Welcome to Welcome to Nightvale

Reputable people kept telling me to listen to the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, but I kept thinking: do I really need to start following the news cycle of a fictional town? when I have enough trouble keeping straight what's happening on the actual Earth? why would I need more news? fictitious news? it's hard enough to find time to listen to Planet Money and Dan Carlin and Radiolab and Freakonomics . . . but I now that I've listened to the show, I realize these thoughts were idiotic; Welcome to Night Vale is fantastic and spooky and visceral and poetically hysterical, like Stephen King meets NPR meets Jack Handy, set in a haunted desert version of Winesburg, Ohio . . . with a little bit of the Parks & Rec Pawnee vs. Eagleton rivalry -- except that it's The Night Vale Scorpions vs. The Desert Bluffs Cacti . . . and my kids love the show as much as me, so fuck the real news cycle, especially when the headlines are simply to fill the space: "No Evidence of Shooting at Washington Navy Yard Despite Lockdown" . . . we're following indescribable shapes and hooded figures and the perfect hair of Carlos the scientist.