Power bands.
The freaking things are everywhere.
Famous athletes, those who wish to be famous athletes, those who watched a famous athlete on TV once; it seems like a lot of people are wearing the things.
But they don’t work. AT ALL.
Because it’s a shiny sticker and a rubber band. You cannot affect someone’s athletic performance with a shiny sticker and a rubber band unless you duck-tape them over the athlete’s eyes, and even then you are negatively affecting it instead of positively affecting it.
According to the True Believers, this magic sticker somehow affects your body’s something-or-other field, and gives you greater endurance and stamina and you can shoot lasers out of your eyes and shit bricks of platinum. I don’t know, I tend to stop listening to bullshit after a while.
While it’s well documented that the magic stickers are worthless (Unless you are buying them from the Power Balance folks, who charge $100 for ten of the little moneymakers. Whores don’t have that kind of profit margin) in the interest of furthering pseudoscience and not having to come up with another blog topic, I have decided to have my own little test. Since I’m not going to waste $30 of my brandy-money on silicone and shiny stickers, I came up with an alternative;
A gum wrapper and a rubber band. I am a genius.
The band in use. It looks just like the original.
Hour 1 – I feel normal, no sign of wing-budding yet but I am optimistic.
Hour 2 – Some tingling in the extremities, a feeling of profound cold over the rest of my body. I decide to get out of the freezer and see if I can remember where I put my clothes.
Hours 3 – 5 – I am one with the universe. I can feel the heartbeat of every blade of grass and see the colors of the moonlight. I will frolic with the children of the west wind and they shall fear me.
Hours 6-10 – Dammit, they are on to me! It was that rat-bastard Pedro, he sold me out to the Walrus King. I told the apple, you can never trust a kumquat! I find that little raisin and he’ll be prune juice. Pickled kumquat spinach juice! Hey, you ever notice how weird a word looks when you write it over and over again? Like apple. Apple. Aye pee pee ell eee. Apple. it’s just odd, that’s all.
Hours 11-20 – APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE
Hours 21-24 – I am the very model of a modern major mineral, not vegetarian organ-grinder something something, something-something … PICKLES! Beep the pickles, but slowly. Slowly! :MANICAL LAUGHTER:
:24 hours later:
Ah-hem.
That was probably a bad idea.
To whomever owned the lavender Audi, I’m sorry about the thing with the pickle relish and the fire extinguisher.
Well, now I’m craving pickles and applesauce. Meh, could be worse.
Just remember, Power Bands go around your wrist, not your neck. Unless you have a really skinny neck or are Kate Moss.
I think Kate uses them as hula hoops.
so funny!!!
Since everything hurts on me…all the time…okay, except my hair…every one of my well-meaning friends that has one of these magical talismans has tried to get me to buy one.
Uh.No.
I even went so far as to go on a rant about “modern-day snake oil” and “who’d be stupid enough to buy one of these?” to one guy only to find out he’s selling the damned things. He doesn’t talk to me a lot these days.
Several people I work with ,who are otherwise intelligent people, wear them. I wore my little homemade band for most of the day and it worked exactly like theirs in that it did absolutely nothing. No one even asked me about it.
I did get tiny flecks of tin foil all over my arm from the gum wrapper, so I looked a little like a sparklepire for a while.
I’m so excited….are you going to market these? I’ll be your first customer…….NOT
Hi Mom!
:waves:
You were in my spam folder. I hope you didn’t catch anything.
I had a great talk with some friends the other night. One was talking about wearing a talisman and putting out “positive energy” and that it seemed to work so fast and well she got scared and took it off. I pointed out that the talisman had nothing to do with it – that people naturally respond to being treated with consistent kindness, smiles, and positive attitude.
She said the talisman did actually matter. Not because it had any power of its own, but as a REMINDER to behave in a particular way.
This is a long way to say that any benefit from these things is entirely attributable to their use as an aid in remembering to focus, or to treat the people around you well, or to take your meds, or the placebo effect. This effect is actually aided by the ridiculous price. Sort of along the lines of, “I paid for the damn thing, I’m bloody well going to use it!”
Still, you can achieve the same effects with either a personally-chosen talisman (I had a smiley-face watch that reminded me to watch my attitude) or none at all as long as you make mindfulness a habit.
If it was marketed as such, like the LIVE STRONG bracelets and similar items sold to promote awareness of various causes, I wouldn’t have a problem with them. It’s the dubious medical claims the company has made that tick me off.