Welcome to the Internet

You are safe.
You are in grave danger.
  You are both at once and are thus free to fully enjoy your life. This duality of existence comforts you, as does the knowledge that none of this matters, that none of this...is real.

Welcome...to the internet.

[Cue Ballad of Fiedler and Muntz]

Hello,reader. I'd like to talk to you today about a program-a podcast, actually- that is very special to me. No, no, I know what you're thinking. It isn't Blacker than Death: Chronicles of a Stygian Reversal, though I do so love how the voice actor portrays the Unicorns and bunnies. No, the podcast I wish to speak of today is a little gem called Welcome to Night Vale. Strictly speaking,this blog is supposed to be about something I read, not listened to, but that's ok! I've actually been reading transcripts of the podcast all week! Sure, reading the transcripts aren't the same as having Cecil Baldwin's dulcet tones purr into my ear, but I can make do. Looking directly at the words and processing them, instead of having them pulled between my ears on a velvet cord/chord,I can still imagine  his voice. More importantly, however, I can analyze.

I wont go into  too much detail, readers, because I'd hate to spoil such a fantastic thing for you, but the creators of Welcome to Night Vale have built, over time, an incredibly complex world, with many layered plots, conspiracies up the wazoo, and I'm fairly certain they've got a subterranean warehouse  that houses a surplus of wazoos.


But, I haven't even told you what the Podcast is about, have I? Well, Welcome to Night Vale is told from the perspective of a newscaster of  a community radio station ,NCR (Night Vale Community Radio). Apparently omnoscient (or a least enough so to be able to report the news as it happens, with no other sources), Cecil dutifully reports the goings-on in Night Vale. I understand that this normally wouldn't sound too exciting, but the events that take place in Night Vale are...well, let me give you some examples.

To start off, Night Vale has been described, by the creators, as 'a town where every conspiracy theory is true'. Yes, EVERY ONE of them.

Some of the inhabitants and odd occurences are as follows:

• Secret underground city.
• Malevolent glow cloud that rains dead animals, transmits terrible hallucinations, and runs the School Board
• Angels that everyone sees but that,legally, do not exist.
• The Sheriff's Secret Police. 
• Municipally Granted Free Will
•  Hooded Figures.
• Trees that whisper compliments to you and convince you to join them in their commune of life force-sharing trees, by physically absorbing you in and turning you into a tree.

I've said too much already. Just, for goodness sake, go listen to it! Here. I suggest episode 42, it has a nice representation of the show's mood, without many spoilers.

(I'm aware that this is not as good a review as I normally do, but I'm exhausted, and I'm literally hallucinating the letters dancing across my screen right now)