Welcome To Night Vale Quotes

Fear is a reasonable response to life.

She understood the world and her place in it. She understood nothing. The world and her place in it were nothing and she understood that.

Remember that misuse of language can lead to miscommunication, and that miscommunication leads to everything that has ever happened in the whole of the world.

People are beautiful when they do beautiful things.

Comfort was the answer to all life's problems. It didn't solve them, but it made them more distant for a bit as they quietly worsened.

It was a fair question, although the problem with fair questions is that they are asked about an unfair world.

The past is gone, and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first and settles in as the gentle present.

She was angry, which is the more productive cousin of fear.

Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not. We never are. But that’s not the right question. The question is are we living a life that is worth the harm?

She left the shower as most people leave showers, clean and a little lonely.

The search for truth takes us to dangerous places,” said Old Woman Josie. “Often it takes us to that most dangerous place: the library. You know who said that? No? George Washington did. Minutes before librarians ate him.

Sleep is confusing. Dreams are baffling. The concept of transitioning from one perceived reality to another is a tolerated madness.

People who grow older think they are so wise, she thought. Like time means anything at all.

In other news, a recent report suggests that things may not be as they seem.

There is nothing more lonely than an action taken quietly on your own, and nothing more comforting than doing that same quiet action in parallel with fellow humans doing the same action, everyone alone next to each other.

Librarians are hideous creatures of unimaginable power. And even if you could imagine their power, it would be illegal. It is absolutely illegal to even try to picture what such a being would be like.

She was not shy, but maybe lazy socially. Not willing to seek out situations and connections that were not already part of her routine.

In terms of tacos, she was doing fine.

Almost always we are all experiencing the same problems as everyone else,” said Josie, “and pretending we don’t so that every one of us thinks we are alone.

You say your life is unraveling. Your life cannot unravel. Your life is your life. You haven't lost it. It's just different now

Sleep heavily and know that I am here with you now. The past is gone, and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first and settles in as the gentle present. This now, this us? We can cope with that. We can do this together. You and I, drowsily, but comfortably.

Sometimes it is easy to forget which things in the world can feel pain and which cannot.

We understand the lights. We understand the lights above the Arby’s. We understand so much. But the sky behind those lights, mostly void, partially stars, that sky reminds us: We don’t understand even more.

Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.

there’s no sense in going through life presuming awful things about people you do not know.

To be remembered is, I think, a basic human right. Not one that occurs to a person when it is there, but like a parched throat in a desert when it is gone.

Desperation does not breed empathy or clear thinking.

The present tense of regret is indecision.

We are skipping Friday this week, but we’ll make up for it by having Double Friday next week. Mark your schedules.

It's not other people that hurt us, but what we feel about them

But babies become children, and they go to elementary schools that indoctrinate them on how to overthrow governments, and they get interested in boys and girls, or they don't, and anyway they change.

She didn’t have a good reason for most of what she did. Mostly, she went by what seemed right in the moment, and justified it to herself later, and in this way she was no different than anyone else she knew.

It was a simpler time. Because I personally had less memories and so less to superimpose upon the world, and so it was much clearer, and also I was younger. Thus, the world was simpler.

Remember: if you see something, say nothing, and drink to forget.

Sometimes it's okay to find something beautiful without correctly understanding it.

I don’t know who I am and I don’t understand the progression of time as it relates to me,” said Jackie. Leann nodded. “We’ve all been there.

We live in a pattern that we'll never detect, and that will shuffle us through invisible hierarchies to the actual death of us.

I’m not afraid,” she declared, and she wasn’t. She was angry, which is the more productive cousin of fear.

There's a monster at the end of this book. It's the blank page where the story ends and you're left alone with yourself and your thoughts.

Whisper a dangerous secret to someone you care about. Now they have the power to destroy you, but they won't. This is what love is.

Clocks and calendars don’t work in Night Vale. Time itself doesn’t work.

Her body no longer felt young. All of her energy had been robbed from her. She felt old, looked young, was neither.

Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not. We never are. But that’s not the right question. The question is: Are we living a life that is worth the harm?

And now a brief public service announcement. Alligators: can they kill your children? Yes.

Troy and I loved each other. We called it 'unconditional love', which was true. Once conditions arose, the love dissipated.

You, of course, should always chant when you wash your hands. It is only hygienic.

I'm sorry that it was this way, Mom. Not sorry like an apology. I'm sorry as in sorrow.

One day we will destroy the moon with indifference!

If we cannot be judged on our actions, then we cannot be judged.

Some people prefer to make their homes so neat that there is no evidence of life anywhere at all.

Science was meant to be hard. After all, what was science but a bunch of bored human beings trying to challenge themselves when faith became too easy

Sometimes you go through things that seem huge at the time, like a mysterious glowing cloud devouring your entire community. While they're happening, they feel like the only thing that matters and you can hardly imagine that there's a world out there that might have anything else going on. And then the glow cloud moves on. And you move on. And the event is behind you. And you may find, as time passes, that you remember it less and less. Or absolutely not at all, in my case.

You believe in mountains, right? Not everyone does.

Pepsi: Drink Coke.

Of course, angels do not exist. It is illegal to consider their existence, or even to give them a dollar when they forget bus money and start hovering around the Ralphs asking for change.

Some days the weather happens and we never look up or go outside and that’s okay too.

but what are people but deaths that haven’t happened yet?

It’s nice to have a station pet. Wish it wasn’t trapped in a hovering prison in the men’s bathroom, but listen: no pet is perfect. It becomes perfect when you learn to accept it for what it is.

Silence is golden. Words are vibrations. Thoughts are magic.

Everything I do is for a reason. And I don't know what that reason is. Everything I do is for a reason, and I know none of them. Everything makes sense, and the sense is hidden from me.

This is Night Vale. Our mayor once led an army of masked warriors from another dimension through magic doors to defeat an army of smiling blood-covered office workers. There is definitely, definitely another way.

It would be safe to assume that the house is an enclosed structure owned and built by people. It would be weird to assume that the house has a personality, a soul. Why would anyone assume that? It is true. It does. But that was weird to assume that. Never assume that kind of thing.

Like any reasonable human, I do not like harming innocent people, but like any reasonable human, I do not consider the wealthy to be innocent people.

The desert seems vast, even endless. And yet scientists tell us that somewhere, even now, there is snow.

He was not so arrogant as to refer to his own death as The End, just one of billions of ends before The End. Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.

It is a terrible, terrible beauty that I do not understand.

You're a good one, Jackie Fierro," they said. "And that makes the world a dangerous place for you.

Most people in Night Vale get by with a cobbled-together framework of lies and assumptions and conspiracy theories.

Not everybody gets to be friends with everybody.

She loved him the way one loves an old bridge or a wool sweater or the sound of a growing tulip.

Imagine a fifteen-year-old boy. Nope. That was not right at all. Try again.

All the beauty in the world was made within the oppressive limitations of time and death and impermanence.

Parents sometimes show love through velocity.

The tarantula stared at the ceiling not knowing at all what a ceiling is.

There are a lot of things we don’t understand about orange juice, the house thought.

We are not history yet. We are happening now. How miraculous is that?

Be proud of your place in the cosmos. It is small, and yet it is. How unlikely! How fantastic!

The moon’s weird though, right? It’s there, and there, and then suddenly it’s not. And it seems to be pretty far up. Is it watching us? If not, what is it watching instead? Is there something more interesting than us? Hey, watch us moon! We may not always be the best show in the universe, but we try.

Perfection is not real. Perfection is not human. Carlos is not perfect- no, even better- he is imperfect. Everything about him, and us, and all of this is imperfect. And those imperfections in our reality are the seams and cracks into which our outsized love can seep and pool.

Everyone in this town is frightening and friendly and kind and awful. But everyone everywhere is.

When nothing else works, eating sure does.

Diane was gasping and slowing, cursing years of intended workouts that had never happened.

Don’t worry. Don’t worry. All is as it was meant to be. It was meant to be lonely and terrifying and unfair and fleeting. Don’t worry.

Wednesday is Smell Like a Pirate Day. Everyone in town is encouraged to get in on the wacky fun by not bathing for weeks and rubbing yourself with ash and blood.

Then you will die, but only for a little while.

Finally, most identity thefts occur when databases are not securely managed. So, my advice? Don’t ever end up in a database.

At your smallest components, you are indistinguishable from a forest fire.

Mostly we don’t get destroyed,” John said. “Mostly we destroy ourselves.” Another

But here is the truth of nostalgia: We don’t feel it for who we were, but who we weren’t. We feel it for all the possibilities that were open to us but that we didn’t take.

As the old saying went: “Not all windowless vans have residential surveillance equipment.

Get out to Lenny’s for their big grand opening sale. Find eight government secrets and get a free kidnapping and personality reassignment so that you’ll forget you found them!

The reading area was a beautifully crafted trap set by the librarians, but it was too perfect. Even the dumbest book lover—and anyone who would regularly choose to come in contact with books could not be a bright bulb, Jackie thought—wouldn’t fall for this.

Your existence is not impossible, but it’s also not very likely.

Mostly we don't get destroyed," John said. "Mostly we destroy ourselves.

when Cecil talked it was possible to let some of that go. To let go of the worries. To let go of the questions. To let go of letting or going.

It’s not easy raising a child in Night Vale. Things go strange often. There are literal monsters here. Most towns don’t have literal monsters, I think, but we do.

Distance is confusing,” the stranger would tell people, anyone who would listen. “So is time.

The City Council ended the conference by devouring a raw potato in quick, small bites of their sharp teeth and rough tongues. No follow-up questions were asked, although there were a few follow-up screams.

Nothing there but a distant airplane crawling across the sky, red blinking lights, vulnerable in the vast empty, faint red beacons flashing the message HELLO. A SMALL ISLAND OF LIFE UP HERE, VERY CLOSE TO SPACE. PRAY FOR US. PRAY FOR US.

A story never stands on its own, but exists in the context of the storyteller.

Most people in Night Vale get by with a cobbled-together framework of lies and assumptions and conspiracy theories. Diane was like most people. Most people are.

There is power in being unremembered, in being overlooked. You should remember that power. People who aren't seen can see and hear all.

Saying a moment is awkward has never made an awkward moment better, but it’s a tactic that humans keep trying over and over.

That’s a simplification. Just because something eventually doesn’t work out doesn’t mean it never worked out. It was working out fine until, not much later, it wasn’t working out at all. Happiness is not canceled out by unhappiness. A relationship is not canceled out by its end.

Josie produced a glass of water, through practiced manipulation of cupboards and valves and municipal plumbing. Neither she nor Jackie was impressed with the human miracle represented by how easily the glass of water was produced.

Diane, what does it mean when you know you’re feeling something but you don’t know what that feeling is?” Diane considered this seriously for a long time. “It means you’re growing older.” “I never grow older.” “I guess we all thought that once.

All information was important information, even if the reasons were not immediately apparent.

Diane suddenly felt like the words she was saying were twisting in her mouth and coming out as different words altogether.

If you like a thing, and only one place in town serves that thing, you’re going to be pretty excited by that thing, regardless of quality.

Wednesday has been canceled due to a scheduling error.

Everything is exciting, particularly existence. Existence is the most thrilling fact of all.

The Night Vale PTA released a statement today saying that if the School Board could not promise to prevent children from learning about dangerous activities like drug use and library science during recess periods, they would be blocking all school entrances with their bodies. They pulled hundreds of bodies out from trucks, saying, “We own all of these bodies and we will not hesitate to use them to create great flesh barricades if that is what it takes to prevent our children from learning.

And night falls on you too. You have survived, survived everything up to this moment. Grip tight, hum, laugh, cry. Forget nothing and think many things of it. Goodnight. Goodnight. Goodnight.

Remember: If you see something, say nothing, and drink to forget.

Be proud of your place in the cosmos. It is so small. And yet it is.

Who can fathom the danger and pain of a visit to the City Council?

Hulu Plus: Good for criminals.

History is us squinting into the past, mistaking millions of tiny vibrations in all directions for unified, unidirectional movements by entire civilizations.

you will find yourself on your hands and knees, the warm water running over you, and you will know where the pawnshop is. You will smell must and soap, and feel a stab of panic about how alone you are. It will be like most showers you’ve taken.

All this time he had lived for the future. The future had been the firm ground he stood on, and the present was only the slight haze in the air. But now he understood that the future was a joke without a punch line and that whatever he had in the present was what he would always have. He did not have much in the present.

You may not live through it. And if you do, the you that lived through it will not be the same you that lived before it. In that sense, you will definitely not exist after, and I’m sorry.

I love you,” she called, hoping it wasn’t too late. “I love you too,” he said back, not loudly enough to be heard.

When you make weirdness into a puzzle to be solved, you make LOST

Often it takes us to that most dangerous place: the library. You know who said that? No? George Washington did. Minutes before librarians ate him.

Everything I do is for a reason, and I know none of them, Everything makes sense, and the sense is hidden from me.

Valentine's Day is a disaster. Any day that is designed to perfectly encapsulate something as messy and personal as two people in a romantic relationship would have to be. But in Night Vale it also kills people. This is called satire.

Imagine teaching a fifteen-year-old how to drive a car with manual transmission. First, you have to press down the clutch. Then you have to whisper a secret into one of the cup holders.

We have nothing to speak about. There never was. Words are an unnecessary trouble. Expression is time wasting away. Any communication is just a yelp in the darkness. I am speaking now but I am saying nothing. I am just making noises, and, as it happens, they are organized in words and you should not draw meaning from this.

May we all be human: beautiful, stupid, temporal, endless. And as the sun sets, I place my hand upon my heart, feel that it is still beating, and remind myself: "Past performance is not a predictor of future results.

Remember, this is America. Vote correctly or never see your loved ones again.

Jackie laughed, although she didn't find it funny. There are other reasons for laughter.

They were flinty, dull, with inscriptions depicting each of the five Ws of Journalism (What? What! What!? What. Why?).

Her mother had called, and being a good daughter was as convenient an excuse as any. Anything to avoid the library.

had felt good to have someone explicitly value something that she did.

But a person doesn’t need experience or knowledge of something to have opinions about it. It turns out all they need for that are opinions.

We wake up. We move on. No state is our state forever. All is fleeting.

Night Vale, my sweet and only Night Vale, may you find love. May you find it wherever it's been hidden. May you find who has been hiding it and extract revenge upon them.

In breaking news, the sky. The earth. Life. Existence as an unchanging plain with horizons of birth and death in the faint distance.

The antiques in the window were especially cute, wrestling with each other and playfully snapping at each other’s tails.

She continued to look out the window for a moment, her humanity and thoughtfulness tucked away inside a tight frown, an honest brushstroke in a boring painting.

Almost always we are all experiencing the same problems as everyone else…. and pretending we don’t so that every one of us thinks we are alone.

In my rage, I can be anywhere, do anything. Vengeance is my path, and I must never once veer from it.

The concept of transitioning from one perceived reality to another is a tolerated madness.

There are moments in life in which it is made clear to us how vastly we have misunderstood.

She drove home and grabbed the things she would need to check out a book: strong rope and a grappling hook, a compass, a flare gun, matches and a can of hair spray, a sharpened wooden spear, and, of course, her library card.

Today is the last day of your life up to this point.

I’m not afraid,” she declared, and she wasn’t. She was angry, which is the more productive cousin of fear. The

It didn't matter what he said. The world is terrifying. It always is. But Cecil reminded her that it was ok to relax in a terrifying world.

You always know your child, even when your child doesn't know you.

What are people but deaths that haven't happened yet?

He'll be what he'll be. And we'll all learn to be okay with whatever that is.

It felt like illness, but it was only existence.

People are beautiful when they do beautiful things.

Beyond the window was the parking lot and beyond that the desert, and beyond that the sky, mostly void, partially stars. Layered

sadness is eternal, that weakness is another word for humanity, and that all will pass, all will pass. She

Messages are for the sender, not for the receiver.

City halls are always huge and ornate and topped with ancient volcanic stone towers.

As they stepped outside into the sandy dusk, the bell on the door jingled faintly in Jackie’s mind like a favorite song to which she could no longer quite remember the tune.

If you say guns kill people one more time, I will shoot you with a gun, and you will, coincidentally, die.

Whoever you are now, you are home.

Thoughts that should be unthought before interacting with the public. Thoughts like [low guttural growl] or [knuckles crack, fists clench, teeth tighten, eyes stop letting in any new information, and water runs down a rigid face].

Each day the sun rises and sets. The moon pulls the tides. Our hearts beat. Our loved ones love us back. And we share our inhales and exhales with the great organism that is our tiny planet.

Along those lines, to get personal for a moment, I think the best way to die would be swallowed by a giant snake. Going feet first and whole into a slimy maw would give your life perfect symmetry.

ONE DAY, YOU WILL DISCOVER YOUR PURPOSE, AND THEN YOU WILL TELL NO ONE. AND THEN YOU WILL DIE.

Some mysteries aren’t questions to be answered but just a kind of opaque fact, a thing which exists to be not known.

Pain is just weakness leaving the body, and then being replaced by pain. Lots of pain.

The moon is a trick of light suggested to us by the seas, the house thought.

failed to yield to hooded figures, resulting in mandatory citywide ennui for hours.

remember that misuse of language can lead to miscommunication, and that miscommunication leads to everything that has ever happened in the whole of the world

Sorry, listeners. I need to go make sure she’s all right. I take you now to the sound of a human stomach digesting, heavily amplified and electronically distorted.

Weird at last. Weird at last. God Almighty, weird at last.

Stay tuned next for our countdown of last words, from “Stop telling me how to drive” all the way to “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.

You may not live through it. And if you do, the you that lived through it will not be the same you that lived before it. In that sense, you will definitely not exist after, and I'm sorry.

You were my baby. But babies become children, and they go to elementary schools that indoctrinate them on how to overthrow governments, and they get interested in boys and girls, or they don’t, and anyway they change. They go to high schools, where they learn dangerous things. They grow into adults, and become dangerous things.

You still need to work on a lot of things,” Diane did not say. “I’m sorry your father isn’t here,” she also did not say. “But I am trying so, so hard. I am, Josh. I am, I am, I am,” she did not say. As far as things go, her self-control was pretty good.

Maybe she had come into existence seconds ago and had made up every moment until this moment to explain how she came to be sitting in this booth in this diner.

Aren't we all, metaphorically, just looking for a bathroom?

You say your life is unraveling. Your life cannot unravel. Your life is your life. You haven’t lost it. It’s just different now.” “Do

It's a kind of assault, this constant insistence that we can't be publicly acknowledged. Sometimes an act as simple as a person recognizing you, your bulk, the tangibility of your skin. That can mean everything.

People arrived in town all the time. It wasn’t that distant from other places, and it was along a major thoroughfare. There was a Taco Bell where people could pee. There was a gas station where people could pee. There were all sorts of things.

Dear, be kind to the mothers of Night Vale. Have pity on us. It’ll be no easier for Diane. Things go strange here. Your children forget you, and the courses of their lives get frozen. Or they change shapes every day, and they think that just because they look completely different you won’t be able to recognize them. But you always will. You always know your child, even when your child doesn’t know you.

No one cared about a woman staring through binoculars from a parked car. It was a common sight. There were three other cars with binoculared, watching women just on that block, and that was light by Night Vale standards.

We all chose to stand down and hope change would be won for us, and not by us. By someone else, we believed. A hero, we believed. But belief is only step one. Action is step two. Fighting for what you believe is step two. Solidarity is step two. Unity is step two.

He doesn’t think of himself as the him that exists in this moment but as the him that will exist soon. He is not far away from the him that he really is. He will be that version of himself very soon.

Taking a shower often solved problems for her. She would find herself with thoughts that seemed to come from outside her, thoughts that would question decisions or offer suggestions or just consider life hazily in a way that made it seem like the thoughts could not possibly be her own.

Time is like wax, dripping from a candle flame. In the moment, it is molten and falling, with the capability to transform into any shape. Then the moment passes, and the wax hits the tabletop, and solidifies into the shape it will always be. It becomes the past, a solid, single record of what happened, still holding in its wild curves and contours the potential of every shape it could have held. It is impossible, no matter how blessed you are by luck or the government or some remote, invisible deity gently steering your life with hands made of moonlight and wind, it is impossible not to feel a little sad looking at that bit of wax, that bit of the past. It is impossible not to think of all the wild forms that wax now will never take. ... ... But then you remember, I remember, that we are even now in another bit of molten wax. We are in a moment and it is still falling, still volatile, and we will never be anywhere else. We will always be in that most dangerous, most exciting, most possible time of all: the now, where we never can know what shape the next moment will take. Stay tune fore... well, let's just find out together, shall we?

She had recently turned nineteen. She had been recently nineteen for as long as she could remember. The pawnshop had been hers for a long time, centuries maybe. Clocks and calendars don't work in Night Vale. Time itself doesn't work.

Troy does not get to be your father simply because he participated in your creation. Troy does not get to earn your love as a son because you are biologically his. I have done the work. I have put in the time. I have loved you. Troy does not get to be my equal in your life because he has not earned it. I need to protect myself. And I need to protect you.

That’s it from me for now, listeners. But something in me says that this is no ending. The night outside is bright and breezy and full of dangerous secrets. There is a taste in the air like tarnished silver, like the flesh of an extinct animal now only remembered through our spinal cord and the hairs on our back.

WE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN. BUT HERE’S A LITTLE SECRET FOR YOU: NO ONE IS EVER THE SAME THING AGAIN AFTER ANYTHING. YOU ARE NEVER THE SAME TWICE, AND MUCH OF YOUR UNHAPPINESS COMES FROM TRYING TO PRETEND THAT YOU ARE. ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE DIFFERENT EACH DAY, AND DO SO JOYFULLY, RECOGNIZING IT FOR THE GIFT IT IS. WORK WITHIN THE DESIRES AND GOALS OF THE PERSON YOU ARE CURRENTLY, UNTIL YOU AREN’T THAT PERSON ANYMORE, AND EVERYTHING CHANGES ONCE AGAIN.

Here is what we know about sentience. Sand is sentient. The desert is sentient. The sky is not sentient. Plants are intermittently sentient. Dogs are the most sentient. We are not sentient. The planet as a whole is sentient. The parts that make up that whole are not sentient. Holes are sentient. We are not sentient. Gift cards are sentient until they expire. States in which it is illegal for gift cards to expire have created immortal sentience. Money is not sentient. The concept of private property is sentient. Sand is sentient. The desert is sentient. We are not sentient.

Look, life is stressful. This is true everywhere. But life in Night Vale is more stressful. There are things lurking in the shadows. Not the projections of a worried mind, but literal Things, lurking, literally, in shadows. Conspiracies are hidden in every storefront, under every street, and floating in helicopters above. And with all that there is still the bland tragedy of life. Births, deaths, comings, goings, the gulf of subjectivity and bravado between us and everyone we care about. All is sorrow, as a man once said without really doing much about it.

He looks up. Again, it is there in the sky. The planet of awesome size, lit by no sun. An invisible titan, all thick black forests and jagged mountains and deep, turbulent oceans. It is very close now. So close that he wonders if he could touch it. As he reaches up, he thinks he sees movement on its surface. Through the canopy of the forests and upon the slopes of the mountains and on the shores of the churning ocean. People maybe. Crowds of people all wrapped in white cloth. They are leaning into each other like dropped puppets. They sway lifelessly. He feels horror in the back of his throat, but still he reaches up.  He can’t help himself. It’s just what he does next.

I took a walk on the cool sand dunes, brittle grass overgrown, and above me, in the night sky, above me, I saw. Bitter taste of unripe peaches and a smell I could not place, nor could I escape. I remembered other times that I could not escape. I remembered other smells. The moon slunk like a wounded animal. The world spun like it had lost control. Concentrate only on breathing and let go of ideas you had about nutrition and alarm clocks. I took a walk on the cool sand dunes, brittle grass overgrown, and above me, in the night sky, above me, I saw. This message brought to you by Coca-Cola.

Where do we start?” said Jackie. Josie told her. Jackie swore at her, and then apologized for swearing. “The library, though.” Jackie considered. “No. That’s. That’s.” She indicated with her hands what it was. “The search for truth takes us to dangerous places,” said Old Woman Josie. “Often it takes us to that most dangerous place: the library. You know who said that? No? George Washington did. Minutes before librarians ate him.

You will know recycling has been picked up because your recycling bags will be gone and there will be a large, reddish brown smear across your front door roughly in the shape of an X. Or maybe it’s a cross. It’s not clear in the brochure I’ve been handed, which has no words, only dark black-and-white photographs of angled shadows along brick walls. I mean, municipal one-sheets are kind of useless, but this one is at least haunting.

There was a girl Josh liked who only liked Josh when he was bipedal. Josh does not like always being bipedal and found this news disappointing. There was a boy Josh liked who liked Josh when he was a cute animal. Josh always likes being a cute animal, but Josh's subjective sense of the word cute was different from the boy's. This was another disappointment for Josh, and also for the boy, who did not find giant centipedes cute at all.

Josie’s house was near the edge of town, next to the used car lot. When a person was done with a car, and they didn’t need to pawn it, they would park it in the used car lot, open the door, and run as fast they could for the fence, before the used car salesmen could catch them. No one ever came to buy one. The used car salesmen loped between the lines of cars, their hackles raised and their fur on end. They would stroke the hood of a Toyota Sienna, radiant with heat in the desert sun, or poke curiously at the bumper of a Volkswagen Golf, nearly dislodged by potholes and tied on with a few zip ties. The used car salesmen were fast and ravenous, and sometimes a person who meant only to leave their car would leave much more than that.

We all want to live forever, right? Wrong! Think about watching your family die as you selfishly carry on. Your children aging and passing, your grandchildren, and so on. Think of all of the friends you’ll make but eventually lose. You don’t want that! No! You know the earth is eventually going to be swallowed by the sun, right? And one day you would be present for this greatest of all apocalypses. As fascinating as this event would be, scientifically speaking, this excitement would fade as the pain of thousand-degree flames engulfed your tender body and your aged mind would be so alone in this interminable torture. Does this sound like something you want? We didn't think so. Immortality is stupid. Think before you wish. This message brought to you by DIRECTV.

Last night, at a press conference, the City Council reminded everyone that the Dog Park is there for our community enjoyment and use, and so it is important that no one enter, look at, or think about the Dog Park. They are adding a new advanced camera system to keep an eye on the great black walls of the Dog Park at all times, and if anyone is caught trying to enter it, they will be forced to enter it, and will never be heard from again. If you see hooded figures in the Dog Park, no you didn’t. The hooded figures are perfectly safe, and should not be approached at any costs. The City Council ended the conference by devouring a raw potato in quick, small bites of their sharp teeth and rough tongues. No follow-up questions were asked, although there were a few follow-up screams. We have also received word via encrypted radio pulses about the opening of a new store: Lenny’s Bargain House of Gardenwares and Machine Parts, which until recently was that abandoned warehouse the government was using for the highly classified and completely secret tests I was telling you about last week. Lenny’s will serve as a helpful new source for all needs involving landscaping and lawn-decorating materials and also as a way for the government to unload all the machines and failed tests and dangerous substances that otherwise would be wasted on things like “safe disposal” or “burying in a concrete tomb until the sun goes out.” Get out to Lenny’s for their big grand opening sale. Find eight government secrets and get a free kidnapping and personality reassignment so that you’ll forget you found them!