We Will All Go Together When We Go
Jan. 30th, 2026 12:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeWe Will All Go Together When We Go
Summary: a failed stand-up comedian walks into a bar at the end of the world. What’re you having?
Series: none (stand-alone)
Word Count: 1400
Notes: Winner of the January 2026 fan poll, originally written 1/2/2020… and man, I don't know how I feel about posting this story considering what's happening politically right now. This is a rare case where I’ll be quoting liberally from a real song, because Tom Lehrer, who made “We Will All Go Together When We Go,” put all of his music and lyrics into the public domain in 2022. (https://tomlehrersongs.com/disclaimer/) You can listen to the song and read the lyrics here: https://tomlehrersongs.com/we-will-all-go-together-when-we-go/ He died July 26, 2025.
A funny thing happened today, on the way to Armageddon. Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you all about it!
Because I was there, that’s why. No, there, there. In shitting distance when it came down. Amazing I wasn’t killed.
Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, Chuckles. Everyone’s a critic nowadays. You buying or not?
That’s better. Okay, so it went like this…
No point in introductions, I figure. Who’s got the time? We’ll all know each other soon enough, and who I am is the least interesting part of me. Now, what I do (or, more accurately, what I fail to do) is stand-up. Comedy, smart guy!
But nobody wants real comedy these days. It’s all Postmodernist Dada, sound and absurdity covering the nihilistic void of existential terror: spiders Georg and wild hogs and soviet Russia. Kids these days, I’d say, but my wife was into it too. Well. Ex-wife. Anyway.
So here I am, crying all the way to the bank, when that bomb comes down. Don’t suppose you know who dropped it? No? Me either. Guess it doesn’t matter, there’s so many of ‘em. Maybe they took numbers and got in line. Maybe someone skipped. Maybe it was us.
But no shit, there I was, and I hear that sound, that warning whistle, and no time to duck and cover! It came down like a shooting star, took out the bank (and good riddance to them!), managed to somehow miraculously miss every single person in the damned place (for all the good it did us), and then the thing didn’t even have the decency to go off! Just stuck out of the ground like God’s teenage erection, if God was dark red and jizzed uranium.
How do you screw up that bad? Makes me feel good about my life, I tell you. I might’ve been a bomb in the comedy scene, but at least I went off!
How’d you hear about it? Your phone? Right, right. Don’t know why I bothered asking.
It’s going to go off eventually. We all know it. We can feel it. The timer just got wrong somehow. Maybe they forgot Daylight Savings Time. Maybe they’re just dicking with us.
Now, since I don’t have a pocket Internet, I got to watch the reaction in real-time. Like a wave: folks calling their loved ones, dropping everything. No screaming, though. All quiet. Eerie, I tell you. Everyone got real polite and quiet all of a sudden.
Me? No, no. I have no one to call, nothing to do. What’m I going to do, crack jokes in a time like this? And I sure as hell wasn’t going far from Nuclear Viagra over there, I tell you! Other people, oh sure, they were running or at least power-walking away, but not me. You ever learn about Hiroshima? They still talk about that now? Well, they did in my time, and so I know if you’re close when it goes off, boom! That’s it. Vaporized instant death. But if you’re further away, you might survive that first blast, for a bit anyway. Then it’s the radiation what gets you, and slowly… it’s bad. I’m too old for that. I’m staying right here, thank you very much.
But what to do till then? It’s been a couple hours now; thing’s sure taking its sweet time, isn’t it? I tried waiting for a while, but then I decided I didn’t want to die waiting in a bank. Who does?
So what to do instead?
People were leaving. Not the panic mobs you’d expect either, it was all very calm and orderly. Same as you saw? Gee. I guess, what’s to panic over when it’s been coming for so long, right? What I saw was, people weren’t even going for their cars, most of ‘em! But who’d want to outrun a nuke by car in this town, am I right? Can you imagine Harvard Square about now? Brr! Talk about a fate worse than death.
Maybe they’re all waiting for the bus. Ha!
Anyway, by the time I got up, it was already empty, sort of. Folks had left, or gone in to be with their families or their fallout shelters, them what had ‘em. Oh, they’re still around; I’ve seen ‘em on Comm Ave! But where’d that leave me? Look at me, do you think I could afford a fallout shelter in this town? Really? That’s nice of you.
The old masters, they’d find some way to make this funny. Groucho, Mel, all them mugs. But I couldn’t think of a damn thing. The streets were so quiet, I didn’t even have an audience.
If you can’t make your own gags, steal ‘em. So I started singing Tom Lehrer, “We Will All Go Together When We Go.” You know it? No? Well, allow me to enlighten you. Imagine me singing it to an empty street, and while you’re at it, imagine I got the pipes of Pavarotti and the looks of Casanova. You ready? It goes like this:
“No more ashes, no more sackcloth,
“An an armband made of black cloth
“Will someday never more adorn a sleeve
“For if the bomb that drops on you
“Gets your friends and neighbors too…”
And then this window shoots open! Bam! And I hear, “There’ll be nobody left behind to grieve!” Scared the bejesus out of me. I almost fell out of the chorus, but let nobody say I can’t take a surprise, I can improv with the best of ‘em, so we brayed like jackasses together:
“And we will all go together when we go,
“What a comforting fact that is to know,
“Universal bereavement,
“An inspiring achievement,
“Yes we all will go together when we go!”
That’s what I love about this town. I don’t care if he was a New York man, he was ours too, and even at the end of the world, you sing Tom Lehrer in this shit-hole town and someone, someone will know the tune. It was some young thing too, with pink hair and more holes than I did after my Purple Heart. That’s them over there… hey, Unique! Check out the new blood! I know, right?
So anyway, we sing the whole thing together, and then this bar at the end of the street (which I had never set foot in) opens the door and a guy I didn’t know (but I do now—hi, Bill!) shouts out at us to come and sing in here. So we do, and now we’ve got a whole bar full of flies determined to drink their way to the end of the world, playing back-up, and when we run out of verses, we make up our own, and somewhere along the way we figure out what’s money and beer between friends at a time like this? So the bartender starts putting it all on our tabs, then says the hell with it and puts it all on the house.
And then we ran out of songs, even made-up ones, and then you walked in looking shell-shocked, and now here we all are. Best audience I’ve had in my life. Who knew?
I see you looking out that window. The army’s not coming. They’ve got any sense at all, they’ve high-tailed it as far away out of the blast radius as they can get. Even assuming it wasn’t them who dropped it on us in the first place, there’s no stopping this; why kill a bunch of their own men trying to?
It’s just us. Just here. Waiting for last call. A bunch of strangers—well, who’s a stranger at the end of the world?—waiting for that damn thing to blow.
Could we have stopped this, do you think? Kept it all from happening? Surely we could’ve, somewhere, somehow. I don’t know. I guess it’s too late now, right?
It’s sure taking its time. Hurry up, already! The anticipation's killing me!
Well, anyway. You’ve been awful quiet. Guess I can’t blame you. Here, have a drink, on me. What’re you in for? What’ve you seen?
If you’re the last person I ever see, might as well get to know you. Tell me something!
We’ve got all the time in the world.
At least I made someone laugh before the end.
Summary: a failed stand-up comedian walks into a bar at the end of the world. What’re you having?
Series: none (stand-alone)
Word Count: 1400
Notes: Winner of the January 2026 fan poll, originally written 1/2/2020… and man, I don't know how I feel about posting this story considering what's happening politically right now. This is a rare case where I’ll be quoting liberally from a real song, because Tom Lehrer, who made “We Will All Go Together When We Go,” put all of his music and lyrics into the public domain in 2022. (https://tomlehrersongs.com/disclaimer/) You can listen to the song and read the lyrics here: https://tomlehrersongs.com/we-will-all-go-together-when-we-go/ He died July 26, 2025.
A funny thing happened today, on the way to Armageddon. Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you all about it!
Because I was there, that’s why. No, there, there. In shitting distance when it came down. Amazing I wasn’t killed.
Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, Chuckles. Everyone’s a critic nowadays. You buying or not?
That’s better. Okay, so it went like this…
No point in introductions, I figure. Who’s got the time? We’ll all know each other soon enough, and who I am is the least interesting part of me. Now, what I do (or, more accurately, what I fail to do) is stand-up. Comedy, smart guy!
But nobody wants real comedy these days. It’s all Postmodernist Dada, sound and absurdity covering the nihilistic void of existential terror: spiders Georg and wild hogs and soviet Russia. Kids these days, I’d say, but my wife was into it too. Well. Ex-wife. Anyway.
So here I am, crying all the way to the bank, when that bomb comes down. Don’t suppose you know who dropped it? No? Me either. Guess it doesn’t matter, there’s so many of ‘em. Maybe they took numbers and got in line. Maybe someone skipped. Maybe it was us.
But no shit, there I was, and I hear that sound, that warning whistle, and no time to duck and cover! It came down like a shooting star, took out the bank (and good riddance to them!), managed to somehow miraculously miss every single person in the damned place (for all the good it did us), and then the thing didn’t even have the decency to go off! Just stuck out of the ground like God’s teenage erection, if God was dark red and jizzed uranium.
How do you screw up that bad? Makes me feel good about my life, I tell you. I might’ve been a bomb in the comedy scene, but at least I went off!
How’d you hear about it? Your phone? Right, right. Don’t know why I bothered asking.
It’s going to go off eventually. We all know it. We can feel it. The timer just got wrong somehow. Maybe they forgot Daylight Savings Time. Maybe they’re just dicking with us.
Now, since I don’t have a pocket Internet, I got to watch the reaction in real-time. Like a wave: folks calling their loved ones, dropping everything. No screaming, though. All quiet. Eerie, I tell you. Everyone got real polite and quiet all of a sudden.
Me? No, no. I have no one to call, nothing to do. What’m I going to do, crack jokes in a time like this? And I sure as hell wasn’t going far from Nuclear Viagra over there, I tell you! Other people, oh sure, they were running or at least power-walking away, but not me. You ever learn about Hiroshima? They still talk about that now? Well, they did in my time, and so I know if you’re close when it goes off, boom! That’s it. Vaporized instant death. But if you’re further away, you might survive that first blast, for a bit anyway. Then it’s the radiation what gets you, and slowly… it’s bad. I’m too old for that. I’m staying right here, thank you very much.
But what to do till then? It’s been a couple hours now; thing’s sure taking its sweet time, isn’t it? I tried waiting for a while, but then I decided I didn’t want to die waiting in a bank. Who does?
So what to do instead?
People were leaving. Not the panic mobs you’d expect either, it was all very calm and orderly. Same as you saw? Gee. I guess, what’s to panic over when it’s been coming for so long, right? What I saw was, people weren’t even going for their cars, most of ‘em! But who’d want to outrun a nuke by car in this town, am I right? Can you imagine Harvard Square about now? Brr! Talk about a fate worse than death.
Maybe they’re all waiting for the bus. Ha!
Anyway, by the time I got up, it was already empty, sort of. Folks had left, or gone in to be with their families or their fallout shelters, them what had ‘em. Oh, they’re still around; I’ve seen ‘em on Comm Ave! But where’d that leave me? Look at me, do you think I could afford a fallout shelter in this town? Really? That’s nice of you.
The old masters, they’d find some way to make this funny. Groucho, Mel, all them mugs. But I couldn’t think of a damn thing. The streets were so quiet, I didn’t even have an audience.
If you can’t make your own gags, steal ‘em. So I started singing Tom Lehrer, “We Will All Go Together When We Go.” You know it? No? Well, allow me to enlighten you. Imagine me singing it to an empty street, and while you’re at it, imagine I got the pipes of Pavarotti and the looks of Casanova. You ready? It goes like this:
“No more ashes, no more sackcloth,
“An an armband made of black cloth
“Will someday never more adorn a sleeve
“For if the bomb that drops on you
“Gets your friends and neighbors too…”
And then this window shoots open! Bam! And I hear, “There’ll be nobody left behind to grieve!” Scared the bejesus out of me. I almost fell out of the chorus, but let nobody say I can’t take a surprise, I can improv with the best of ‘em, so we brayed like jackasses together:
“And we will all go together when we go,
“What a comforting fact that is to know,
“Universal bereavement,
“An inspiring achievement,
“Yes we all will go together when we go!”
That’s what I love about this town. I don’t care if he was a New York man, he was ours too, and even at the end of the world, you sing Tom Lehrer in this shit-hole town and someone, someone will know the tune. It was some young thing too, with pink hair and more holes than I did after my Purple Heart. That’s them over there… hey, Unique! Check out the new blood! I know, right?
So anyway, we sing the whole thing together, and then this bar at the end of the street (which I had never set foot in) opens the door and a guy I didn’t know (but I do now—hi, Bill!) shouts out at us to come and sing in here. So we do, and now we’ve got a whole bar full of flies determined to drink their way to the end of the world, playing back-up, and when we run out of verses, we make up our own, and somewhere along the way we figure out what’s money and beer between friends at a time like this? So the bartender starts putting it all on our tabs, then says the hell with it and puts it all on the house.
And then we ran out of songs, even made-up ones, and then you walked in looking shell-shocked, and now here we all are. Best audience I’ve had in my life. Who knew?
I see you looking out that window. The army’s not coming. They’ve got any sense at all, they’ve high-tailed it as far away out of the blast radius as they can get. Even assuming it wasn’t them who dropped it on us in the first place, there’s no stopping this; why kill a bunch of their own men trying to?
It’s just us. Just here. Waiting for last call. A bunch of strangers—well, who’s a stranger at the end of the world?—waiting for that damn thing to blow.
Could we have stopped this, do you think? Kept it all from happening? Surely we could’ve, somewhere, somehow. I don’t know. I guess it’s too late now, right?
It’s sure taking its time. Hurry up, already! The anticipation's killing me!
Well, anyway. You’ve been awful quiet. Guess I can’t blame you. Here, have a drink, on me. What’re you in for? What’ve you seen?
If you’re the last person I ever see, might as well get to know you. Tell me something!
We’ve got all the time in the world.
At least I made someone laugh before the end.
