Welcome to Night Vale

THE VOICE OF NIGHT VALE

CECIL:… allergies to shellfish, dislike of shellfish, apathy to shellfish, philosophical disagreement with shellfish, or a general uncertainty about the whole concept of shellfish should let the event planners know when making their reservation.

And now a word from our sponsors:

We know that sometimes in life you find yourself with nothing to do but wait. Maybe you have hours to wait. Maybe you have hours to wait hiding in a darkened office until the custodian leaves so that you won’t be caught snooping through confidential files at work. There’s lots of reasons you could be waiting. It just happens to be that the reason you are waiting right now is that one. Yes, we know a lot about you.

Wouldn’t this period of malfeasant waiting be better if you were able to use it, say, catching up on the latest episodes of your favorite TV shows? Think how less boring illegally breaking into your boss’s office would be if you were watching TV right now, Diane.

We all thought better of you.

Hulu Plus: Good for criminals.

This has been a word from our sponsors.

And now a word about librarians. We are all, from our youngest years, warned that the most dangerous, untrustworthy creature is that which stalks our public libraries. We all remember as children having this told to us by frazzled men in rumpled suits clutching ancient tomes to their chests.

“Agggh!” they would say, pointing at a diagram that was just a square with the word LIBRARY written neatly in the middle of it.

“Ouuugh!” they would continue, pointing at the clearest photograph ever taken of a librarian, which is a blurry and badly burnt Polaroid.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” they would conclude, pointing at the first diagram again. It was always a very short presentation.

Then the men would run from our classrooms, looking fearfully around and muttering, “There’s no time, just no time,” and never would be seen again.

These warnings, as playfully conveyed as they were, are serious matters that should be applied to your grown-up, serious life. Librarians are hideous creatures of unimaginable power. And even if you could imagine their power, it would be illegal. It is absolutely illegal to even try to picture what such a being would be like.

So just watch out for librarians, okay?

And now, let’s have a look at traffic.

Here is a man with a new job. Here is a man. He has a new job. So new that he hasn’t actually gone to it yet. He is now only in the process of going to it. It is his first day. Not as a human, but at this job. It is approximately his ten thousandth day as a human. And yet, for all his days, he is not yet very good at being a human. He still makes a lot of mistakes. All that time and he still is unsure of himself.

He drives to his job. His car is nice. Nicer than he can afford, but just as nice as he hopes he can soon afford. His car is aspirational. His gray pin-striped suit, his smile, his silver watch, the way he walks, these are all also aspirational. He doesn’t think of himself as the him that exists in this moment but as the him that will exist soon. He is not far away from the him that he really is. He will be that version of himself very soon.

But then he sees something. It doesn’t matter what. It’s someone dying. It’s sudden and not anyone’s fault, but also could have been prevented. He is sitting in his nice car and he sees this death. And he does not go to his new job. He never does. In fact, since he never actually goes to it, it is not accurate to call it his new job. It is the job he never had. It is a future that, like most futures, never happened.

This has been traffic.

New statistics by the community activist group Citizens for a Transparent Government say that it is as difficult as it has ever been to get through City Hall alive and speak to Mayor Cardinal, that over half of citizens who have appeared before the City Council have been eaten by the council, and that the government is still not transparent.

“I can still totally see them,” said Frankie Ramon, spokesperson for the group. “They’re not even faint outlines in the air, they’re still totally visible, totally opaque. It’s like they’re not even trying.”

Next: a sudden loss of consciousness followed by a waking as a new person, living a new life, but with all the same old questions unanswered. Starting in one, two,