Radioactive Blues

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I haven't done any writing since Mom got really sick, and me too. But I'm sitting here listening to Tom Petty, Dave Matthews, Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash and Randy Newman (my iPod is confused, too). Something happened, a song. Imagine this written and performed by one or more of the above guys.

Radioactive Blues

I fell in love like an atomic bomb
But she left me flat as Nagasaki
I wanted to take her home to my Mom
But she changed the keys and tossed my shoes
Now there ain't nothing left of me.
You couldn't find my heart with a Geiger counter
Yes, I'm completely blown apart since I found her
Cause I got them radioactive blues!

I'm in love with a plutonium blonde
I'm as flat as the sands of Trinity
When I met my love the atom age dawned
She kicked me out, I got nothing to lose,
Cause there ain't nothing left of me.
You couldn't find her heart with a Geiger counter
Yes, I'm completely blown apart since I found her
Once I got them radioactive blues!

Don't fall in love with a nuclear tart
Who'll leave you flat as Hiroshima
She'll blow your soul completely apart
Your atoms just drifting in ones and twos.
Your poor hopes couldn't get dimmer
You won't find your heart with a Geiger counter
If you're completely blown apart once you found her
Cause you got them radioactive blues!

Comments

nucular tune

Sounds like the poor singer doesn't even have half a life left.

Enriching

laika's picture

Nifty little number. Reminds me of all the songs & dance numbers peppered throughout Pynchon's novels. "Plutonium Blonde" is priceless! This got me to toying with something in the classic Delta Blues vein...

21st Century Blues

Well I was born in the West Tower
I rode that sucker down
Tornados and firefights
Raging all over town
You know the Devil was my midwife
Crossed himself when he saw me crown...

I also enjoyed the peak at your playlist. I always wondered what you listen to. Mi gusta!
~~~big hugs, LAIKA

what really scares me.

Those of us who grew up during the cold war get most of the "funny, UH OH." of this. The kids of today, who never had to practice air raid drills, or know what the little yellow signs on the post office are for, might be a little lost. I like it though. Good job Erin.

Much love, for you and your mom.
Toni

Believable

So many people who didn't grow up "under the bomb" as they/we called it, don't have a clue that a whole lot of people were just waiting for WWIII to start while simultaneously pretending (to stay sane) that the threat really didn't exist. My father had a bomb shelter made out of an underground rifle range at our house in Chevy Chase, MD, not far from Washington DC, in 1961. I was too young to understand the Cuban Missile Crisis, but he was an engineer working on missile defense systems and was aware. People would like to forget that Castro was actually eager to use the nukes on Washington and NYC and start WWIII; it was the Russians, who weren't completely mad, that put a stop to that. Still, it almost happened. The Ruskies miscalculated slightly when they thought Kennedy was a patsy who wouldn't react to nuclear missiles staged 90 miles from Florida, which would have decimated our second strike capability, and they didn't back down from their nuclear blackmail easily.

Dramas like "Fail Safe," dark comedies like "Dr. Strangelove," and songs like "The Merry Minuet" were all reflections of the feelings of those dangerous days.

Aardvark

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

Mahatma Gandhi

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

Mahatma Gandhi

Gosh,

Angharad's picture

And I just went out to play while all this was going on, oblivious of oblivion! (Didn't read the Guardian when I was 8-9).

Angharad

Angharad