181 - C****s
A horse is a horse of course of course, of course that’s a horse don’t look too closely. Welcome to Night Vale.
[acting note: the words in brackets are read normally, but will be censored out in audio editing;
sound mix note: Rather than the standard beep, I’d love to find some more interesting sounding way to censor. Perhaps like the words are being swallowed, or held deep underwater, or punched out of the universe with a metaphorical holepunch. Just something striking that doesn’t sound like the typical censor noise.]
The City Council is holding a special hearing on the legalization of [clouds] and an end to censorship of [clouds] as well as [vapor] and [precipitation] 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 stands of [cloud] 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 the subject. While I don’t mind talking in private with close friends about such subjects as [cumulus] [clouds] or [weather] [patterns] 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 [nimbostratus] 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 will report on the hearings as they proceed.
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 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 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. 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. It just makes you lucky.
So those are three ways to get rich. As for the stock market, woof, I don’t know. Mutual funds, I guess? Are those a thing? Look into mutual funds probably.
Now let’s take a second for Cecil’s Music Corner. I know I’m not a connoisseur like Michelle Nguyen over at Dark Owl Records, and I don’t have a fun cover band that plays 90s hits every Friday night at the Pinkberry 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 fifteen-minute-long narrative ballad that describes the titular event in truly excruciating detail. Or his lovely campfire singalong "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 until it hurts, until it hurts very much, until you are gasping and 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 [clouds] 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 to ask me about [clouds]? What specifically about [clouds]?” and “Why is everyone screaming in horror every time I say the word [cloud]? Wait, don’t take me away. Help! Oh god help!” and stuff like that. Honestly, I had trouble following it.
Rich Maes (Maze), 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 from us 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, a 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 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 protestors 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 the uproar. I’ll keep on my eye on this, and report back when I know more.
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The City Council hearing on an end to the censorship of [clouds] and [cloud] related material has devolved into shouting, as protestors 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 flying around in a frantic swarm.
We all knew that the question of [clouds] 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 [silver] [lining] 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, Night Vale 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: [a series of clicks, like very very very fast morse code]. Got it? Great.
1 Down is “The hat that Henry wore.” 1 Across is “That fleeting feeling after lunch”
2 Down is “A basket made from this material can safely hold fear.” 2 Diagonal is “A tired dog, shortly.”
3 Down is “Lee Marvin.” Uh, sorry that’s just the answer, I forgot to think up a clue for him. 3 Up is “Lee Marvin’s favorite flavor of ice cream.”
4 down is “A very long tooth, abbreviation”. 4 down on the Z axis is “That special birthday treat.”
And finally 5 down and 5 across are the same, and they’re both your secret name, the one you’ve never told anyone, that you’ve spent your life running from, that you’ve been terrified anyone would find out. So, uh, 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 [cloud] supporters grappling with [cloud] 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. 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 [clouds] illegal all these years were right. Look what happens when we try to talk about them.
But wait, the City Council is regaining the podium and banging gavels with eight of its seventeen 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, I wasn’t censored there. Clouds. Thundercloud. Cumulous. Stratosphere. My god. This is a freedom like I’ve never known.
Why, what better time than this to talk about the weather?
[Weather: “Whatever Happened to Jim Crow“ by Black Guy Fawkes https://blackguyfawkesmusic.bandcamp.com/]
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 balustrades 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 that day, 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 shown 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’Keefe 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 skyscape, 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 real part of your life taken from you, no matter how small. To have it suppressed. To have to constantly work around the clouds in 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.