15.11 – Street Cleaning Day

Ladies and gentlemen, it is not possible for us to exactly do another news report on Street Cleaning Day, as no information can get through the barricades and seals that are keeping us safe within our broadcasting bunker.  Instead, we offer the following impressionistic list of what we believe is happening outside our secure perimeter.

• Screaming
• A slow movement downwards
• The crunch of items made of wood and items not made of wood
• A quick movement upwards
• Char
• A smell like rotting seaweed, or a poisoned ocean
• The song “La Bamba”, only faster
• You know that feeling when you realize you’re not alone?  Only more so
• Screaming
• Screaming
• Screaming

Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, the street cleaners are upon us.  What can we do?  What is there to do, besides, perhaps, taking you in a haze of terror and heat to the weather?

[“A Little Irony” by Tom Milsom. Music can be found at tommilsom.bandcamp.com.]

19A.9 – The Sandstorm

Listeners, I have some bad news and some, uh, good news. Dana is dead! But the other Dana is alive, and I don’t know which is the original and which is the double. Right now, one of the Danas is standing above her own corpse, panting. I cannot tell if she is grinning or grimacing. When I went in, she had clutched in one hand a broken stapler, and in the other, a printout of this email from… oh, God. This is the bad news I was talking about. An email from Steve Carlsberg. I don’t even want to read an email from that jerk, but if printing it out was one of the Dana’s final actions, I must honor her efforts.

Steve… ugh. Steve writes: ‘The sandstorm is clearly a coverup. I believe this was a government-created project. Our government has long been participating in cloud-seeding experiments, and trying to suppress the people with pharmaceuticals. I believe that this government will stop at nothing in order to…’

Now you listen here, Steve Carlsberg. You’re not saying anything new, Steve. Of course the sandstorm was created by the government. The City Council announced that this morning. The government makes no secret that they can control the weather, and earthquakes, and monitor thoughts and activities. That’s the stuff a big government is supposed to do! Obviously, you have never read the Constitution.

Okay, sure, government can be very inefficient, and sometimes bloated and corrupt, but the answer is not to complain about everything that they do. Without government, we would never have schools or roads or municipal utilities or helpful pandemics or black vans that roam our neighborhoods at night keeping us safe. So please, Steve Carlsberg, I’ve had enough of your government-bashing.

And with that, dear listeners, let’s go to the – oh my. Look at that. Listeners, there is a black, almost indigo, vortex that has formed along my studio wall. Listeners, words fail me. It is so beautiful. I can’t leave you, as our show is not yet over, but there must be something beyond this something, Night Vale. I must see what it is. I must go. I will try not to be long, listeners. I will try not to be long…