November 2018

137 - The Mudstone Abyss part 3

Kevin: If this had been an actual emergency, this signal would be followed by screaming and chaos.

Welcome to Desert Bluffs.

Hello, Desert Bluffs! It has been exactly one week since language resumed functioning.

We are all of course relieved to finally be able to greet neighbors once again with a friendly “You should smile more!”

But sometimes with good news comes bad news. It’s also been exactly one week since all construction on the Mudstone Abyss was halted. There are still several creeping shadows roaming about the dig site, causing everyone who goes near there to become so overwhelmed with joy that they run away screaming. It’s unclear why the shadows are still there. We don’t know what they want. Some have said they want us to dig no further, and that these shadows are responsible for our loss of language. I think they came out to see the beautiful craftsmanship on our Mudstone Abyss.

Mayor Lauren Mallard called for a halt to construction despite adamant protests from the media. The media spent the past week constantly texting and calling the mayor, telling her construction must continue, because it has been the media’s dream since childhood to bring a grand physical testament to the Smiling God’s endless happiness and love. But the mayor has been slow to respond. She’s probably busy scheduling contractors to restart work on the monument. Maybe the media should try texting the mayor again.

[typing noises] Why… is construction… still… halted… Lauren? Oh, that sounds a bit aggressive. Let’s brighten that tone a bit with… oh, bleeding gums emoji… spider with human eyes emoji, cry-laughing emoji, there we go.

The mayor and I have been close for a long time. We’ve had our ups and downs, but I think our more difficult times were back when we used to run a company together. We had some typical disagreements over who was in charge. She thought that because she was the president of the company, she should have final say on all decisions. Whereas I knew that I was one of the Smiling God’s chosen prophets, and our all-loving devourer would not choose a prophet who made mistakes. I believe ceasing construction was a mistake. Certainly our mayor thinks digging the Mudstone Abyss is somehow connected to our loss of language, and I appreciate her concern, but there is only anecdotal evidence to support this.

More on this story as it develops.

But first, I wanted to tell you that Charles and I went out again! Originally, Charles and I were going to go to the opening of the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit at the Desert Bluffs Museum of Art. This exhibit features many of O’Keeff’s famous flower paintings, but reimagined as if O’Keeffe were a joyous worshipper of the Smiling God. Artist at the museum have painted large smiles and centipedes over O’Keeffe’s originals, and the result is apparently quite powerful and moving.

Then Charles and I planned to have another luxurious dinner at Vermillion, but at the last minute, Grandma Josephine and her demons told him they weren’t available to babysit Charles’ five-year-old Donovan, and we couldn’t find a babysitter.

So instead Charles, Donovan and I spent the day at the Desert Bluffs’ Spinning Smiles amusement park. We rode the Spine Compressor, the Esophagus Remover, and a brand new roller coaster called Intentional Sepsis. Donovan was really delighted by all the struggling actors dressed in stuffy unvented animal costumes. Donny got his picture taken with one person dressed as a smiling tortoise. We could hear the man in the costume panting heavily and begging for water. Donny turned to the tortoise and said: “The sun calls for sacrifice because the sun loves all that it sees.” The man inside rasped: “Air! Please! I don’t know where I am! Please!” and passed out. [chuckles] Donny giggled right as Charles took the photo. It was actually really adorable. What a great memory to capture!

We went back to Charles’ house and made sandwiches and watched cartoons, but Donny wasn’t interested in the television, he just played with his toy planes, zigging and zagging them over his head, turning and swirling them in reckless fits. I hope he does not grow up to be a pilot.

I sat next to Charles on the couch, mesmerized by the motion of Donny’s planes until Charles and I fell asleep. Around 2 AM, I woke up. Donovan had put himself into bed and Charles was snoring softly against my shoulder. I carefully stood up and pulled Charles’ legs onto the sofa. The whole day had made me happy, but not in the way I wanted to be happy about it. happiness should be something you have, not something you take. I placed a blanket over him and drove home.

I’m getting an update that Mayor Lauren Mallard is holding a press conference at City Hall. Let’s hear her speech live.

Lauren: People of Desert Bluffs, after discussions with City Council as well as some prominent and very knowledgeable members of the media, I have decided to reopen construction of the Mudstone Abyss. I know many people are frightened by the shadow beings drifting around the dig site, as well as the ones lurking in and around your homes, but there is nothing to fear. These shadows are merely the impure souls of those devoured and then later (disgorged) [0:07:52] by the Smiling God. They’re not worthy of your fear. These shadows don’t even have faces. We cannot discern their intentions or feelings. They move around in quick jerks and starts, flickering in and out of our vision, sometimes standing just behind us while sloowly tilting their heads. And unless you’re looking in a mirror, there’s no way you can even see that.

So I’m not sure why you’re all freaking out. Plus they are completely intangible. [chuckling]Watch! There’s one right now, passing in front of me. I’m whipping my hand back and forth right through it. it can’t do anything, it’s just a shadow! It can’t eve smile. [chuckles] Construction resume at 7 AM sharp on Monday. We’ve assigned every citizen a daily 8-hour time slot with two 10 minute breaks. We’ve also hired some clowns to come by to keep everyone smiling. As a former corporate president, I know first hand how important laughter is for maintaining a healthy work environment. Skeleton silverfish! What, uh? Silverfish French press carbuncle. I can’t pillowcase slapstick? Uuh, plenty of hibiscus! Yeah.

Kevin: Ah, Mayor Mallard! Such a way with words. Well you heard her, it’s a joyous day. In fact, probably a future holiday. I cannot wait to start digging again next week, Desert Bluffs! Let’s look now at the Community Calendar. These are probably the last non-construction events we’ll have for a couple of weeks.

On Wednesday afternoon at Morning Bird Records, the Society for Painless Living will be holding a protest march against the construction of the Mudstone Abyss. Well, I don’t usually read press releases for such tiny events, but I guess there might be one or two people who want to exercise their right to assembly. So if this sounds like something you’re interested in, I guess you should go to the march, and then think about all the joy the Smiling God has give you and question your motives for refusing to appreciate it.

Thursday morning, the Citizens of Free Will will host a sit-in at the Sunlite All-day Diner to demonstrate their opposition to the Mayor’s order for mandatory labor on the Mudstone Abyss. Huh.

Oh this looks netter! Thursday afternoon, the Natural Smiles theatre company- I love that name! – is opening their new play, “The Pit of Ruin”. Playwright Danika Lopez says her work is an (–) [0:10:36] parable about the arrogance of religion, government and media. Lopez’ play, according to their press material, tells a story of a bloviating radio host.. who overreaches his position, enslaving an entire town in order to feed his hunger for religious power. I like the sound of this theatre company less and less. There has to be some community event that’s actually fun in here.

Friday morning, the People for Clean Sharp Teeth will be burning Kevin the radio host in effigy. I don’t… understand.

[long beat] I’d like to spend more time on this. Explaining to you, dear listeners, that my happiness is not yours to take. I’d like to have all afternoon to teach you about how you must receive your own joy by making joy, rather than destroying others’ joy. But I cannot spend any time on this, because I’m getting word that Mayor Mallard is being forcibly removed from her podium at City Hall! A large crowd of unsmiling people overtook the Mayor and the city council. The crowd used a tattoo gun to draw a permanent frown on the Mayor’s face, which effectively exiles her from this community. The crowd is chanting: “Pete Ma’s handlebars, Pete Ma’s handlebars!” The police have tried using their bullhorns to call for order, but instead of words they’re emitting bird chirps. Language seems to be failing us again.

Desert Bluffs, I need you to remain calm. I need you to take a deep breath and think positive thoughts. Think about the Smiling God, its mammoth wriggling form and thousands of legs emerging from the earth and devouring your body. Envision your whole self nestled in the moist, loving belly of the divine beast. Smile while you do it, Desert Bluffs. Keep smiling. Keep – I’m getting a phone call. Oh, it’s from Charles! Maybe he found a babysitter.

Hey Charles, I was just thinking about you. You know there’s a night club that opened last month? It’s called No Exit. I thought maybe we could drop off Donny with Josephine this evening and then… Uh huh. So you called to see if I wanted to go to the zoo with you and Donny this afternoon instead? Uh.. W-well, I was just looking at the weather and I’m not sure if today’s the day to… It’s not. Charles. I have the weather report right here.
Listen.

[“Hymn #101” by Joe Pug]

I figured it out, Desert Bluffs. The mob outside City Hall has dispersed. They returned Lauren Mallard with her tattooed frown to her position as mayor, but city bylaws prohibit anyone incapable of smiling from serving in that position. So for now, we have no mayor. The drifting shadows around the Mudstone Abyss have dissipated, returning whatever other otherworld they came from, and the construction has begun again at the monument dig site, several days ahead of schedule.

I figured it out. During our phone call, Charles was getting flustered. I asked what was wrong and he said Donovan was distracting him by swinging his toy planes around again. I told Charles to focus on us and not worry about what Donovan was doing.
“We can’t talk about us, Kevin, without worrying about what Donovan is doing,” he snapped at me. “Donovan is us. That’s the deal, OK?”
And I was hurt. I wasn’t smiling. I don’t like criticism, it makes me sad, and then mad, and then – confused.

Listeners, I don’t often use strong language, so if your ears are sensitive to vulgarity, turn the volume down for a few seconds. I hate! Not being happy. I hate it! There, I said it. I’m sorry.

I thought about what Charles said. I thought about his teeth, his chest, his hair, his snoring, his smile. I thought about Donovan. I thought about Donovan swinging those toy planes around above his head, like the birds in that dream every one of us has every single night. You know, where the birds zig and zag across a blood red sky, recklessly turning and swirling in panicked fits. Donovan’s planes were, in fact, moving in the exact same pattern as those birds. I figured it out. Each movement, each turn, each path of each plane was identical to those birds’ paths.

Listeners, it’s not a dream. It’s a message. The shadows do not speak in our mouthy languages, but in shapes and patterns. I interrupted Charles to tell him this. I told him to take Donny to the Mudstone Abyss. I told him to bring Donny’s planes. Charles and Donny approached the shadowy figures. The gathered crowd called to them to stop, to move no closer to the shadows, but all the crowd could yell was “cabbage coat hangers!” Charles then presented Donny to the shadows, and they flickered as he zigged and zagged his planes above his head. And then – a miracle happened. Glowing dotted lines appeared in the paths of the toy planes. A radiant geometry, triangles and stars and hexagons. The shapes began to connect to each other, circles forming spheres, triangles forming pyramids. The shadows raised their arms and disappeared. Donny stopped flying his planes around, but the dotted lines hung in mid air, an unreadable but completely comprehensible message to the now silent crowd.

They figured it out. One by one, the people returned to the dig site and began carving the shapes they had just seen into the mudstone. As people grew tired and stepped away for rest breaks, they found that their words had returned to them. And when they went back to digging more, they fell silent again, but only because they felt more comfort in their new spatial language of shapes and motion. The anger over the construction was no more. Citizens came together, not just out of a common communication, nor for the good of a great monument, but because happiness finally showed itself to them, and they discovered their own paths to peace. Through the pride of choosing the hard work, for the benefit of all. 

Charles called to tell me how excited he was for me. “You figured it out,” he said. “Kevin, you figured it out.”
I told him: “Donny figured it out. He didn’t spout a solution in words, but in deeds. You should be proud of your son, Charles, I said. I am proud of him.”
I didn’t say anything else. I need more time to know what else to say. Soon, we’ll go visit the zoo. Hopefully soon we’ll have a night to ourselves. To drink, to dine, to dance, and late at night in a quiet home, to dream a dream of diving birds, of love and language. And we will wake up the same people in a different place. The earth will have moved, the clocks will have moved, the sun will not have moved. But we will wake and we will smile, and we will do our best to understand ourselves and others.

Desert Bluffs, I didn’t figure out the language of the abyss, Donny did. I didn’t figure out what the language intended, you did. What I figured out was that I sometimes push too hard. I will do my best to not do that. We are building this monument because you want to. I want to too, but I’m glad you found your own way here. Lauren, tattooed frown scrawled crooked on her face, is standing over the pit and staring at the shapes the dream has shown us, as though reading messages only she could understand. She is muttering strange syllables to herself and staring at obvious malice at the workers in the pit. So even she has found a hobby in this – post-mayoral life.

Thank you, Desert Bluffs. I love this town. I’m happy you do too.

Stay tuned next for the sound a child makes upon seeing a giraffe in real life.

And as always,
Until next time, Desert Bluffs,
Until next time.

Today’s proverb: Kangaroos are deer abbreviated.

138 - Harvest Time

Everything old will be new again,
Except for when it’s so old it disintegrates at your touch and scatters into oblivion.

Welcome to Night Vale.

It’s harvest time. A time of reaping, sowing, and rebirth. A time of turning over old soil and doing something with crops, maybe. No one really knows.

All we know is that every night for the past week, we’ve heard the air raid siren blasting in the town square and a (-) voice chanting: “Behold! Despair! Rejoice! Harvest time approaches!”

There has never been a harvest time before, so it should prove to be an exciting event. Or phenomenon. Or period of forced manual labor. No one currently has any guesses as to what exactly will be harvested. Since the land surrounding Night Vale is barren sand wastes, as noted on the new tourism billboard out on Route 800, which reads: “Now entering Night Vale. If you lived here, you’d be dead by now.”

John Peters – you know, the farmer – remarked with pride that he’s never encountered a single visible crop in all his years of farming. And then remarked with suspicion that he doesn’t believe in routes, and if anyone tries to tell you different they’re a filthy liar. He then opened a tobacco tin, pulled a wad of feathers from inside and ate them.

A big congratulations to former Night Vale Community Radio intern Maureen, who has just received her heating, ventilation, and air conditioning or HVAC certification. It’s apparently one of the only certifications one can receive from the Community College that does not require internship credits. She isn’t sure if she’s passionate about the ventilation sciences yes, but it at least makes for a lucrative side hussle. Especially in this current heat wave. According to our friends at the Unavoidable Casualties Bureau, the current heat wave will statistically take eight lives by morning. Who will they be? I don’t have the answers, of course, and there certainly isn’t a betting pool laying 7-to-1 odds on Susan Willman or anything like that, but that’s a fun thought experiment, right?

Former intern Maureen has also expressed the need for an income boost, so she can help her girlfriend Michelle’s store, Dark Owl Records, out of financial difficulties. Dark Owl Records has been on hard times since they took a stance against free market capitalism by ceasing use of actual currency.

We have here a testimonial from one of Maureen’s satisfied customers. Gladys R. from Old Town says: “Our air conditioner was making a terrible sound, and Maureen came in and installed new insulation and cooling pipes and even fixed the motor. It works great now. The insulation she used was made of premium wolf spider eggs, which she explained are particularly energy efficient, since they are made to withstand the extreme desert heat and keep all those tiny wolf spider embryos nice and cool. Millions of matured wolf spiders did begin pouring out of every vent in our house after a few weeks, but the air quality remained crisp and cool.

An exterminator came in and sprayed for the spiders, which totally killed them, so that’s not an issue anymore. But the poison that was used to kill that particular species did cause small benign tumors to form along my underarms, as well as my husband’s. And the tumors began pulsating, and the doctors later discovered heartbeats inside the tumors, but they did stress the fact that these tumors are totally benign. The doctors advised a wait and see approach and put my husband and I on a course of prenatal vitamins. Unfortunately, the vitamins gave both of us a rash, which is slightly itchy, so we stopped taking them. There’s no specialist in town to help us with this, and no ointment or home remedy that seems to work, that’s a little frustrating, but the air is still very crisp and cool, and the unit doesn’t make that terrible sound anymore. Thanks Maureen, five stars! Would suffer sentient tumors again.”

Wow, what a nice review from Gladys. Personally, I love it when it’s this hot out. It feels like everything is just moments away from catching fire. It’s exhilarating.

Now the community calendar. Let’s see. Um… it’s all just notations in a childlike scrawl about how harvest time is coming. Oh wait, here’s something else.
Uh, there’s a spaghetti feed tonight at the Elks Lodge. If you’ve never been to the spaghetti feed before, you’re really missing out. It’s all about folks in the community coming together and eating and eating and not knowing when it’s over, because the spaghetti just keeps coming. It’s about commitment and dedication. It’s about not being a quitter. Remember when they called you a quitter growing up? “Quitter,” they said, pointing at you and your half eaten sack of pasta. Don’t you wanna prove them wrong? Keep feeding! Feeding isn’t about nourishment, not anymore. It’s about quantity, mass, volume, and proving you’re no quitter. It’s about commitment! Tonight at the Elks Lodge. This has been the community calendar.

And now, traffic.
When you were 12 years old, you sat in the passenger seat waiting for your mother to come out of the clothing store called Don’s that used to be on main street. You turned the ignition to the battery-only setting so you could listen to the radio. You were reading a fictional tabloid newspaper and eating candy. The window was halfway down. A crisp breeze ruffled the newsprint in your hands. You were perfectly content, a feeling you won’t experience again until well into your 30’s.

The car that was parked next you began to back away. You saw it from the corner of your eye, and you were overcome with the panicky vertigo sensation that your own car was moving forward, that it was picking up speed and rolling right into the Don’s, through the display window, through the mannequins and Wrangler jeans that hung loosely around their plastic hips, and oh god your mother! She would be mangled among heaps of bloody denim and plastic body parts, and it would all be your fault somehow.
Yes, you probably turned the ignition too far and somehow put the car into gear. You were only trying to listen to the radio. Your hands slammed onto the glove compartment, and you waited for the deafening impact of plate glass, and you squeezed your eyes shut.
This has been traffic.

Did it just get dark out suddenly? No. Wait. There’s something covering the windows of the studio. What is that? It looks like someone has plastered flyers all over the building. Wait, let me peel one of these off. OK. Plastered all over other nearby buildings as well. They say “Harvest time is nigh. All will be cleansed.” Huh. I just got a text alert saying the same thing. Did you guys get that? Wait, is that smoke outside? Hang on a second.

Yes. Um, the Night Vale fire department is assuring me now that the air is filled with black acrid smoke, but there’s no fire to account for its origins. So the fire department says it’s not actually smoke, it’s perfectly normal dark air. Breathe deeply, go for a jog, let the little ones run free in the park, fire chief Ramona Incarnacian announced from insider her airtight bunker.
“The dark air is coming from all directions at once,” Incarnacian explained. “So there’s no point in avoiding any particular areas. Just go about your business, folks. Visibility is hovering right around zero, so please stick to the posted speed limits when driving. You will not be able to see the posted speed limits, so just try to remember what they are. We’re on the honor system here, OK?”

The fire department recommends trying memory games to help sharpen your skills, like “look look” or “fruit flip”, or get yourself a Simon. You guys should remember Simon, the toy that flashed different colors in a certain order, and you’re supposed to correctly mimic their patterns. If you do it right, they tell you a secret. Sometimes it’s a secret about someone else, maybe a stranger. Maybe someone you know. Probably your girlfriend. It’s a secret about you, something she would never tell you, and certainly something you don’t want to know. The only way to make sure that secrets stay safe is to get the pattern right.

[sings] Blue blue red green, blue yellow, ochre, (-), cornflower, chartreuse, chartreuse, ecruu… It helps to sing it. 

“Remember if you fail at this or anything,” Incarnacian added, “it’s because you didn’t try hard enough. Everything is a pure meritocracy.”

Speaking of remembering, my niece Janice has been practically knocking herself out studying for the pre-SAT’s. I know a lot of other kids at Night Vale High School are doing the same right now, so we’re going to run through a few practice questions to help them prepare. First, basic analogies.

Scavenger is to carrion as love is to A) car accident, B) quitting your job, C) cooking for friends, or D) cooking friends.
Wait, (that was) the answers for the verbal section, um.. Here, let’s try math. [clears throat]

How much would you have to be paid to pull out your own fingernails? The correct answer is 450 dollars.
How much would you have to be paid to pull out your own fingernail sin the year 1979? The correct is 1,520 dollars, adjusting for inflation.

How many box turtles would it take to eat a common raven? Hmmm. Think about that
while we go to the weather.

[“Friend or Foe” by Low Power https://soundcloud.com/lowpowermusic]

Breaking news. A giant statue has been erected in the town squire. A post-minimalist anthropod the size of a suburban rent style house. It’s made of Italian marble with tasteful touches of bronze, but also concrete, scraps of paper, chicken feet, and plastic (cub) caps from a 1979 Nissan Ultima for eyes. Scratched into the dirt around the statue are the words: “Harvest time is now”. Theories vary on what this means, but seem largely to fall in three categories.

Religious leaders believe harvest time may finally signify the onset of end of times, which they can’t deny will give them a certain smug satisfaction. There have been more than a few human sacrifices so far, which some are saying is a bit pre-emptive, but as John F. Kennedy famously said, “sacrificers gonna sacrifice”.

Others are claiming this is all a viral marketing campaign for a new vegan restaurant. A voice was heard echoing the smoke-filled streets. “It’s a chain, isn’t it? I’ve eaten at one. It’s a buffet thing,” the voices shouted. “The restaurant is inside a statue.”
Others still prepared a public demonstration by standing around holding blank signs, knowing they will feel strongly about something soon.

Hm. Uh, looking at the community calendar,  I no longer see the notation for harvest time. The Elks Lodge spaghetti feed is still happening though. Not too late to get down there and grab a plate. I know that’s where I’m headed right after this broadcast. I’m getting a report from the spaghetti feed that those in attendance felt painfully full only moments ago, or “abysmal with spaghetti”, as one feeder put it, and now fall somewhere in the spectrum between ravenously hungry and the absence of any sensation at all. Sounds delicious!

OK, alright, I am getting quite a lot of reports all at once. Um, [clears throat]. It appears some things have gone missing. Citizen Jeremy Godfrey, who has been experiencing symptoms of midlife crisis for several months, reported a sudden and complete loss of the fear of death. My brother-in-law, Steve Carlsberg, reported his Christmas decorations are missing from his attic. Now this includes the life-size Santa that sits in an aluminum boat and casts a fishing pole string made of lights. My niece Janice expressed the dissenting opinion that the loss of these decorations may actually be a gain for the family. Janice also reported her PSAT practice test went completely blank, after she spent hours filling it out. Fortunately she enjoys standardized tests, so she just did it again.

Professor Harrison Kip is missing two toes. Though luckily, they were his two extras. Siobhan Asdaq has reported the loss of a close acquaintance after inadvertently hurting their feelings online, but noted maybe it’s better this way, if they’re going to be such a crybaby about little things like all caps curse-filled insults. Little league coach Betty Lucero reported all of her baseball bats are missing. She found her garage filled instead with fruit bats, which are at the time of this report drowsily eating bananas.

Ah, also. Everyone in town reported their credit card numbers stolen and maxed out. Hmm. The charges on the cards originated from the same places: a building supply company, a scrap yard, and a Michael’s craft store next to the Staples. It appears all the stolen funds have gone to building the new statue in the town square. Now there are mixed feelings about this, as it is a beautiful statue but you know, it’s also credit fraud.

And I have here and addendum to the testimonial I read earlier from former intern Maureen’s air conditioning client, Gladys R. It reads: “The skin hangs loosely from our arms, where tumors once bulged with unknowing life. They hang flat and empty, with tiny open sores. Perhaps where something emerged in the night while we slept. We slept so well. I can’t emphasize that enough. The rhythmic sensations of those little heartbeats vibrating against the fat and bones of our arms lulled us into a state of complete relaxation. A relaxation deeper than we have ever known before. We miss that. We really miss that. Wee can’t sleep anymore. We didn’t fully appreciate what we had until it was gone. We acknowledge that and we repent. We want to find whatever it was that was inside of us and put it back. We don’t know what to look for or where to begin. If anyone has seen anything, please let us know.”
Thanks, Gladys R.! Will do.

Wait, are you guys hearing that? There’s a new sound coming from the town square, it-it sounds like the trumpeting of ram’s horns. And the smoke has started clearing up, and now there remains only a gray dusty quiet.

Is it over? Did anything really happen? So many things are like that, aren’t they? Anticipation and disappointment. Loss and abundance happening at the same moment. So that you end up with only the uneasy illusion of balance or meaning. I’m hearing now that there’s an engraved placard on the anthropod statue, previously unseen because it was slopped over with plaster and looked hastily scratched into the back of a license plate with a nail. It says, [clears throat]
“Ripeness is perfection, and perfection is the step before decay.”
Awww, that’s sweet, right? Anyway, better get down to the spaghetti feed before it’s over. Oh, and the answer is 2. 2 box turtles can completely devour a common raven.

Stay tuned for the original 1972 folk rock ad jingle for the Simon memory game entitled “Never Forget to Remember – and Remember to Forget to Forget”.

Good night,
Night Vale,
Good night.

Today’s proverb: If you circle the letters in the Bible just right, you get the phrase: “lightly dressed kale”. So I don’t know what that means, but it’s direct from God.