Sizzle reel

 

Over the past day I have been making these little short pieces that are too small for anything featured, and have not yet led into more complicated longer pieces. But they are fun little treats and even involve one of my co-workers who obliged by acting in a couple clips. I have assembled them all into today's sampler clip, which is mainly filmed in my library.

I have added music because you deserve the full burst of entertainment!

As usual with embedded video, click to prime. Enlarge on the bottom right, and click to play.

The 64 dollar tomato

 

There is a book that kicked around our library system over the past couple of decades called "The 64 Dollar Tomato". I never managed to read it, though I may have brought it home once or twice over the years with good intentions. The conceit it seems to be based on is an appealing and familiar one: That a simple hobby like gardening can come with so many costs, failures, and expenses that, well, growing one's own tomato can end up shockingly expensive.

I kept thinking about that book as I worked on the video below.

One of the video generators I circle around to periodically had a new feature I've been waiting for, so I spent money on some credits that allow me to generate AI... stuff.

Some of it worked just how I wanted!

But a lot of it didn't! And I went through most of my credits at a feverish clip that made me grumble quietly to myself:

"The 64 Dollar Tomato!"

But the movie is pretty neat. I think I'd make more things like this, especially the trippy bugheart section, if I had the credits. 

But I don't.

So I hope you enjoy my 64 dollar movie. Well, not a movie, more like a clerkmanifesto TV commercial. Which actually makes it a pretty good deal for the price. Which, if a homegrown tomato is good enough, can be true for it too.

Shovel load of coal

 

I am at the front desk of the library, again. I am tired today, in so many ways. I sigh heavily. I climb up on my high chair. I poke at the computer. Poke, poke, poke. In between library patrons I look over towards the Friends of the Library Bookstore to my right. The title of a small book on display leaps out at me:

"Ennui to Go"

Alas, it is too much trouble to go look at it.

Dipping into the magic hat

 

Is six years ago a long time, or is it practically yesterday?

I thought I would crank up the way back machine and travel to the March 3, 2019 post and see if it felt like a long time ago, or if it felt like it just happened. But I have a secret suspicion that no one here reading today is so familiar with the history of clerkmanifesto that it will seem like anything other than...

New.

But it would also be nice if one of you out there encountered this and thought:

"Oh, yes. This one."

This one was called "Guns"

It goes like this:

Due to some initiative of the County we hand out gun locks at my library. This means every once in awhile someone wanders up to me at the front desk and says "I heard maybe that you might have gun locks to give out?"

And I cheerily respond "We do!" (I like to give out good news). "How many would you like?" I ask.

I see their eyes light up and I see the calculation run through their brain that says "I would like 20, but what is the amount I can ask for and not seem like I'm planning on killing a bunch of people?" So I add "You can have three." Because that is how many they can have.

They say "I would like three" because this is America and that's how we roll. Well, not anyone I actually know, but on the Internet it's how I hear we roll.

So I go to the secret box in the Many Managers Office and get three gun locks. I take them to the front desk and I say "I need to see your guns to hand these over."

Just kidding. I don't say that. Though it might be fun. No, what I say is "Please do come back if there's a Zombie invasion. We'll need help."

They say "Ha ha ha." Then they go home and do gun safety and maybe do and maybe don't kill a bunch of people.

So, that's it.

That's nice.

You know what I said when I read this?

"Oh, yes. This one."

Here then is a random movie clip bonus for you today because that's the kind of blogpost we're having. 

No sound cause it's... short. 

Click to set, enlarge with the bottom right corner, click to play.

The agony of defeat

 

In the big giant massive annual library puzzle contest today, with 36 (mostly) 4-person teams competing, I told the 4th place team that they finished in third place by six seconds! But little did I realize that the real third place team had pipped them to the bronze by five seconds! 

Three teams finished within 11 seconds of each other!

Anyway, I felt bad about it.

The fourth place team was pretty bitter about it too when it was all straightened out.

"So we don't get any trophy?" One of them asked.

"No. I'm sorry." I replied. "But you're welcome to this puzzle you just finished."

They took the puzzle. 

And hopefully I'll be over it myself in a few weeks.

Busy day at the library

 

It was a busy day at the library.

The responsibilities involved helping to prepare my library for a major 150 person puzzle contest, there were the many, many library visitors who needed assistance, a newer co-worker who I don't think will ever be up to the job, and an urgent need to produce pictures of cute, anthropomorphic creatures having coffee at Clerkmanifesto Cafe, suitable for t-shirts and stickers. I also needed to finish listening to a novel on my phone, study French, and urgently order some 3-ring notebooks for one of the library's investment publications.

As you can clearly see here, at least I got the most important thing done.

Bughearts on my mind

 

 I usually have some kind of AI subscription going, and the capabilities of that subscription tend to inform the pictures and movies one might see here. I am currently burning through a month's allowance of credits on a dizzyingly misnamed AI platform called Freepik.

It costs money! And it's called Freepik!

But it does give access to a lot of different tools, the main ones I've been using being its image generators, editor, and upscaler. And though I began making bughearts for T-shirts, well, I've bought all the T-shirts I can manage right now, and I am just making more bughearts because...

because...

I can't stop!

So maybe it's lucky I'm almost out of credits. I've got bughearts on the brain!!!!

Wait.

That gives me an idea.

Wait here for a minute will you?

Well, that's intense.

Anyway, the rest of these shouldn't be so gory. Also, they're still designed as t-shirt logos, so they basically have clear backgrounds (unlike the one above). They also have kind of a porous quality to them because I have found that if the image is too much of a solid decal, it feels like it's plastered on the shirt, and also it falls apart far more quickly.

On the websites where the designs are or will be available, one can change the color of the t-shirt and see the significant differences of how the designs look on different colors with the different color coming through the back of the design.

I'm afraid here we just automatically default to a white background color. So it will have to do.

You will find a strong vein of product placement in this collection.

So weary

 

I'm so weary.

Maybe it's the strange half-light in the library at six o'clock. But I'm just standing here at the front desk of the library and I feel half asleep.

Luckily I can do this job in my sleep.

And, apparently, write a blog post.

What a beautiful blog post it is though. It is wreathed in stars. It's twilit. It is halfway to being a dream. Let us leave the front desk of the library and fly up into the atrium. What do we see? We see the top of men's heads. We see the funny way people walk when one looks at them from straight overhead. We see the puzzles from our puzzle collection all spread out on their display cube.

Oh, I think we're sinking.

Flap your arms.

That's better. 

Not too much. Don't hit your head on the white ceiling. 

How little everything seems. 

Where are these butterflies coming from? 

Why are there stars everywhere?

What? What! I'm awake!!! You want a library card? Sure, sure. I can get you a library card.

You're not here for a library card?

 

You're here for the blog post?

You're sure you don't want a library card?

Hmmm.

I'll see what I can do about a blog post then. Although I could swear I just wrote one.

Incident on the death stairs

 

Behold, there was an incident on the death stairs at the library!

This it now the 22nd incident on the death stairs.

Maybe we should have thought this kind of thing through before we called them The Death Stairs.

Oh waily and oy vey! Another victim has fallen. Tragedy and mayhem. Blood and peroxide. 

And worst of all, incident reports!

Hearts and prayers and our deepest condolences.

Down he went at the bottom of the stairs. 

He did not go head over foot, but they usually don't. He just sort of...

crumpled.

An older man crumpled down at the bottom of the stairs!

He grunted.

My colleague at the front desk rushed over.

The man was dead!

No, wait, that doesn't make sense. 

I don't think he actually died.

Maybe it was touch and go for awhile?

I get all mixed up now trying to remember the tragedy. Let me think.

I've got it!

He was bleeding from the forearm. The man was bleeding from his forearm.

That's it: A man fell near the bottom of the stairs and it caused some bleeding on his forearm.

I remember this because I advised on the spelling of "forearm" on the incident report.

First aid was applied.

Paramedics were called.

There were Band-Aids!!!!

So you can see why I confused it with the death of a man.

Flotsam and Jetsam

 

One could say that clerkmanifesto presents each day a meticulously crafted work of small art. And though it be tiny in a World that is far too big for its own good, there is no scale when one looks at something. For when we regard, that is all of the conversation, and a pebble mused on in our hand is no different than a star.

Or

One could say that clerkmanifesto is simply the detritus of a tide. And the tide washes up the shore, and leaves behind whatever has fallen out of the ocean. And here you are walking along the beach, and, voila. It is all random and wild.

And now it is yours.

What will I wear

 

As what could be our very last deep winter starts to show signs of relenting, my thoughts turn to my ragged collection of overused t-shirts.

I'm going to need new clothes.

So I am making some. Or, I should say, I am working on some more t-shirt designs for the companies that print them on demand for me or anyone else who would want them, but really just me.

What does this mean for you?

More bughearts!

It is the rite of passage for every clerkmanifesto reader to occasionally see our symbol here, the bugheart. And so today is...

A normal day at clerkmanifesto: