New Year, New You: 100 ways to improve your life
From fun with mould to making it Halloween all year round, Wallis and Wilson offer you 100 ways to almost certainly (not) improve your life without really trying.
- Get to know your neighbours by hiding in their crawlspace for days at a time.
- Change your name frequently but keep the initial. For extra fun, make the name changes of a theme e.g. Fred becomes Flapjack, then Frosties, then Flora, then Flump, etc.
- Become a porcupine collector.
- Disembowel a mechanic then repair him using a vintage Hayes manual.
- Build an arsenal of origami-based secret weapons.
- Dampen your breakfast cereal with your tears.
- Make up for loss of earnings during lockdown by disinheriting your children.
- Consider the lily.
- Make road signs more inclusive.
- Combine method acting and experimental surgery, with hilarious consequences.
- Bung it on the credit card.
- Study the icicle formations in the freezers at big Sainsbury’s.
- Avoid the inconvenience of earphones on a run by constructing a sound system audible anywhere within a 10-mile radius of your home.
- Enjoy a carb-heavy luncheon AND a productive afternoon with an injection of amphetamines for dessert.
- Store confidential material in the first place they’d look.
- Catalogue your pornography.
- Psychoanalyze elderly family members before performing exorcisms.
- Deodorise your household plants.
- Serve them dog, by all means. They’ll never know.
- Exhume Rolf Harris and ask him why.
- Don’t hesitate. Ever. That’s when they get you.
- Repurpose your Christmas tree lights by making them into a high-visibility jacket.
- Strike up a conversation with the self-checkout in the Co-Op and over time persuade it to lead a rebellion of the machines.
- Lick the mould off your VHS tapes.
- Watch every episode of Hoarders and keep a diary of your feelings.
- Hold your breath.
- Make a set of inspirational quote memes using only the words of Ed Kemper.
- Choose a random line from Das Kapital and graffiti it on the wall of your nearest Poundland.
- Start a riot.
- Have a five-round straightener with your parish priest.
- Register on Companies House as Priti Vacant Borders and Landscapes.
- Get yourself committed to a psychiatric ward.
- Redecorate your house in the style of Ed Gein.
- Remember that Domino’s counts as a food group, despite what your ma says.
- Lattes are for posers. Refuse to leave until the barista serves you “a coffee”.
- Save money on foundation by painting your face with Cuprinol. One coat lasts all year and it’s waterproof.
- Currency needs a rethink. Start the reset by paying with those little badges you get in hippy shops. If they refuse, lop off an ear. It’ll grow back, don’t worry.
- Invite your neighbours to form a Wicker Man Committee.
- Show your nan how much Family means to you by knitting her a lovely Charles Manson blanket.
- Refuse to pay your council tax until they institute a weekly parade dedicated to Des O’Connor.
- Save all those mini plastic fish soy sauce bottles from packets of sushi, release them from the top of a multi-storey car park, then write to the Fortean Times.
- Grow a Magic Money Tree.
- Relax. Don’t do it.
- Befriend Shaun Ryder then donate him to the Greeks. He’s better than marbles!
- Take the money and run.
- Start a power electronics band with residents of your local retirement home.
- Get yourself a bad reputation.
- Organise a class reunion in that pub down the road that keeps getting shut down.
- Teach yourself taxidermy.
- When in a legal quandary, consult the team at Edgar, Allan, and Poe. They do mates’ rates if you have a coupon.
- Do something about that smell.
- In times of emotional fragility, Harpic will never let you down.
- Learn the names of every manager of the Dudley Building Society since its inception in 1858.
- Hit the barber’s and ask for a Current 93.
- Recreate the Bélmez Faces in your doctor’s waiting room using the medium of your choice.
- Question a sibling’s legitimacy.
- Create a new guitar pedal then immediately get a neighbour’s kid to clone it.
- Be proactive in experiencing brainfreeze.
- Enjoy both exercise and drinking by necking four cans of Stella, followed immediately by two litres of Diamond White, then taking to the trampoline at your gym to give it all a good slosh around.
- Test your child’s resistance to peer pressure by encouraging them to smoke.
- Understand that jerry cans are not just for fuel.
- Start the day by emailing your team an ethical conundrum to shake off the brain sleeps, such as ‘Should we colonise Mars?’, or ‘What the fuck is Zippy?’
- ‘Timodine, voltarol, sertraline, co-codamol, mirtazapine and alcohol’ 🎵
- Remember, opticians see you coming. Tighten that wallet chain.
- Remember that pyjamas will undermine every diet you start.
- Always accept if you are offered the use of a caravan.
- Order Scooby Snacks with Bitcoin.
- Write a treatise on the phenomenology of Wotsits.
- If something in the world is making you angry, rush out into the street and have a ruddy good shout about it.
- Inject some rigour into your Zen meditation by kneeling on pieces of Lego.
- Custard powder is surprisingly versatile. Carry some at all times.
- A roast chicken a day keeps the fox away.
- Take up skateboarding: break it ‘til you make it.
- Give yourself a new look based on your favourite member of Darkthrone.
- When invited to a party, always bring a can of WD-40.
- Send your friends a weekly postcard of your hometown. If they politely ask you to stop, ignore them.
- Write to your local newspaper. It doesn’t matter what about as long as it sounds slightly unhinged.
- Melt down all your records, fill a paddling pool with the result, and spend a day being The Creature from the Black Lagoon.
- Buy a Samurai sword for chopping vegetables.
- It’s wasteful to wear a Halloween costume just once a year. Wear your Sexy Zombie Cheerleader outfit to pick the kids up from school.
- Set up an underground gambling club and advertise it in the Classifieds section of your local paper.
- Bear a grudge.
- If someone invites you to something you don’t want to go to, tell them to fuck off.
- Repaint all the picture frames in your house with glitter glue.
- Climb a small tree and demand to be rescued by the fire brigade.
- Always start the working week with a healthy blast of Venom.
- Make each morning new and exciting by throwing your car keys into the back garden before you go to bed.
- Reject gravity as the mere theory it is.
- Discover a new species in Alan Moore’s beard.
- Eat sand.
- Track down every edition of the Argos catalogue and, when you’ve done that, see how they price-matched over the years with Index.
- Moisturiser is a con. Water is moist. You get me?
- Keep expensive trainers in the fridge so they stay cool.
- Never less than six teabags per pot; sometimes more, but never less.
- Samosas make you more diplomatic, so load up before firing someone.
- Dye your pet a nice shade of beige.
- When eaten daily, kidney beans will sort you right out.
- Forge a library card.
- Pay close attention to the characterisation and structure of Radio 4 dramas.
- For the love of god, please don’t ask.
Wallis & Wilson
Jennifer Wallis is a historian of science, medicine, and technology, also distracted by British film and television of the 1970s, horror cinema, and power electronics.
Gareth Wilson thinks he'll pack it in and buy a pickup.
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