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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Joseph Fink
Read between
May 2 - November 4, 2019
First you need an item to pawn. To get this, you need a lot of time behind you, years spent living and existing, until you’ve reached a point where you believe that you exist, and that a physical item exists, and that the concept of ownership exists, and that, improbable as all those are, these absurd beliefs line up in a way that results in you owning an item. Good job. Nicely done.
You, of course, should always chant when you wash your hands. It is only hygienic.
You are, ultimately, unnecessary to this process. You are, ultimately, unnecessary.
There was always some world-ending cataclysm threatening Night Vale. Feral dogs. A sentient glowing cloud with the ability to control minds (although the Glow Cloud had become less threatening since its election to the local school board). Old oak doors that led to a strange desert otherworld where the current mayor had been trapped for months.
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.
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.
It was impressive how he got the car onto the counter, but there is a way these things are done, and it had to go on the counter.
It is a terrible, terrible beauty that I do not understand. Please stop.
It is hard to say who is good and caring when you know nothing about a person except that they show other people pictures of houses, but there’s no sense in going through life presuming awful things about people you do not know.
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].
It also houses a boy, not quite a man. He’s fifteen. You know how it is. Imagine a fifteen-year-old boy. Nope. That was not right at all. Try again. No. No. Okay, stop.
Like most teenagers, he always was what he happens to be in that moment, until he never was that.
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.
For the most part, I do not like taffeta, the house thought, and Diane shared that thought.
Another way the house is unlike other houses is it has a faceless old woman secretly living in it, although that is not important to this story.
There was the day where the small crack that’s always visible in the sky suddenly opened up, and several pterodactyls flew out. Later it was revealed they were just pteranodons, and all the panic was for nothing.
There was a black sedan with tinted windows at the end of the lot—the windows cracked down enough for her to see two sunglassed agents of a vague yet menacing government agency watching her intently. One of them had a camera that kept going off, but the agent didn’t seem to know how to deactivate the flash. The light against the tinted windows made the shots worthless, and the agent cursed and tried again and it flashed again. Jackie waved good night to them, as she always did.
So far the lights seem harmless, unless you’re directly under them, in which case, they’re the opposite of harmless, whatever that means to you.
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.
If you see hooded figures in the Dog Park, no you didn’t.
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!
She left the shower as most people leave showers, clean and a little lonely.
Teenagers shout things a lot while smashing knives near their hands, everyone knew.
The Night Vale Unified School District indicated that fewer than one in five tarantulas graduate from high school. Indeed, most spiders never even enroll in public education, choosing to instead spin webs and eat smaller insects. Tarantulas are simple creatures, thought PTA Treasurer Diane Crayton today, without ever voicing that sentence aloud to anyone, according to several reliable and invasive spy satellites that were scanning her brain at the time. We reached out to the tarantula community for a response to Diane’s privately held opinion, and were immediately crawled upon by several of
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Pepsi: Drink Coke.
We now return you to the sound of whatever is around you, which is probably a great deal more sound than you think, only some of which indicates future harm for you.
“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.
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.
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.
“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.”
The joyful glow of being somewhere together and feeling like they were both on the same team had outshone the silly antics of the funny characters in the kids’ movie (No Country for Old Men) up on the screen.
This particular night, the theater was showing the sequel to that popular animated franchise about the trees that look like trees but have human organs and try to stop developers from razing their forest. The trees are unsuccessful at first, but in the end the construction crews learn their lesson after seeing the large quantities of blood, and hearing the mangled screams.
They, of course, value and respect others’ love of a smiling god. (Is that a smile?)
Often he would ask questions. Sometimes those questions were out loud.
Jackie started her car in the direction of the library, but soon it strayed. Or she strayed it. Whatever the verb is to cause to stray. Corrupted. She corrupted her car toward her mother’s house.
Her house could easily be mistaken for any other house that happened to be identical to it.
Some people prefer to make their homes so neat that there is no evidence of life anywhere at all.
“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.
“Your father picked you up and swung you around. Parents sometimes show love through velocity.
If you see one of these FalsePolice, act right away by shrugging and thinking What am I gonna do? and then seeing if anything funny is on Twitter.
He had teeth like a military cemetery.
The reason for anything was rarely immediately or even eventually apparent, but it existed somewhere, like a moon that had escaped orbit and was no longer a moon but just a piece of something that once was, spinning off into the nothing. The scientists were just then writing down that very metaphor. Metaphors are a big part of science.
(as something of a party trick, she was excellent at guessing passwords based on a person’s personality, and had long ago correctly guessed that Tina’s password was “WhoAmIReally” followed by nineteen question marks),
“A Cake Recipe That Only People Who Hate Our Government Will Want to Try So Mail Us Your Best Pictures of Making It and We Will Take You Away.”
The mayor laughed. She looked different when she laughed, and then she stopped laughing and she did not look different anymore.
“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.”
He was wearing baggy jeans and a Mountain Goats T-shirt, which Josh had once been kicked out of school for wearing, because of its strong political message siding with those who believe in mountains.
“Mostly we don’t get destroyed,” John said. “Mostly we destroy ourselves.”
“Till we get some of that federal water here, mostly I grow imaginary corn. Grows just as well as anything else. Sells pretty well too. Plus doesn’t take much work.”
She felt as though everything had been taken away from her, even though only most things had.
