Welcome to Night Vale - 131 - Brought To You By Kellogg's

Episode Date: August 1, 2018

This episode, and also your life, and every life on this and every world, and this entire universe, brought to you by Kellogg's. Weather: “Standard Deviation” by Danny Schmidt http://dannyschmidt.com Our membership program is now on Patreon! Become a Night Vale Scout to help support the show and get cool rewards like behind-the-scenes videos, Director’s Notes, and bonus episodes. https://www.patreon.com/welcometonightvale Don’t miss our 2018 / 2019 World Tour, coming to over 40 cities across North America, the UK, and Europe! All tickets on sale now! http://www.welcometonightvale.com/live PodCon 2 will be in Seattle on January 19-20, 2019! Check out our Indiegogo campaign, where you can show your support and get cool things like remote attendance, a pizza party with the founders and guests, and more. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/podcon-2-community New on the store: a Night Vale Community College back-to-school pack, featuring necessities like pencils, erasers, and a slap bracelet. https://topatoco.com/collections/wtnv Music: Disparition http://disparition.info Logo: Rob Wilson http://robwilsonwork.com Written by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor. Narrated by Cecil Baldwin.  http://welcometonightvale.com Follow us on Twitter @NightValeRadio or Facebook. Produced by Night Vale Presents.  http://nightvalepresents.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Nightville, it is Jeffrey Craneer speaking to you from April of 2026 with a couple of cool things coming up. First off, we're going to be in Europe touring our newest Nightville live show, Murder Night in Blood Forest. We're going to be in Edinburgh, UK, on May 27th. We'll be in Manchester on the 28th. We will be in London on May 29th, and we will be in Amsterdam on May the 30th. You can get tickets for these shows at Welcome to Nightville.com slash live, and hopefully we'll have more. shows coming up later this year. Who knows? Just get on our newsletter. Go to Welcome to Nightville.com. Sign up for our newsletter. We will send you emails twice a month to let you know all of the news that you need to know about Welcome to Nightville. One of the big news things to tell you

right now is that our other hit podcast, Alice Isn't Dead, is coming back on April the 13th, written by Joseph Fink, produced by Disparition and starring Jacica Nicole. More episodes of Alice Isn't Dead return on April the 13th. So make sure you are still subscribe to that podcast. Finally, do you want some cool nightbale merch? Go to welcome to nightville.com, click on store, and we have all kinds of cool t-shirts, things for the summer, tank tops, beach towels, and if you like coffee mugs, if you want calendars, if you want backpacks, all kinds of cool stuff there. So check out Welcome to Nightville.com and click on store, click on live. If you want to see our live shows, we will see you in Europe. And hey, thanks.

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. Okay. one month of soil shipments in exchange for us exclusively talking about them for the next three years. Huh. Okay. Well, 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-night 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, said 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 cornflakes and that they wanted to buy up his entire crop. He told them that he already had a deal with Flakeos, 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 Flakeos. To be honest, listeners, I'm now worried about Flakios. 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. I did not know that. And that only cereal contains all the protein, vitamins, and corn that a body needs to live. Yeah, 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.

Okay, I'm actually getting some sort of urgent text from Carlos. 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. You know, it's not clear what Kellogg's wants from us. Saturday morning is the Summer Softball League's Weekly game, pitting Steve Carlsberg's Happy Hyenas

against Susan Wilman's Garbage Dump Team. That's not the actual name of the team, but it should be. Kellogg's will be sponsoring the game by replacing the softballs with fistfuls of apple jacks and sending employees to hurl boxes of cereal-led 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 onto you. Kellogg's will place a six-inch-deep layer of special cats, over the entire park for reasons that are their own. The Nightville 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-crispy 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, Flakio's executives announced that they are going to stand strong against this current Kellogg's, encroachment. We are citizens of Nightvale, said Flakio's chief executive, Leopold Tuesday. We've been through a lot of terrifying stuff. It's a real weird town. We're not afraid of a competing

serial 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 Flakeos, the person said. And then the Kellogg's group left the office while Leopold sputtered about how they got in, and why anybody would ever spit on another person's floor. Next up, we have traffic. Oh, nope, okay. 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 number one, 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. Okay, question number two. 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 Certain measures are taken for your own good. Don't worry about it. It's fine. And question number three. Is this coupon for frosted mini-weets 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. This has been Common Kellogg's Questions. Hey, let's just keep this going. Health tips. Did you know that corn flakes cure most cancers? The reason you didn't know that is that 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. Okay, this is just insulting. Do I really have to... Their soil shipment? So let's just keep moving. Flakio's chief executive Leopold Tewsdale has vanished under mysterious circumstances. A white van with a Kellogg's logo pulled up.

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 cornered by our current sponsors to report that nothing is known about Leopold's disappearance. and there are no clues indicating what happened. You know, probably he just got scared about the quality of his competitors' 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. A chalkboard full of secrets. It was like some kind of coat. Tell the stars and planets how to fall and how to glow. But when she turned to face the classroom, there was chalk upon. Like the ghost of Madam Curie or a cloud. In women's clothes and the boys dismissed. The work so quickly like,

It's just a girl who spilled some numb in the basement by herself. books and getting the shelves. Oh, she was searching for some answers. When she stumbled in the dark, on a girl with colored pencils and black eyes like question marks, and they said hello in stereo, and they both just stood and stared as a normal sort of silence fit.

And what she read so late, but she said it was a story. He'd write back stories when there's something more to share. So she shrug began. Smartest things she'd ever heard. She'd seen. So she grabbed her by the brain stem. And she threw her tooth, and they kissed like their equations, had never balanced quite before.

Because every lonesome thesis Just ascribes the unobserved There's always one who will fall upon The tale of every curve There's so many lies, so many doors, so many twisted keys Within the standard deviation from There's so many lies, so many lives,

So many doors, so many twisted keys Within the standard deviant Something else here now, something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus, It's the series Stephen King calls Scary as Hell Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules.

Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. 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. There was... Nothing became something. Kellogg's spread and formed. Kellogg's became the planets and the stars. Kellogg's gathered into long strands to become the arms of galaxies,

an infinity of Kellogg's. 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 birds bleed, like how how trees bleed. It did not create out of benevolence. Kellogg's is not benevolent. It is not

full 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 looked out over the first kingdom. It was not a very big kingdom, but then there weren't a lot of people at that 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 killing. Once, there was a farmer who lived at the edge of a forest, and 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. Kellogg's will watch the universe grow to fire,

and will help it lay itself in the darkness. We'll 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, is that it? 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. We belong to Calais. and we are made of Kellogg's. 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. Flaky Oads 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 a 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 FlakyOs. 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, Nightvale. Good night. Welcome to Nightvale is a production of Nightvale Presents. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Criner and produced by Disparition. The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin.

Original music by Dysperition. All of it can be found at disparation.info or at disparation.bancamp.com. This episode's weather was Standard Deviation by Danny Schmidt. Find out more and get Danny's music at dannyshmit.com.

Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightvale.com or follow us on Twitter at Nightvale Radio. Or consider how the cellular structure of a leaf might be extrapolated out into a map of the entire universe. Check out Welcome to Nightvale.com for more information on our brand new Patreon, which allows you to support the folks who make this show for you in a much more user-friendly way. Today's proverb, keep your eye on the ball, keep your lungs on the court,

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