Happy hardcore is a terrible genre of music. However, it is no longer horrible when you combine it
with certain other things that are horrible. This is weird because it happens in other
places, such as when you combine pictures of cats with jokes in bad grammar, or
when you floss really hard while having angry thoughts about your grandmother, or when you have a sex dream about Justin Bieber right after your divorce, and you are both dolphins, like the kind of making out that would happen in his video right when he decides to start being sexy for real but he can't get all Cry Me a River yet because his fanbase's moms will get angry, and secretly turned on, and that will make them more angry, but he doesn't have adult fans yet like Skrillex and Maroon 5. I have been thinking about some things that happy hardcore music goes well with, because I just had a job in a cubicle for five months, and they had a fluorescent light in there that made everyone look like they had just been cooking meth for the past 12 hours, and then had to dissolve a corpse in a bathtub full of acid, and the acid had eaten through the floor so that all of the blood and chemicals and ceramic and ceiling stuff came falling onto the ground, and they had to clean it up. Or at least like they had had to watch that episode of Breaking Bad several different times in a row, because office jobs are sort of like both of these experiences, except in a quietly desperate way like how plants scream right before you clip them. Truth. Read on internet.
I listened to music on my phone while working at that job,
which wasn’t too bad, because I was writing words, rather than filling out
cells in Excel spreadsheets, or sending many emails that ended in “Thanks!”,
and every time, every single time, you think, “Should I say ‘Best’? Or just
sign my name? Is that rude? Why are these emails so impersonal? Is there some
acceptable way to make small talk, or otherwise send a little code to the other
human, that I am a human?" But then you try to, and they don’t do anything back,
and you feel like a jerk, and then you forget to send the attachment, and you
have to resend it, and say something like, “Oops! I forgot the attachment,” and then you feel like you are betraying your personal brand by using enthusiastic punctuation.
I started listening to a lot of music when I was at this
job, and I noticed that I wanted to listen to electronic music that I have now
learned is popular among the 9 to 16-year-old demographic. This includes
Skrillex, Kaskade, Deadmaus, and other electronic pop (“EDM”) artists that you
are not supposed to like. But you know what Julia Childs liked? McDonalds french
fries. Fucking loved them. Julia Childs was fucking furious when they removed the beef fat from McDonald's french fries.
I tell myself that I am a music critic, and am therefore allowed to like cheesy electronic music. I am sure this is similar to the stories that other music critics tell about liking hair metal, or Maroon 5, or YouTube videos of Carl Sagan in auto-tune. I think that if I lived in a cool context, or a context where I identified as cool, and not in some absurd and random suburban context, I would probably not tell people that I like artists such as Skrillex. I would just like Skrillex secretly, the way that I can’t even buy Cheez-Its, or the way that I once spent three weeks of my life watching every single episode of Golden Girls, not as a joke but really, and I guess that seemed ok because we rented them on VHS from the library, and my boyfriend/ex-husband person was really hot, and dressed well, and had a funny Golden Girls dance that he did at the intro that made him look like a sarcastic gay stripper.
I started listening to Happy Hardcore towards the end of
this job, right before they laid me off, and paid me a lot of money to go away.
Which, by the way, is a weird feeling. You are insulted, and also feel like you
finally got a good scratch-off, or, like, a great scratch-off. The scratch-off
that you dream about. What are you going to do with all that cash.
I was also drinking Sprite Zero from the company fridge at
this time. I was in a manic phase, and had stopped eating months ago, and had
stopped sleeping as well, and I felt like a crazy, beautiful angel of
death/crack head. I will not go into all of that, because you would get bored
really quickly, and think that maybe I should just go do some angry flossing
and read a spiritual self-help book.
Which, oh yeah, I read those, too. I was a lit major in
college and have read Ulysses, Kant, and all that other shit, and I also read
self-help books. I sometimes read them while compulsively going into the
kitchen to eat more Cheez-its, which I have closed with one of those clampy
things, just so I will have to think about it, and put way on top of the
fridge, but I still go and eat more of them, and then I count how many calories
that is, and then I think about how many hours I am going to have to spend on
the treadmill listening to happy hardcore music. The treadmill is one thing
that is horrible, that when combined with happy hardcore music, becomes fucking
awesome. I seriously ran so hard on the treadmill while listening to a happy hardcore
mix two days after Thanksgiving, still high on green bean casserole, that I did
something to my leg where it is visibly twitching. I have not seen anything
inside my body move like that since I had a baby inside my body, and I’m not
sure if that’s bad or not, but I don’t have health insurance anymore, so I
guess I’ll just hope it goes away. I read that potassium helps, and that it can
also be a sign of diabetes or multiple sclerosis or irritable leg syndrome. I
really hope it is going to be ok.
So here are the things that happy hardcore goes well with,
things that are horrible, that then become not horrible.
- Sprite Zero or any other drink that has no caffeine or any reason to drink it really other than for a fake sugar high that you don’t even believe while it’s happening
- Administrative work or any work in an office that has carpeted cubicles because they do hate you and they are trying to make you kill yourself
- The treadmill, and you go fast then slow, fast then slow, many times, while reading the MSNBC captions, and wondering how anyone could ever want to hear news from a man with Botox and fake tan makeup and swivel hair
- Meth
- The poetry of Sylvia Plath
- Binge-eating cold leftover green bean casserole out of the fridge while thinking about your BMI
- Driving for a long time with someone you no longer have anything to talk about with, that is a headphones situation
- Teaching your toddler how to perform household chores
- Rearranging all of the clothes in your closet while getting really upset about how you don’t have enough money to really develop your personal brand, even though people seem effete and kind of fake in coffee shops and whatnot when they are too good at it, and it seems impossible to represent yourself authentically in an outfit that took that much planning, but maybe I’m just jealous because I look like an asshole when I try to wear anything other than like thermals and corduroy, and I always buy pink shirts when I am happy, even though I never actually want to wear pink, and I’m 30, and I still do that, I have probably spent hundreds of dollars on pink clothing that I never wore and will probably keep doing it forever.
And this is
the stuff you think about while listening to happy hardcore, but it doesn’t seem
too terrible anymore, and that is how you use it to help you get through life.
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