Today, as all days, as every day of your life, has been brought to you by Kellogg’s. Are you worthy? Welcome to Night Vale

Hello listeners. Well, we’ve been having some real budget troubles here at the station, so it does seem that today’s entire broadcast will be a sponsorship message from Kellogg’s. I know that feels like a lot, but it was the only way to keep the station up and running. Station Management consumes three tons of soil from Paris each month, and it has been massively expensive digging it up and shipping it here. Not to mention all the bribes needed for government officials. All to say that Kellogg’s has agreed to pay for, let me check, ok, one month of soil shipments in exchange for us exclusively talking about them for the next three years. Huh, ok, that doesn’t sound like the best bargain, but I’ll consult the station’s legal advisor and see if we can get out of that. Our legal advisor is Laura who is a server down at the Moonlight All-Nite Diner. Between shifts she likes to read Wikipedia pages about law stuff, so we often go to her for her expert opinion. In the meantime, probably best for me to just do what the contract says. This explanation brought to you, of course, by Kellogg’s.

Let’s get to the news.

John Peters, you know, the farmer?, says that some folks came to his farm. They said they were from Kellogg’s. Said they heard that he grew the finest imaginary corn in the state. Said they were thinking of getting into Imaginary Corn Flakes and that they wanted to buy up his entire crop. He told them that he already had a deal with Flakey O’s, a good local cereal company, and that he couldn’t go back on his word. One of the folks from Kellogg’s squinted up at the sun, then spit on the ground through tight lips. “Oh,” that person said, “I wouldn’t worry about Flakey O’s.”

To be honest listeners, I am now worried about Flakey O’s.

And now the community calendar.

This evening is the monthly school board meeting. Topics covered will include updating textbooks to contain words rather than runes and diagrams of ritual dances, hiring a new Vice Principal after that whole Endless Cave of Suffering mess a few weeks ago, and replacing all food in the cafeteria with cereal. Scientists from the Kellogg’s Institute say that most food has no nutritional value at all – oh wow, I did not know that – and that only cereal contains all the protein, vitamins, and corn that a body needs to live. Well, that seems right.

Thursday the Boy Scouts are holding their summer bake sale. They will have bowls of cereal and nothing else. The cereal is not available to you. You are available to the cereal.

Friday is now called Kellogg’s Day. Mentioning the outdated name for Kellogg’s Day will result in severe fines and disappearances.

I’m getting some sort of urgent text from Carlos. Huh, he says that something I’ve said recently is not scientifically accurate, but I don’t have time to check what. Kellogg’s isn’t paying me to text. Or maybe they are. It’s not clear what Kellogg’s wants from us.

Saturday morning is the summer softball league’s weekly game, pitting Steve Carlsburg’s Happy Hyenas against Susan Willman’s Garbage Dump Team. That’s not the actual name of the team. But it should be. Ugh, Susan Willman. Kellogg’s will be sponsoring the game by replacing the softballs with fistfuls of Apple Jacks and sending employees to hurl boxes of cereal at players.

Sunday afternoon, in Grove Park, Sarah Sultan will be offering free meditation classes. Sarah is, of course, a fist-sized river rock, and so is extraordinarily good at staying still and silent, and she wants to pass these skills on to you. Kellogg’s will place a six inch deep layer of Special K over the entire park, for reasons that are their own.

The Night Vale Meteorological Society has issued an extreme heat watch for Monday, saying: “hey, it’s a desert in August, it’s probably going to be hot as heck on Monday and all other days.” Kellogg’s suggests using the sun to cook up some rice krispie treats, by building a simple solar energy panel and using that to power an electric oven.

And please set aside all of Tuesday, as Kellogg’s has indicated that they will have use for us. All of us. On Tuesday. And then Kellogg’s made this hollow, dry laugh that sounded like it came from a long-dormant stone well.

This has been the community calendar.

In other news, Flakey O’s executives announced that they are going to stand strong against this current Kellogg’s encroachment. “We’re citizens of Night Vale,” said Flakey O’s chief executive. Leopold Toosdale. “We’ve been through a lot of terrifying stuff. It’s a real weird town. We’re not afraid of a competing cereal company.” Then he yelped, as the closet in his office opened, and the folks from Kellogg’s came out. One of them squinted up at the sun, then spit on the office floor through tight lips. “I wouldn’t worry about Flakey O’s,” the person said, and then the Kellogg’s group left the office while Leopold sputtered about how they got in and why anyone would ever spit on another person’s floor.

Next up we have traf….no, ok. I’m being told that traffic has been replaced today by our new segment. Listeners, I’m…pleased…to bring you Common Kellogg’s Questions, in which you ask questions and I answer them with off the cuff answers that are not written down for me on these carefully scripted cards.

Question 1: How much is too much cereal?

My offhand answer: How much is too much life? How much is too much love? Would you deny yourself blood in your veins? Would you deny yourself dreams in your evenings? There is not too much. There is only ever the deficit and the longing.

Ok, question 2: Sometimes it seems my cereal boxes are watching me. I don’t know how else to describe it. They don’t have eyes or anything, and they’re just sitting there, but it feels like they’re watching me.

Just improvising here but: Certain measures are taken for your own good. Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.

And question 3: Is this coupon for Frosted Mini-Wheats still usable? I’ve had it since like 2007 but it doesn’t have a date on it? Is it still good?

In answer to your question, and for your extemporaneous listening pleasure, here are 10 seconds of a person eating cereal, recorded really really close to their mouth.

[like it says]

This has been common Kellogg’s Questions.

Let’s keep going. Health tips: Did you know that corn flakes cure most cancers? The reason you didn’t know that is it isn’t true, but we have made a person on the radio say it to you, and now you will remember that he said it and forget that he said it wasn’t true, because our minds are fallible and easily manipulated.

Ok, this is just insulting. Do I really have to… oh man, station management is not happy about my endangering their soil shipment. Let’s keep moving.

Flakey O’s chief executive, Leopold Toosdale, has vanished under mysterious circumstances. A white van with a Kellogg’s logo pulled up to him as he walked to his car and a group of people hustled him into a burlap sack and the burlap sack into the van. One of the people stopped to squint up at the sun, and then spit on the ground through tight lips, before jumping in and the van roaring off. So, I am being required by our current sponsors to report that nothing is known about Leopold’s disappearance, and there are no clues indicating what happened. Probably he just got scared about the quality of his competitor’s products and fled. Happens all the time. All the time, Kellogg’s has asked me to repeat.

Now, let’s see what kind of weather Kellogg’s has deigned to give you.

[weather: “Standard Deviation” by Danny Schmidt]

In the beginning there was nothing. There was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water? Darkness was upon the face of the deep. Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal.

Then there was Kellogg’s.

Nothing became something. Kellogg’s spread and formed. Kellogg’s became the planets and the stars. Kellogg’s gathered into long strands to becomes the arms of galaxies. An infinity of Kellogg’s. Space made tangible out of the empty. Kellogg’s became soil and water, it became trees and it became birds and it learned to sing and it learned to speak. The first man rose and found the first woman waiting for him and her name was Kellogg’s and his name was Kellogg’s, and they shouted in horror at their own mortal forms.

Later there were cities and before that there were communities, and it all came from Kellogg’s and was of Kellogg’s and belonged to Kellogg’s. The people knelt and they gave a joyful thanks for their own creation but Kellogg’s could not hear. It was a heaving, dumb creature, and it created out of a natural impulse, like how humans bleed, like how birds bleed, like how trees bleed. It did not create out of benevolence. Kellogg’s is not benevolent. It is not evil either. It is a stone. It is a star. It is every empty distance between the stones and the stars. It is not capable of morality. It is Kellogg’s. It is forever.

Once, long ago, the first king looked out over the first kingdom. It was not a very big kingdom, but then, there weren’t a lot of people at the time. Great empires would come later, but at that moment the world was very small, a stretch of grassland near water, and the person who held that grassland was a king, and the grassland became a kingdom. There were titles given, and borders erected. The king felt that he had created something great here. That his name would ring out forever. No one knows his name now. Even a hundred years after his death it was forgotten. The only name that rings out forever is Kellogg’s.

Once there was a farmer, who lived at the edge of a forest. As she worked her fields, she would look at the forest with longing, because it seemed to her that her life was built only of routines and chores, and that these were the walls that boxed her in, and that by monopolizing her days, these routines were killing her. They were killing her in the sense that they were taking her entire life away from her. And she felt that if she ever got the nerve, one Kellogg’s Day evening, she would run into the forest. Maybe it would be scary in there. Probably dangerous. She would be less comfortable than she was on the farm. But she would also be truly herself. It was all waiting for her in the forest. She never ran into it. Later, she died, while working one of her fields. This story doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is Kellogg’s.

Years from now, the universe will disperse. The stars will dim, running out of the energy imbued to them when it all exploded. Planets will become cold rock, and molecules will stop forming, and atoms will stop vibrating and it will be still. It will be still forever, or at least until the next thing. And nothing from this thing will ever see the next thing. Except Kellogg’s. Kellogg’s will watch the universe grow tired and will help it lay itself to rest. And Kellogg’s will wait in the darkness, will wait as long as it needs to, forever, or what a human would perceive as forever. Maybe it will wait for ten times as long as this universe ever existed. But eventually it will stir. There will be water there, unfathomed depth of water. Darkness will be upon the face of the deep. And it will all start anew.

There is a town, and that town is called Night Vale. It exists on a plain in a desert, surrounded by the scrublands and the sand wastes. Above us are lights that flit about and that peer. We peer back, wonderingly. We are simple and we love each other and we conceal secrets and we hold multitudes, and in this way we are like anyone. We live lives that are rich with meaning and awe, or we live lives that are heavy with torment and worry, or we live lives that pass by like a Wednesday afternoon and we reach the end and say “my god, was that it?” and it was.

We are a community. Like the king, we have made the world smaller, and in claiming this tiny corner as our entire world, we have created a kingdom. Like the farmer, we eye the forest and contemplate what could be out there, if we ever left, if we ever went, but few of us do. And like the universe, we are brought to us by Kellogg’s. We belong to Kellogg’s and we are made of Kellogg’s, and we cannot understand Kellogg’s, and that may be because the mystery is too complex, or it may be because it is as simple as a monolith, and truly there is nothing to understand.

Flakey O’s is no more. The company has been bought out, with no management left to resist the hostile takeover. It is now a research wing of Kellogg’s, designed to test out a concept that Kellogg’s says they have just invented all on their own, which is line of cereal meant for nighttime only. The new head of this division squinted up at the sun, then spit on their own office floor through tight lips before saying “I wouldn’t worry about Flakey O’s.”

That’s it for our sponsored show. Remember:

Today has been brought to you by Kellogg’s. And Kellogg’s can take today away.

Good Night, Night Vale. Good Night.