Cut that racket
ELEANOR ROBERTSON HAS THE NEXT WELLNESS FAD ALL SORTED.
The other day, while browsing my second-tier procrastination websites, I discovered that the new wellness trend is drinking half a litre of celery juice in the morning. Yeah, celery, the vegetable with precisely three legitimate uses: as a vehicle for peanut butter; a garnish in a Bloody Mary; or mixed with onion and carrot in a ‘mirepoix’ – the diced veg mix that forms the base of all good stews. Celery-pushers are claiming all the usual benefits: clear skin, increased hydraulic torque, a smug aura of divinity. These people aren’t even trying anymore. At least healing crystals are pretty. I thought, I could come up with at least five better, more viral wellness trends. So, here they are. (I’d like to thank celery juice for my keen concentration and creativity.)
FINGER PLANTING One of my favourite wellness scams of late has been ‘earthing’, otherwise known as ‘walking barefoot on the ground’. But there’s one problem with this from a scamming perspective: it’s free. So, earthing entrepreneurs have had to sell ‘earthing mats’ that ‘bring the Earth’s positive charge into your home’ or some such garbage. Anyway, it’s a complete evil genius idea, and I plan to replicate its success with ‘finger planting’ – cutting off one of your fingers and planting it into the soil. Just like earthing, but better, for spiritual reasons. Buy a finger planting cup (a small section cut from an egg carton) for $75, plant your finger, and say goodbye to aches, pains and the presumption of adult competency in court. CASSETTE THERAPY A lot of talk about mental health these days borders on scammy. Nobody seems to want to make the world itself less depressing or terrifying, so we’re offered a suite of questionable self-care techniques instead. Diets, exercises, apps, sleep routines. Just what I need for my psychological wounds – a bunch of difficult and boring tasks to feel guilty about not doing. Well, how about this: try chewing and swallowing a cassette recording of Quiet Riot's 1983 heavy metal album, Metal Health. Will it work? No. Do I recommend it? Absolutely not. But the album sucks, so you’d get a warm glow from doing everyone else in the world a favour.
SALAD SQUATTING This combines two things we all know to be healthy: salad and squatting. Simply pick up a bowl of salad, do one set of five shallow squats, and you’re done. The act of touching the salad prompts a cascade of Salad-specific Energy (SSE) to flow through your body, strengthening your muscles and making you feel 1.65 times as lively as you did before. Can you eat the salad after you squat it? Of course! But be aware that, having drained all the salad’s SSE during the squatting procedure, its spiritual nourishment value will be similar to that of bark chips or sand.
HEXERCISE Everyone wants to exercise, and everyone likes hexing their enemies using arcane witchcraft magick they saw on Tumblr, so why not put the two together? As the old saying goes, “Living well is the best revenge, except cursing your enemies to a thousand years of pain and suffering, which is slightly better.” All hexercise requires is for you to mutter evil incantations under your breath while your heart rate is over 120. I suggest avoiding group exercise that might be disrupted by the eldritch groaning of undead spirits.
SCREAMING Everyone’s so into meditation, hygge and weighted blankets these days that we’ve all forgotten how good it feels to scream blue murder for no reason, until you pop a blood vessel in your eyeball. Therapeutic screaming was big in the 1970s, but it disappeared along with poo-brown furniture. I say it’s time to bring back ear-splitting, hysterical screeching. As long as nobody does it anywhere near me, and my life is not disrupted in any way.