Welcome to Night Vale - 181 - C****s

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

Legalize c****s! Weather: “Whatever Happened to Jim Crow“ by Black Guy Fawkes https://blackguyfawkesmusic.bandcamp.com/ Transcript available at http://welcometonightvale.com/transcripts LiveStream Feb 11: The Investigators Tickets: http://www.welcometonightvale.com/live Patreon is how we exist in this plague year! If you can, please help us keep making this show: http://patreon.com/welcometonightvale/ Our third novel, The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home, is out now: http://www.welcometonightvale.com/books/ Music: Disparition http://disparition.bandcamp.com Logo: Rob Wilson http://robwilsonwork.com Written by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor. Narrated by Cecil Baldwin. http://welcometonightvale.com Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Check out our books, live shows, store, membership program, and official recap show. Produced by Night Vale Presents. http://nightvalepresents.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Howdy y'all. It is Jeffrey Craneer. I'm not sure which episode of Welcome to Nightville you're listening to, but I am speaking to you from April of 2026. And I'm here to tell you we're going to be in Europe. If you want to see Nightville live and you're going to be in Europe, come check us out at the end of May. We're going to be in Edinburgh on May the 27th. We will be in Manchester on the 28th, London on the 29th, and Amsterdam on May the 30th. Just go to Welcome to Nightville.com slash live to see the show dates and to get your tickets. This is. our newest Nightville live show Murder Night in Blood Forest. It is so much fun. Please come check it out. Also, coming up this month here in April, it is the return of Alice Isn't Dead, brand new episodes of our other crazy hit podcast. This is written by Joseph Fink, produced and with music by Dysperition and starring Jacique and Nicole. So make sure you are still subscribed to Alice Isn't Dead and go get those on April the 13th as new episodes come out. Finally, speaking of other shows, do you want to hear us talk about other things? things. We have three other really great chat shows. First of all, there's Good Morning Nightvale for all of your Nightvale needs. You can hear Hal, Meg, and Symphony talk about every single

episode in order of Welcome to Nightvale. Also, we have Random Horror Number Nine. That is me and Nightville star Cecil Baldwin talking about horror movies one at a time in a random order. And then Joseph and Meg do best, worst, which is a really fun podcast where they look at hit TV shows and they review the best rated on IMDB, the worst rated on IMDB, and if you're a Patreon member, they will review the middleest rated on IMDB. So check out all of those at Nightvillepresents.com or just wherever you get your podcast. And hey, thanks. 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 v and in general. This has been a long-standing policy in Nightvale, 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 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 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. 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. It just makes you lucky. So, those are the three ways to get rich. for the stock market? I don't know.

Mutual funds, I guess. But there's a thing? Yeah, look into mutual funds. Probably. Now let's take a second for Cecil's Music Corner. I know, I know I'm not a connoisseur like Michelle Winn 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 Days Duky, which he produced and co-wrote. Not to mention the music he put out through the early 2000s under the stage named 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 far seer. 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 and 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 book binding. 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. Today's show is brought to you by Clorox. Thinking of wiping away your sins, try Clorox. It doesn't matter what you used to do, who you used to be, what kind of terror lives in the shadow of your memory, you can move on. Can leave it behind. You can enter a world so pure and clean that the past can never, ever touch you.

All you need is Clorox. That small, steel voice in the middle of the night, letting you know. know that you remain who you always were, that you will have always done what you always did, well, that voice can finally be drowned out with gallons and gallons of Clorox, dumped on the walls, wiped on the floors, and poured on every single surface until it's spotless. Until you are spot-lit. Chlorox, you will be born anew. You will be clean.

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. 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 I put that name in both boxes. Great. 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. I 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? gives up lots for our story still goes on but still the melanin is viewed a great as sin in the eyes of this social phenomenon can't grow and song old tom's cow will just cause you more shit as they try to hold you down this pigeon hole no matter how you dress they'll still be less impressed and just blame it on the culture that you stole of culture found from how you walk to the sound waves flowing out your mouth you'll always lose the tragic irony of false identity when either side is the side is the only

One you want to choose A pro. Society, either too much or you'll never be enough. 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 comes up 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. 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. Flat and sad and far away from myself. When by Carlos first came to town, a stranger, a scientist, an interloper, the clouds were mostly absent. The blue of the sky seared. It cast unearthed. the 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-Leges. landscape like sheep on a meadow. And our sun 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, 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 have to have to have to 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, Nightvale, good night. Welcome to Nightvale as a production of Nightvale Presents. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Craneer and produced by Dysperition. The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin, original music by Dysperition.

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 guy fox music or at black guy fox

music.combeam.com. Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightvail.com or follow us on Twitter at Nightvale Radio. Or go outside into the cold, cold air, and pretend that it's refreshing. Check out welcome to nightvale.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 Nightvale now. Hi, we're Meg Bashwinner. And Joseph Fink. Of welcome to Night Vale. And on our new show, The Best Worst,

we explore the Golden Age of Television. To do that, we're watching the IMDB viewer-rated best and worst episodes of classic TV shows. The episode of Star Trek, where Beverly Crusher has sex with a ghost, the episode of the X-Files, where Scully gets attacked by a vicious housecat. And also, the really good episodes, too.

What can we learn from the best and worst of great television? Like, for example, is it really a bad episode, or do people just hate women? The Best Worst, available wherever you get your podcasts.