Learning Day: Oxycise! (Patreon)

Breathing! It's all the rage now, but in the '90s no one was doing it. No one until air pioneer Jill R. Johnson.

In 1997, she published the book Oxycise!, a workout program based on breathing, but I'm making it sound too complicated.

You see, late in Jill's life she learned that some fat is removed from the body with carbon dioxide and she had a revelation. If you breathed more, you would remove more fat. It's cute! It's the sort of storybook logic that would lead you to butter the back of a cat. I've read several bios abou– sorry, there's an old joke that if toast always lands butter side down and a cat always lands on its feet, anyone dropping a buttered cat would have to deal with a universe refusing to let it land. It obviously doesn't work in real li– wait, I know what I did. I forgot to toast the cat!

Okay, I'm back. And I might not know as much as I thought I did about cats, or toast. While on the subject of keen research skills, let's get back to Jill. I've read several bios about Jill Johnson, and I still don't know what her background was before Oxycise!. Her body of professional work looks like this:

I've never seen a more singular focus. Jill's other two books, Fuel for Success and Chart Your Success, may sound like financial self-help drivel, but they're not. They're just Oxycise! again. She has made three books, seven videos, and a cassette tape about breathing, and again, I'm making it sound too complicated. Two of them are about breathing for your butt, and I know enough about comedy to know we can stop there.

The cassette, Oxycise!: On The Go Commuter Routine, is really something. Or maybe the opposite of that. It's 42 minutes of her reminding you to breathe. It's dingus-brained beyond what humans should be capable of. It's something a very brave fish would think 375 million years ago.

I have no idea how popular or successful any of this bullshit was. I've never met anyone who has Oxycise!ed, but the VHS tapes were ubiquitous enough that I've found two of them at Good Will. As for the book, I ordered it from Amazon for $0.01 plus shipping, and I've never seen it in the wild. While I don't have access to sales data, you can sort of measure a book's success by how many copies are available in libraries, and the only copy of Oxycise! is in a single Colorado library. Success? I guess these figures make Oxycise! somewhere between one and infinity times more successful than my favorite stupid book by a dumb idiot, Prehistoric Birds in Modern Times.

Speaking of prehistoric, Internet veterans or me fans might recognize Oxycise! from an article on my old website, where I said this about the VHS version:

Aw, look at young me, making perfect sense. I'm a veteran science communicator and an enduring delight! While I don't have access to analytical data, you can sort of measure a '90s Internet article's success by speccing into the Mechromancer's Ordered Chaos tree in Borderlands 2.

Success? I'd argue the Iron Eagle reference was load bearing, but we don't get to pick how our work gets appreciated. Let's get back to the book.

Jill opens with a Special Introduction which is another way to say A Personal Letter to You. You can skip ahead to the bottom part; I'm only including the whole thing to show you how quickly Jill R. Johnson goes from "Dear friend" to the most fucked up goddamn shit.

We've been here for three paragraphs. That's how long it took for Jill R. Johnson to diminish the struggle of all races. Think how White your life would have to be to say this, that the discrimination of all minorities is dwarfed by that against the overweight. This is an extremely falsifiable theory. The fact that she typed it means she never once tried saying, "You blacks and queers talking about discrimination over here? Ha. You know nothing. Maybe try walking a mile in my chubby shoes. Well, of course not like a full mile. From the car to Baskin Robbins; you get it, you whiny bitches."

It's worth reminding everyone Jill is from America, where a bowl of marshmallows is only one small part of our complete breakfast. Everyone here is overweight. Our national flower is the 12-piece bucket. How fat must she have been for her love handles to have eclipsed AIDS, Jim Crow, and the Trail of Tears? There was probably a more fun way to ask that, but I have the answer! Here's Jill's before picture from the Oxycise! website:

That's it!? She was a little boxy? She was walking around in a Wal-Mart small and equating it to racism? I was expecting a wet mound with a face. This is not an achievement standing above the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. Martin Luther King did not write "Letter from Birmingham Jail About a Lady Who is Still Kind of Bangable."

This is baby shit, and you don't have to take my word for it! You can see in her own copy, Jill was listing her life's record-breaking hardships and it only took four before she said, "Oh! One time a guy told me it looked like I've had too many mashed potatoes, and let's see… what else? What else… I guess that's it!" Pathetic. "Looks like you've had too many mashed potatoes" isn't worse than bigotry, you psychopath. It's something a kind lover would say if they were a handful of mashed potatoes. Back to the book!

Let's jump ahead to page 16 where Jill is still trying to sell us on the concept of the book we have presumably already bought. Wow, easier? Better? Faster? This Oxycise! sounds like the workout for me! How can I learn less? Oh, I can't? As someone who breathes I already know all there is to know about Oxycise!ing? Well, that explains why this dipshit won't get to the point!

Jill seems to think the best part of Oxycise! is how much money it will save you. "Sure," you might think. "Breathing is free," you might add if you want to belabor the point beyond all reason. But instead of moving on to explain how to do this miracle workout, Jill lists every possible expense and inconvenience you might run into during "real" exercise. Relatable, universal experiences like our weekly fat farms and the stress, stress!, stress!!! of having to write down phone numbers from infomercials.

I don't think Jill wrote Oxycise! during a financially stable time in her life. I say that because the money section is sprawling, desperate, and insane, but the cellulite section is simply "Your legs will have less cheese, it will be amazing." Speaking of money, Oxycise! is still around, and like all legacy media, it has switched to a predatory subscription model:

For fifteen(!?) dollars a month, you get access to all the Oxycise! you love. And you know what that means, starting with the most important thing: No more jumping. You might think this goes against the philosophy of Oxycise! since Jill dedicated 70 pages of her book to how much shoe money and fat farm entry fee it saves you, but that's because her workout takes two fucking sentences to describe, not because she's running a charity. You don't rename the same VHS tape seven times (twice about butts) because you're trying to not steal money from the very dumb.

There's no way of knowing how many people subscribe to this nonsense, but there are currently over 80 customer reviews, and they are the best.

Poor cindy fritze gave them three out of five stars because she got a headache. From breathing. Which means there's probably a review on the Peloton page that says "i looked at your stare climer and my knee caps snaped off -cindy p.s. help i am somewear dark but i can hear birds"

Anonymous only gave Oxycise! four stars because while the new videos are fine, the old videos are old. Get with the times, permanent records of the past! It's so perfectly dumb, and I love imagining Jill trying to respond to this impossible criticism with the same nimble mind that gave us Oxycise!.

Here's what Jill's customer comments looked like in 1997:

Jill is relentless in her claims. So relentless, in fact, I'm starting to not believe her. Something about, "I'm able to participate in my favorite recreational sports" doesn't sound like a thing a real person would consider saying. I also question whether Jill has met someone who enjoys running but, until now, was unable to use two of the holes leading to their lungs. Plus, I think she made it up that "breathing" cured her client's asthma. Only because I bet they would have tried that. Is it possible this person selling a very, very, very easy cure for everything is a lying grifter? Let's keep reading.

Oh, I was wrong. Jill isn't trying to grift, she's trying to cult. This is cult talk. Next she'll be saying, "You must do precisely as I tell you. The others are lying to you. You need to wake up from your fake reality. Look at my hot body."

Gasp! It's exactly as I predicted!

So now we're thirty pages into this exercise book. Time to start Chapter One: Not Fucking Exercising Yet! Jill has dropped a lot of hints, but she has not explicitly stated yet that Oxycise! is nothing more than breathing. And she won't for a long time. It's almost like she's embarrassed to say it. Anyway, let's listen to her complain about how fat you are some more.

"No more marrying dessert carts to save on cheesecake payments! No more breaking out of your bed restraints to hunt rats!" Jill, these are not universal weight problems. Why are you still doing this? No one is wearing tents to the beach, you dick. You're writing pointless insults that will only hurt the fragile, confused fatties who bought your book. Sorry, that's hurtful. To use your terminology, I meant arm-flapping shame monsters trapped under their own stomachs, waiting for stairs to go extinct.

Jill has a bit to say about the psychology of positive reinforcement and the danger of treats. She admits treats are a normal way to get results like in the normal quote, "You've been such a good girl today, Mommy has a lollipop for you." I can't criticize her for this, though. In 1997, my writing style was also sloppy fat jokes broken up by sudden, unexplained horniness. So, I guess I'm trying to be sympathetic. When someone is slopping together a 145-page book with .00001 pages of material, you're going to get a little naughty lollipop mommy in there.

Jill clarifies her point the only way she can– with an unfiltered list of loose ideas. Maybe instead of their choice of candy bar you could give children hugs for prizes! Also, I guess this is now a parenting book, and not instructions for a low-impact workout you can do with only your mouth. Oh, that reminds me. We are only twelve pages away from our first Oxycise! instructions! I'll skip to them:

You probably thought there was no way Oxycise! could actually be only this. "Breathe in. Breathe out." Jill finally says. And some part of her knows, even after all this setup, after building her life around it, that Oxycise! is stupid as fuck. Because she frames it like we're the ones who think this is profound. "Oh my god, reader, could it be that simple!? Do you realize what you've realized!? You've uncovered the secrets of Oxycise!, a cheap and cheese-burning way to huff, puff your way to fitness! You did!"

Anyway, she's done with every last detail. Time to get back to all the money you'll save.

No more having to remember the spin instructor goes by Trey because there was already a Trevor! No more being told you can't return a tent after you've fashioned it into underpants! No more Trevors turning out to be a man-shaped nest of snakes and this cave is not a gym at all! And what's the deal with the loud, redundancy of gym music? Do unexpected snakes have a rule against saxophones? Where am I? Saxophone snakes!? I've absolutely lost perspective on how to make fun of this woman. There's never been anything this dumb. She is five pages away from explaining breathing itself.

That wasn't a joke! On page 49, Jill decides to go over some of the basics of oxygen, including how you need it, which you would know if you'd ever been in a boating accident! She is urgently explaining the importance of breathing to us like we're a baby she found in space. What's the deal with breathing, anyway? People these days! Their pants are too tight for a– sorry, I'll let Jill tell the joke:

One of Jill's many Avoidable Mistakes is that you fashionable breathers, with your girdles and your panic disorders, are exhaling all wrong. This is why you're fat! Why you have to trample through a tent to craft a swimsuit, dummy! Try to imagine how long Jill R. Johnson had to have been living with this idea, that breathing is the secret to fitness, for it to molt and mutate into this monstrosity. Look at how smug she is, talking about belt owners like they all made some rookie air mistake. I can't criticize her for this, though. I'm the same way when I see a chef preparing mashed potatoes without his penis.

Look, simple child, it's not your fault you breathe like a half-dead tiktaalik in a girdle. It's society. All these buttons, all these machines. You never had a chance. Don't get the author wrong, she loves living in this modern world of indoor ovens, but it's not like she lets stove buttons get in the way of her breathing like you do. Speaking of cooking food, stop goddamn doing it!

Jill is so tired of this modern society with its oxygen-killing food heat. Oh, you have some seeds? Good, those count as breathi– wait, no! Don't roast th– fuck. FUCK!

…

Let's just move on to the last mistake most people make.

Oh… Jill! You card!

Okay, it's been fifty-five pages. Jill has told us, several times, about the financial drain of all non-Oxycise! workouts. She's told us about the asthma, the tent panties, the fad diets, the suffocating belts, and the many, many other mistakes we have made thus far in our lives. And we get it. We screwed up. It's time now, in Chapter Two, for her to teach us the right way to do it.

Jesus fucking Christ, Jill.

If I didn't know better, I'd swear the creator of Oxycise! was trying not to talk about what Oxycise! actually is. I'll skip ahead to Chapter Three.

Stop telling me why I need to Oxycise!! I bought the fucking book, Jill! Please just tell me what I'm supposed to do and how to do it, because I'm starting to worry I've already been doing it. Automatically, and since birth. I fucking hate you, I hate this. You write like a chimpanzee yearning for the day it's not being strangled.

Oh my god. It is page 70 and Jill is still trying to convince us breathing is some novel challenge. We know what breathing is, Jill! It looks like you know we know! If you gave this to a kindergarten teacher they'd say, "I'm sorry, but I can't give you any leeway simply because you're a turtle who died slowly in a tuna net. The paper is an F minus."

I assume you knew this, but Jill isn't done. She keeps selling the reader on breathing for another full chapter. Not the breathing workout you were expecting, of course, but still the basic concept of not suffocating in a plastic bag. Breathing! It's "The Big Kahuna!" on the surf scene of your torso! What the shitting fuck is she doing here? It's like she wrote a baby book for rock monsters who use us as food. If I showed this to my three-year-old daughter, she'd call 9-1-1 and say "HI, DADDY BATH SALTS AGAIN."

Jill takes a couple pages to list the harmful side effects of Oxycise! except, what's this?, they're all good things!? How droll, how humorous. This is the half-remembered, mistold legend of the dumbest thought any woman ever had. For 77 pages this imbecile has tried to describe breathing to a species of readers with lungs, and now she's being sarcastic? You mashed potato indulgent cow, you haven't earned sarcasm!

Wait, wait, everyone shut up. It's here! We made it! Chapter Six: The Oxycise! Basic Breath!

It only took 85 pages, but we are about to learn how to Oxycise!. And I hope it didn't come as a surprise that there were only four steps and the last two were "bre" and "athe."

I'm kidding. There is more to this fitness program than sitting down and remembering to not die. There's also some complaining (the same shit she was saying earlier about today's society leading to chest breathers) and some advanced tips like "don't breathe with your shoulders." I don't know what to say. When ancient Sumerians invented written language, the first thing they did was make it impossible to describe something this devoid of meaning. Fundamentally, Oxycise! is nothing in a way there can be no conscious thought for.

In addition to being less than any idea before it, this book is also occasionally wrong by its own internal rules. No good will come from splitting hairs such as these, but Jill might say something like "there's no ideal height and weight for anyone" six sentences before also saying, "Use the standard Metropolitan Life Insurance Height and Weight chart." I'm not sure another soul has ever read this book. If so, I am bonded to them across time; they are the only one who could truly understand this struggle, this ultimate frustration.

For 86 pages this book has kept the question "there has to be more to this than breathing, right?" unresolved, but not in a fun way like the stern woman I pay to keep mashed potatoes just out of penetration range. Is this the article where I'm doing callbacks to mashed potato fucking? It's been so long, I can't remember. Am I still the mayor of Iron Eagle?

Don't let the Inhale step of the breathing process go to waste. Use it as an opportunity to work your face muscles! If you're having trouble with Inhale, move in the opposite direction of your smile. You've probably forgotten your head is in a bucket of water, the most common type of Oxycise! injury.

Jill moves on to the next step, Exhale, which means for some of you slower readers, these will be the last words you see. Goodbye! Exhaling is hard to explain, so forgive Jill for failing to find the words. It's like using a trumpet, or a reverse straw, but I'm leaving some of the details out. And keep those buns tight. Thinking a fart was an exhale is another great way to die doing this.

Let's move on to breathing while standing up. Think of standing like draining the drool out of a churro, or a sideways nap. Like 25% of a spider playing the accordion, yet don't let that trick you into untucking your buns. With every letter I type about this book, another tooth falls out, rattled loose by my screams.

Chapter 348: Duck Butt, Duck Butt.

I was there when Jill spent 8000 words explaining over and over again how much workout clothes money we were going to save by switching to Oxycise!. That means these are her normal clothes. She dresses like this for everything. She goes to the bank in her breathing leotard. She goes to her adult food swallowing class dressed like this.

Hold on a second. This is late in the book to be considering this, and maybe it's only occurring to me because of the half-nude woman presenting her erogenous zones and, as I've mentioned several times, COSMICALLY nothing else, but is this a sex thing? Is this how you snuck an autoerotic asphyxiation book past your publisher in 1997? I think I'm onto something because this last part of the book starts with Jill telling me about my magnificent body:

Oh, but it ends with the Holocaust? I am so goddamn confused. Let's keep reading.

Ha ha what the fucking fuck is this book. The End!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: TatersTales, 42 minutes into a supervised breathing session and showing excellent compliance.

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