181 - C****s

Hey hey, Jeffrey Kraner from welcome to Night Vale here.

Apart from Night Vale, we make other podcasts.

If you're already a big Night Vale fan, check out Good Morning Night Vale, where cast members Meg Bashwiner, Symphony Sanders, and Hal Lublin break down each and every episode.

Or if you're looking for more weird fiction, there's Within the Wires, an immersive fiction podcast written by me and novelist Janina Mathewson.

Each season is a standalone tale told in the guise of found audio.

Finally, maybe you like horror movies or are scared of horror movies but are horror curious, check out Random Number Generator Horror Podcast Number 9, where me and the voice of Night Vale Cecil Baldwin talk about a randomly drawn horror film.

We have new episodes every single week.

So that's Good Morning Nightvale Within the Wires and Random Horror 9.

Go to nightvalepresents.com for more or get those podcasts wherever you get your podcasts.

Summer is turning to fall, which frankly, rude of summer to do.

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I got an adorable dress for my daughter, which she helped pick out.

She wore it at her first day of school.

She loves that dress.

It has pockets, if you know, you know.

I also got myself a mulberry silk sleeping mask, and every night since has been a luxury.

I have never gotten better sleep than with mulberry silk draped upon my eyes.

Experience what it must be like to be wealthy without having to, you know, have a bank account that doesn't make you wince when you check it.

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A horse is a horse, of course, of course.

Of course, that's a horse.

Don't look too closely.

Welcome to Night Vale.

The City Council is holding a special hearing on the legalization of

and an end to censorship of

as well as

and

in general.

This has been a long-standing policy in Night Vale, and many of us thought we would never see a day that the government would even consider loosening these restrictions.

But due to the brave stance of activists such as Hannah Gutierrez and Janice Rio, we are now facing the reality that the impossible might become policy.

I myself have mixed feelings on this subject, while I don't mind talking in private with close friends about such subjects as

or

in general, are we really ready as a society to let these topics become public?

To drop the fortress of shame that we have built around them and act as though there were nothing wrong with saying

to a friend.

Listeners, I am not sure.

I am just not sure.

In any case, we will be keeping a close eye on the city council throughout the day, and we will report on the hearings as they proceed.

But before all that, though, let's have some stock tips.

Now, there are three ways to get rich.

The first is generational wealth.

That's when your relatives give you money and then you pretend you earned it.

and get angry and defensive when anyone points out that no, no, you didn't.

This is the most common way to get money and anyone you meet who is rich probably at least got some money from their relatives even though they will loudly and angrily tell you that they didn't until you have to ask them to leave the party.

The second is crime.

Crime is a great way to get money because a lot of people have too much money and you don't have enough.

Even a child can see the way to balance that equation.

And you aren't a child, are you?

Are you?

Are you a child?

Are you five years old today?

Is it your birthday today and you've gone around the Sun five big times?

Good for you!

Happy birthday, little one!

The third is sheer luck.

Now this is the rarest, but it does sometimes happen.

People who get their money through luck will be even more defensive than the generational wealth people and will probably yammer on at you about how many hours they worked and how no one gave them a break or some made-up junk like that.

Luck doesn't make you interesting, unfortunately, just makes you lucky.

So, those are the three ways to get rich.

As for the stock market,

I don't know.

Mutual funds, I guess?

Are those a thing?

Yeah, look into mutual funds, probably.

Now let's take a second for Cecil's Music Corner.

Okay, I know, I know I'm not a connoisseur like Michelle Wynn over at Dark Owl Records.

And I don't have a fun cover band that plays 90s hits every Friday night at the Pink Berry like Steve Carlsberg.

But I still have ears.

I still can listen to a song and think, wow.

That sure is music.

So today, I wanted to shine a light on one of the more obscure songwriters of the last century.

You may not know Bob Dylan by name, but he's been behind some groundbreaking work, like Green Day's Dookie, which he produced and co-wrote.

Not to mention the music he put out through the early 2000s under the stage name Kelly Clarkson.

But I don't want to talk about his hits.

I want to highlight some of his quieter, more personal work.

Consider The Trample at Bone Creek, his 15-minute long narrative ballad that describes the titular event in truly excruciating detail, or his lovely campfire sing-along, oh to be a farseer.

And he had a sense of humor, too.

I bet you can't listen to the writhing creatures under my skin forming strange words blues without laughing and laughing and laughing till it hurts.

Until it hurts very much.

Until you are gasping in pain until the muscles stretch and tear with your laughter.

When considering getting into music, don't just think about the big names putting out big songs.

Think about the unheralded, independent folks, too, doing their quiet work in some quiet corner of the music world.

Like Bob Dylan.

This has been Cecil's Music Corner.

The city council hearing on

has commenced with expert testimony from meteorologists and agents of a vague yet menacing government agency.

The meteorologists all said a lot of academic jargon like, why are we here?

And wait, you want me to talk about

what specifically about?

And, why is everyone screaming in horror every time I say the word,

wait, don't take me away!

No, help!

Oh God, help!

And stuff like that.

Honestly, I had trouble following it.

Rich Mays, an agent of the vague yet menacing government agency, was much more direct and clear.

Listen, folks, he said in a voice that soothed like lavender and cracked gently like a leather bookbinding.

We all want to be able to say all sorts of things, right?

Me, I'd like to be able to say that the sky itself is a flimsy bit of plywood painted to hide us from the terrifying truth of what is really up there.

But I can't go around saying things like that, can I?

It would cause a panic.

There are rules to what we can say.

Sensible rules for a sensible society.

Now, I'm no professor.

And here, Rich chuckled and the city council chuckled too from its many-throated body.

Horrifying sound.

But it seems to me that anyone who talks about this subject should be thrown in prison forever.

Now, that's merely my opinion,

Rich concluded.

Then he smiled and winked, and the city council cooed in delight.

The Glow Cloud, which is, of course, exempt from any censorship because no one in the city or federal government can figure out the jurisdiction or how it could possibly be enforced, hummed and flashed various colors in the viewing gallery.

No one was sure what it thought, and everyone was afraid to ask.

Meanwhile, protesters outside waved signs about the hearings, but the signs had been heavily censored by the sheriff's secret police, and so it wasn't clear what their message was.

This all seems quite an uproar.

I'll keep my eye on this and report back when I have more.

And now a word from our sponsors.

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This has been a word from our sponsors.

The city council hearing on an end to the censorship of

and

related material has devolved into shouting.

As protesters have burst into the room, crying out slogans that contain so much forbidden material, it is impossible for me to repeat them here or play my listeners a recording.

The city council is calling for order, and the bats that live in the council chambers are just flying around in a frantic swarm.

We all knew that the question of

was going to be a touchy one, but we were not prepared for just how controversial this day has gotten.

There's a bit of a

though, pun intended.

I think we may be reaching the end of the hearing.

I can't imagine that it could go on much longer than this.

And now, Nightvale Community Radio is proud to present the first ever audio crossword.

So please create a crossword pattern using whatever materials are around you, be it ketchup on your kitchen table or twigs and leaves on the dirt floor of your rudimentary wilderness shelter.

The pattern should look a little like how this sounds.

Got it?

Great.

One down is

the hat that Henry wore.

One across is that fleeting feeling after lunch.

Two down is a basket made from this material can safely hold fear.

Two diagonal is a tired dog, shortly.

Three down is Lee Marvin.

Oh, I'm sorry, that's the answer.

I forgot to think of a clue for him.

Three up is Lee Marvin's favorite flavor of ice cream.

Four down is a very long tooth abbreviation.

Four down on the Z axis is that special birthday treat.

And finally, five down and five across are the same.

And they're both your secret name.

The one you've never told anyone, that you've spent your whole life running from, that you've been terrified anyone would find out.

So, um, just

put that name in both boxes.

Great.

They know who you are now.

And unfortunately, it is only a matter of time before you know who they are.

They're already on their way to collect you.

They're almost there.

I hope you had fun.

This has been an audio crossword puzzle.

The city council hearing has turned into an all-out brawl, with

supporters grappling with deniers, and the city council itself bounding, howling through the fray, a flurry of claws and teeth and wide, wide eyes.

The sheriff is trying to restore order, and they are doing this by hitting people indiscriminately with a heavy club and sometimes kicking them.

A calm and sober tactic they hope will inspire everyone to calm down.

Oh,

I never thought I'd see such chaos in my town, a town that is usually so quiet and safe.

I guess all those people that made discussion of

illegal all these years were right.

Look what happens when we try to talk about them.

Oh, but wait, wait, wait, wait.

The city council is regaining the podium and banging gavels with eight of its 17 hands.

Enough!

It cries.

Enough!

This is tearing our community apart!

We hereby declare that it is legal and not subject to any censorship to talk about clouds.

Hold on.

That wasn't censored there.

Clouds.

Thundercloud.

Cumulus.

Stratosphere.

My God,

this is a freedom like I've never known.

Why, what better time than this to talk about the weather?

Deep in this family tree,

you'll find an sastery from a time where freedom was the darkest joke.

We're scars upon our backs

from every whip that cracks.

Show no matter what, our spirits never broke.

We march for miles to live.

Laugh love without vindictive

love for our story, still goes on.

but still, the melanin

is viewed as greatest sin in the eyes of this social phenomenon.

Whatever happens, you can throw

I'm right before your eyes.

Everything you bring to love

condemned and

a mice.

Where it's all said, and thought you'll lay my hand

down it on cold tongue's calm

when I'm dead.

Well read with etiquette

will just cost you more shit as they try to hold you down this pigeonhole.

no matter how you dress

they'll still be less impressed and just blame it on the culture that you stole

or lack of culture found

from how you walk to the soundways flowing out your mouth you'll always lose

the tragic irony

of false identity.

When either side is the one you wanna choose,

whatever happened to the gym project

to love,

heart damned and victimized.

When it's all said and God, you'll lay my head

down in Uncle Tong's cabin

when I'm dead.

There is no in-between

in this society.

Either too much or you'll never be enough.

Whatever happened to Jim Crow,

I write before

your eyes.

Everything you claim to love,

condemned and victimized.

When it's all said and done, we'll lay my hand

down in Orico Tos

Hey, it's Jeffrey Kraner with a word from our sponsor.

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In the water surrounding you, lurks a mythical beast with two large eyes and many long arms.

You're just now hearing of this beast, but you're not afraid because you don't plan to swim.

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As a child, whenever that was, time back then being more of a place than a process, more a shady grove to linger in than a road to anywhere at all.

As a child, I used to sit on my back and look at the clouds, the shapes they would make, and the stories I could tell with those shapes, and the thought of what it would be like to ride the clouds as though they were great ships in the sky, the puffs and curves like the decks and value straws from which I could adventure the world.

Life was a thrilling narrative then, as it is for every child.

Until the plot got away from me, until it dissipated into the unsatisfying experimental character study we all end up as.

The day my mother left my sister and I on our own, the clouds were perfect, fluffy things.

I wanted them to be gray and foreboding, but they were delightful.

And I was angry that they were delightful.

I was furious that any part of the world would be happy on a day so painful.

The day my mother returned years later, when my sister and I were adults, the clouds then were gray

and low.

But they did not seem angry to me.

They felt like

how I felt.

Flat

and sad

and far away from myself.

When my Carlos first came to town, a stranger, a scientist, an interloper, the clouds were mostly absent.

The blue of the sky seared, it cast unearthly light on our earthly town, but still they lingered at the margins of the sky, bustled by the horizon, waiting for their turn to cross our stage.

And when my Carlos met me at the Arby's, and we kissed under the lights above the Arby's, oh,

there were clouds then too.

And the lights shone through them in delightful ways, hiding behind, and then casting rays through and then bursting out from behind as the wind escorted the clouds across the sky.

And when my Carlos married me, in front of the whole town and every eye that watches us implacably from space, there was only one cloud.

And it stretched long from one side of the sky to the other, an unbroken line of vapor that I took to mean the unbroken line of our love, but that, of course, is just my projected narrative.

A cloud does not have a narrative, it exists perfectly in the moment and for the moment.

Then our son came to us, and on the day he arrived, the clouds were arrayed in ranks like toy soldiers for his delight.

Smudge after smudge like a Georgia O'Keeffe landscape, like sheep on a meadow.

And our son squalled, and we laughed because the sound would become a difficulty, we knew, but in that moment, it could only be a joy.

And today,

well,

today I look outside,

and there the clouds are,

lofty

and small,

and carried constant by the winds of the upper atmosphere and disappearing over the horizon only to arrive again

over the opposite horizon.

A swirling landscape,

a busy backdrop to our inconsequential lives.

Clouds don't matter much, I suppose.

Not being able to talk about clouds doesn't matter, but to have some part of your life taken from you, no matter how small, to have it suppressed, To have to constantly work around the clouds and the sky, it takes a toll.

And now I feel such freedom and joy.

And I say, look at the clouds in the sky.

They mean nothing.

And yet they are there.

And they are pretty.

Isn't that nice?

Stay tuned next for our special radio drama broadcast of Journey to the Center of the Earth, presented on location by the Mole People Players.

And from one cloud seer to all cloud seers out there,

good night, Night Vale.

Good night.

Welcome to Night Vale as a production of Night Vale Presents.

It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Kraner and produced by Dispirition.

The voice of Night Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin.

Original music by Disparition.

All of it can be found at disparition.bandcamp.com.

This episode's weather was Whatever Happened to Jim Crow by Black Guy Fox.

Find out more at facebook.com/slash black guyfox music or at blackguyfoxmusic.bandcamp.com.

Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightvale.com or follow us on Twitter at NightvaleRadio or go outside into the cold, cold air and pretend that it's refreshing.

Check out WelcometonNightvale.com for info about our live stream for our 2015 touring show, The Investigators, happening soon.

Today's proverb.

So sometimes you write an episode in early December, and then it turns out that the episode reflects a number of January news stories in ways that you could not have intended because they didn't exist.

But it's just that we all live in Night Vale now.

I'm Amy Nicholson, the film critic for the LA Times.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director.

You might know me from the League Veep or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

We love movies and we come at them from different perspectives.

Yeah, like Amy thinks that, you know, Joe Pesci was miscast in Goodfellas and I don't.

He's too old.

Let's not forget that Paul thinks that Dune 2 is overrated.

It is.

Anyway, despite this, we come together to host Unspooled, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must-season, and case you missed them.

We're talking Parasite the Home Alone, From Greece to the Dark Knight.

We've done deep dives on popcorn flicks.

We've talked about why Independence Day deserves a second look.

And we've talked about horror movies, some that you've never even heard of, like Kanja and Hess.

So So if you love movies like we do, come along on our cinematic adventure.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And don't forget to hit the follow button.

Are you squeamish about horror movies, but kind of want to know what happens?

Or are you a horror lover who likes thoughtful conversation about your favorite genre?

Join me, Jeffrey Kraner, and my friend from Welcome to Nightville, Cecil Baldwin, for our weekly podcast, Random Random Number Generator Horror Podcast Number 9, where we watch and discuss horror movies in a random order.

Find, here's the short version, Random Horror 9, wherever you get your podcasts.

Boo.