Oh Injury

Although many of the songs obviously support Rasputina's research of old southern custom's and songs I think no other song on the album reflects the desperation and hardships that the poorer classes faced. The song is about poor workers - either in factories, railways, mines etc who would suffer from horrendous injuries.

"He got hurt by the blast. Oh woe is he, unable to see In front of his face."

Many times if you were very ill or in pain you had to get up and go to work anyway. Back then if you got hurt that was it - your time was up since there wasn't any health care and the bosses sure as hell didn't care what happened. You can see this reflected in the lines

"One kind of fold, they don't know it's broke. The others don't care. They just sit and complain about imagined pain. About an uncle who fell down the stairs."

The rich are in a different class than the workers. They live a life comfortable enough that they can afford to obsess over little things in their health. To make matters worse around the time many of the songs Rasputina researched a lot of workers were getting replaced by machinery. This was really a hard time for a lot of people.

I think this song has a lot of symbolism relating to the turn of industrialization in the early 1900's, and can also be applied to the replacement of man in idustrialization today. The injury can refer to a hurt ego, that a machine can perform a job better then a man could

For me, personally, I think "Oh Injury" is about how someone is "rebuilding" themselves to be apathetic because they have grown tired of not having the life they wanted and always feeling like crap, so they've decided to make themselves apathetic so they wouldn't have to feel all that. The machine is what the man wants to become. He wants to be mechanical so that he doesn't have to feel all the sadness of the world. And Melora's "character" is trying to break him out of it and take him out of that apathy. And if my opinion is what the song is about then I love love love the metaphor.

Um. Something about a guy who rebuilds himself with machine parts? I have no idea.

I don't know about you, but I sort of see a connection to "Remnants of Pecy Bass".

does the toohpick, pen knife, and can opener really mean anything?

i think that this song is more about how sometimes a man never recovers mentally from an injury.they are down for th count,though they have been repaired physically,they still feel they are too broken to pick their lives up again,or they use it as a crutch when they don't feel they can live up to the full potential that they had before. the toothpick,pen knife and canopener are symbolic of the fact that he has gained his dexterity,but is not willing to go back into the work force because of this horrible injury.