The candle burns to the end.

[reddragdiva]

The lack of IMPENDING THERMONUCLEAR APOCALYPSE is why goth sucks these days. It's almost impossible to get this across to anyone under thirty.

(thanks to s0b for inspiration)

Update: Fifty-one comments from other people in just over an hour? This could be my greatest hit.

Update 2: This has now inspired marnameow to a poll.

Comments

[steer.livejournal.com]

Which explains why the best goth tunes were in the 50s and 60s and it was never quite so convincing after that?

[sbp.livejournal.com]

http://www.footlight.com/product.cfm?product_id=30463

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

Think Ronnie Reagan plz k thx.

[vatine]

Yeah, the angst about nuclear threats has been vastly diminished from the mid-late 70s. Notyhing is as before, not even nostalgia. I demand a more interesting past as time goes by!

[tals.livejournal.com]

Speak fer yerself! I spent half the 80s literally waiting for the end on a daily basis... and dear gods, the nightmares.

[neenaw.livejournal.com]

Bloody candles!

[plinkymoo.livejournal.com]

Threaten to kill them - that might help! :-D

[reddragdiva]

The world remains a dangerous place. But it's not THE END OF HUMANITY AND ALL LIFE ON EARTH danger in popular culture.

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

Can't you just substitute SERIOUS AND CREDIBLE TERRORIST THREATS? C'mon, just give it a try.

[reddragdiva]

I just can't see hardcore punk working off that one.

[tals.livejournal.com]

Too true.

[phelyan.livejournal.com]

Give the radical elements in the world a few more years to develop/steal/buy their own nuclear devices.

Actually, that doesn't quite cut it, does it? We need to be sure that any missile launched will trigger a 20x Overkill... damn...

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Yes, otherwise it's just a James Bond plot.

[tviokh.livejournal.com]

Clearly we need to get Bush to threaten North Korea a little more.
That'd up the threat level.

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

Not quite enough for THE END OF HUMANITY AND ALL LIFE ON EARTH danger in popular culture.

[ex-jacquelin411.livejournal.com]

I know when I was under 30, I wouldn't listen to anyone over 30. Now that I'm way over 30, I've noticed that anyone under 30 thinks we're old geezers that don't know what we're talking about. Well, maybe _I_ don't, but most 30+ people do! ;)

[sbp.livejournal.com]

It's the 30+ people who have access to the big red buttons to push....

[m0rbid-princess.livejournal.com]

You want to watch The Atomic Cafe (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083590/)... It's hilarious and will bring back those Cold War memories :)

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, marnameow's a big fan - we have it on DVD. Along with Strangelove, Threads, The War Game, The Stand and anything else apocalypsy she can get her mitts on.

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

Wah, I miss the cold war too!

I have the following quote in my sigmonster's stash, btw:

"Complacency is bad and leads to ecstasy-fueled dance music. Perhaps a
general atmosphere of impending doom will lead to some decent punk
rock." -- David Gerard, post-WTC

[reddragdiva]

You're trying to get our American readers to lynch me, aren't you?

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Ah, but us thirtysomething Cold War nostalgists have Subterranea Britannica and the 'SRG' - very dark and creepy.

Anyway, youngsters these days can grow up watching a more leisurely man-made apocalypse, picking at the cancer scabs and documenting the extinction of all life on Earth bigger than a cockroach.

Gotta be some Goff music in that.

[zey.livejournal.com]

Speaking of which, if you ever see a flick called Fail Safe (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058083/) on late night telly, watch it. It's an excellent Cold War era movie starring Henry Fonda.

Watching it today, the Cold War's over, but, the movie's still damned suspenseful. It would have given me nightmares for weeks if i'd seen that in the 1960s.

[reddragdiva]

Unless you're older than you look, I thought you'd yet to be born in the 1960s.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Yes. Absolutely. Probably a point I may or may not have been trying to make for some time.

1) Buy lots of tanks
2) Everyone start queueing
3) Profit!

Oh, and while we're at it?

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

AIDS just isn't as scary as it used to be, either.

I was *traumatized* by those grim reaper ads, *traumatized* I tell you! Every time I got a head cold I thought I had AIDS and was going to die! Course, if someone had bothered to EXPLAIN SEX TO ME a little earlier, I might not have been so confused ;)

For God so loved the world, that He started World War III

[ihcoyc.livejournal.com]

Things look a little different from the US of A, where the dispensationalists (http://www.dispensationalism.com/) all want us to build more bombs and get more involved in military adventures in the Mideast. They're quite sure that the kingdom of the Antichrist and Beast is just around the corner, and they can't wait, because they're confident God will poof them all to Heaven in the Rapture before all the wars and famines and plagues get serious.

I'm not at all sure how much the Bush administration takes this malarkey seriously, but the Republicans' thoughts on foreign policy are driven at least in part by the desire to cater to these feebs and their prophecies. They are programming World War III (http://www.hallindseyoracle.com/) to do God a favour.

Re: For God so loved the world, that He started World War III

[reddragdiva]

Well, goodness! When's the angstful goth start?

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Hell, that's the reason why so much rock, all the way around, sucks as badly as it does. You can't get away with a good scream over our impending destruction when said destruction ain't gonna happen, so instead we get Nirvana/Wallflowers/Linkin Park whimpering of "Mommy won't let me buy heroin with her credit card! I'm gonna buy a Creed album to protest!"

Is THAT what it is?

[jauncourt.livejournal.com]

(short interlude to do a mental inventory of my early BadGothPoetry)

God's Nads! The man is right. Goth apparently bit it around the same time I gave up on my cycle of Hiroshima/Nagasaki memorial poems due to Chronic Lack of Relevance.

Of course, try to explain to anyone under thirty what it feels like to do A-bomb drills (we had to in my school as late as 1978) and the think you're talking terrorists. Maybe there's hope.

[reddragdiva]

If ecstasy had come along just after the end of the Cold War, it would explain so much.

(pictures Reagan and Gorbachev on E, scrubs skull with wire brush to remove image)

By the way, I think I'll be using your jacket relining tips.

[damien-wise.livejournal.com]

Bring back the cold war!
Hmm, I know this sounds awfully hopeful, but maybe if Dubbya gets re-elected...?
*dream-bubble hatches from head...then gets snagged on the staples firmly holding hand to forehead*

*wanders off in search of iodine pills*

[gths.livejournal.com]

Don't look at me, I was listening to Midnight Oil and shit like "Minutes To Midnight". (Though I'm not goth, so I don't count.)

[kest]

assorted thoughts:

So I'm gothy because of that obsession with postnuclear holocaust literature in my young age?

I suppose you do feel the need to live a little harder when death is staring you in the face.

*yawn* Yes, yes, we're all going to die. Get on with it already.

I'm under thirty, you know.

Really, you can cross out goth and just start the sentence 'the problem with kids these days...' like a proper crotchety old fart.

[reddragdiva]

Of course! As such, I've changed the post to have this icon.

[dukeofmelbourne.livejournal.com]

Well, we still have a *soft* apocalypse (and a *failed* Singularity) to look "forward" to . . .

Have you listened to the Screaming Banshee Aircrew (track - "Banshee Aircrew") yet, O Wise DavidGerard?

Jay Superfluous

[reddragdiva]

Oh Jesus, everyone really does, have a LiveJournal.

I've met ant_girl! Does that count for SBA cred?

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

It's not under *30* yet - people born after about *1977* don't remember knowing that the world was going to end any moment now.

[reddragdiva]

It does depend on the individual. Your awareness of your surroundings was probably greater than that of others. But the way it was sort of switched off out of the culture at the end of 1991, all of a sudden ...