistakes like that can be disastrous, even fatal cocknotching was invented by sailors to keep those kinds of accidents at bay (ie "holy shit! what happened to your cock?" "Oh, that? I forgot to tie off my line and ended up falling twenty feet. Luckily, I wasn't any higher up. Heh, I'll never make that mistake again." or "Oh, man I fell asleep on deck last night and the botswain told me to cocknotch myself." "I know how that goes, I got my sleeping-on-deck cocknotch my first week out. Welcome to sailing!" or "wow last night I went out and got fantastically drunk in front of a bunch of new people with whom I was trying to make a good impression. fuck me. I should be cocknotched).
Cocknotching is not an official naval practice, but is kept in place by peer pressure. So every time you go to take a piss you're reminded of all the big mistakes you've made in your life and you will never do it again.