It’s that glorious time of year when I start feeling a bit like how Wednesday Addams might feel if she worked in a greeting card store and had to spend her day dusting off and unpacking Precious Moments figures:

I actually have a whole fan fiction idea based on this idea, but I digress!

The past couple of days at work it was too cool in my workplace to blast the high velocity fans I like to use to drown out holiday music. Well, the inside of a morgue’s corpse storage unit wouldn’t be too cold for me, but I had to (gasp) work with the other people on my team and I wanted to respect their wishes (seriously just work harder or put on a damn parka if you’re cold, lol).

So I had to hear every cover of Last Christmas, hear every cover of All I Want For Christmas Is You and hear Sia’s utter inability to enunciate.

By the time I was done with work and revving up for my commute home, I had a pathological need to hear some songs with more edge, angst, hate and despair. Trust me, it helps me feel better after an onslaught of joy, cheesiness and…more joy. Ho ho f—-ing ho, already!

Which made me reunite with a favorite album of auld – The Downward Spiral by nine inch nails, released in 1994, when I was 22. Have I outgrown this album? No! Do I listen to someone more mature now, like Tony Bennett or Josh Groban? also no!

Someone on my Facebook friends list recently shared a meme similar to this one:

I may be 50 something, and boy does my body like to remind me of that every day – but mentally, I still feel like I’m way younger than that! Immaturity? Possibly! As Sting so eloquently sang in the song Shadows in the Rain:

They say I suffer from delusion…but I’m so confident I’m sane…

I felt like a baby being swaddled in one of those strait jacket things while listening to this nearly 30 year old album. Ahhh! Gen X lullabies! Though truth be told, my mom said I hated those swaddler things when I was a baby!

You trivia nerds might already know that this album was recorded in the same Los Angeles mansion where the Sharon Tate murders – and other murders occurred. The house is rumored to be haunted.

Another bit of trivia is that nine inch nails songwriter, founder and frontman Trent Reznor refused to take antidepressants while recording this album, although his hired band mates suggested he do so. I think the album would have not been the same had he listened to them. I can barely stand listening to the Cure’s Friday I’m in Love (gag), perish the thought of a happier version of Big Man With a Gun, Hurt, The Day The World Went Away or Heresy! Not to mention the title track about suicide….Or a family friendly version of the Closer video, where Reznor is joyously using playground swings, wearing a red track suit and smiling broadly instead of dangling from meat hooks in head to toe black leather and steampunk goggles!

Sometimes those dark feelings remind you of your humanity and can be cathartic – and make you really appreciate those times when you laugh at an image of a really fat squirrel in the University of Michigan Diag or something (I was obsessed with those porky squirrels for a minute about a year ago). Or like when you’re watching that Beavis and Butt-Head episode where Beavis tries on yoga pants – and has trouble getting out of them (God I thought I was going to pee myself watching that I laughed so hard)!

The above image is an AI generated image I made about a year ago. This is why the robots won’t let me sit with them in the cafeteria anymore! 🙂

Now to think about those other songs that soothe my nerves after a full frontal attack by Mariah Carey lying about what she wants for Christmas! Why is my Rage Against the Machine song selection so limited? And what about the Downward Spiral extras/and remixes that I had on CD? Download time!

Happy Thanksgiving Eve, everyone!