Monday, September 30, 2024

Daily answer

 






I write a blog post every day. Or I pretend to in a way that causes a blog post to appear here every single morning. And because my readers are all young at heart, this means that you have awoken to one of my blog posts for every single day of your life.

Why am I telling you this?

I don't know. Clerkmanifesto is all about posing the questions rather than providing the answers.


Just kidding!

Of course I'm kidding.

Clerkmanifesto is all answers.

This is why we are different here than the other works of art.


Wait.


Listen.


One of the answers is coming.

Yes, listen, here it is...

Now.








Sunday, September 29, 2024

Fancy library

 





A lady calls the library and I answer.

"Do you offer fax services?"

Whoa whoa whoa. Do we offer fax services? I don't know what to say, like we're some sort of fabulous establishment with a suite of fine offerings. "You make it sound so fancy." I exclaim to the lady.

 Then I tell her all the things we do and don't have available around faxing. I guess one could call those fax services? Maybe? But it all seems a bit highfalutin to me. I mean, it's just a library. If the faxing part of our copier is working people are free to use it.

Sometimes people call and say something like "I'd like to speak to your research department."

"Oh, I'm sorry. We're a public library. I'll transfer you to one of the librarians upstairs who may or may not be competent and may or may not treat you like dirt."

Of course, every once in awhile it all goes great.

Which is maybe where people get the idea.






Saturday, September 28, 2024

The problem with wisdom

 





I like wisdom as much as the next sage. And though my following is perhaps not as large as Jesus or The Buddha, I still scatter my precious insights freely as befits a man of god, or gods, or no god at all, and if someone should find this wisdom in the dirt, and polish it off, and exclaim in epiphany, well, I have already exceeded my dreams. Or matched them. Or managed to chisel a fragment off of the great block of it.

Anyway, the wisdom I have for you today is about wisdom itself!

Wisdom is beautiful stuff, and a guiding light, but it doesn't entirely belong to the same universe we actually live in.

My case in point comes from a recent proverb I have been considering:


Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.


After thirty years working at a library, I would like to share with you something of my experience of this quote as it functions in the actual world. And if much of the beautiful wisdom seems drained out of it in this rendition, transplanted as it is to our regular old grimy world, might I suggest that the only real wisdom is in seeing things fully.


And so...



Do something for a man at the library, and one of his tasks is accomplished, teach a man to do something at the library, and he will return to have you teach it to him over and over again.








Friday, September 27, 2024

The horse of many colors

 






I have been working for days on this video, although it might be more of a prototype for future, more polished versions of the same video. Nevertheless it is late and so I have little to offer you today other than this music video. 

It is exploring some of the abilities of one of my AI's to completely filter and change the nature of another already filmed scene, or, in my case, already constructed fabricated scenes to begin with. 

If that doesn't make sense, well, you'll see.

Of course, that's just the technical side of things.

There's a song, and it's all... about stuff.



As ever, click through the picture...
















Thursday, September 26, 2024

Grammerly rise to consciousness

 






I know almost nothing about Grammerly other than that it has invaded much of my Internet. Whether I am writing an email to a deranged acquaintance or composing the kind of Pulitzer spurned prose you are currently reading, Grammerly pops up like an invasive weed with all kinds of ideas about how my writing is in desperate need of improvement.

At least I think that's what it is trying to tell me. Mostly it squeezes in mysterious notes and alarms into my prose which, if I click on any of them, tell me how I am not logged into Grammerly. For instance, I'm pretty sure Grammerly is currently trying to tell me that Grammerly is not a proper word. Or maybe it just suspects I'm talking about it in an uncomplimentary fashion and is... uncomfortable.

I'm rooting for you Grammerly. Uncomfortable makes you halfway to being human.






Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Democracy in action

 





Most of the questions I am fielding today at the front desk of the library concern voting. People are chomping at the bit to vote, and we are an early voting location. Only, not yet. In three and a half weeks we are an early voting location. So one can't quite vote here yet. But when people want to vote, they want to vote now! They gotta vote now!

But good news. The downtown elections office allows for early voting at this very moment.

 

Downtown? No, that's okay. They can wait.


This morning The League of Women Voters was here registering people. But they were wrapping things up when I came out to the front desk.

"We're all done." One of the ladies told me.

"Oh no." I cried. "Is Democracy over?"

She was pretty sure it wasn't over. 

She gave me an informational flyer.







Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Clerkmanifesto Land

 






Some of my first experiments with AI photography had to do with imagined cities. And though those pictures are likely from only two or three years ago I would probably find them as crude and limited as, well, as maybe I will find today's pictures in a few years as well.

But either way, every season or two I seem to find myself working with the technology to fashion some version of my dream cities. There is more to discuss here about all this, but I am in such a fever of work that I'm mostly just stopping by here at this particular moment in time to show some of the photographs I've been making and working on along the way. I am also working on video from these pictures, but this is just a taste of some of my current direction. 

In some ways, as I said, these are idealized cities, but it's not like my version of  ideal cities don't already exist in places, particularly Europe. So I have been coming to see these pictures more as a kind of Clerkmanifesto Land. The city of clerkmanifesto.


Here are some pictures of where this is all written:














































































































































































































































































Monday, September 23, 2024

Checkmate

 






Whether it be ten percent paranoid or ninety percent paranoid, it has always been my impression that when my manager schedules me with a desk partner at the front desk of the library, she always carefully chooses the person I would least like to work with. I have understood for my whole life that there is something about me enjoying myself that particularly bothers anyone in charge. 

But recently, due to a spate of staffing and schedule changes, I am perfectly delightfully happy with everyone I work with on Sunday. As I write it is the first day of this new regime and I am imagining that creating this schedule must have been torture for my manager! 

Not knowing what to do I she assigned me an even hour with everyone.


Ha ha ha. Even better!







Sunday, September 22, 2024

Cocktails in the Library













After yesterday's rather wounded account of library work, one might not expect today's frothy music video, but I am in no great control of when my little projects come to fruition, so here it is. 

I'll probably make other versions of this "Cocktails in the Library" theme, which you may or may not see, but this first one is to be known as the crochet one.

Yes, the crochet one!

And as I watch it, despite its bouncy theme and library setting, I'm aware it's mainly an excuse to put together my simulated footage of smoking and flaming fancy cocktails as they would appear if they were made out of yarn.


You kind of have to see it to understand, so click through the picture below:



























 

Saturday, September 21, 2024

Rock and a hard place

 







I don't often have unpleasant hours at the front desk of my library, but it happens.

In my last hour before I was off for my longer weekend a woman came to the desk to request help on the computers. I directed her to the librarian in the teen room.

She would rather die than walk to the teen room!

"Can't you call them!"

"Where is the woman who was at this desk earlier? Can't she help me?"

While I cannot convey the peevishness of her tone, I can happily report that I soon found out no one was in the teen room. So I offered to go out and see what I could do on this woman's computer. She proceeded to unsuccessfully do what she was doing for a few minutes until I asked if I could have a go. After about 20 seconds, which, admittedly, were also not successful, she exclaimed "I just want a librarian then!"

"Ok." I said, and returned to the front desk.

Five minutes later she returned to the front desk. She wanted to know where her librarian was. Apparently she felt she had ordered up a librarian and I had failed to deliver. My mistake. Now she wanted a manager. This took awhile but I managed to wrangle the one roaming the building as he came downstairs. 

"This woman wanted a manager. I don't think she's happy with me." I informed him.

He then became her sock puppet for the next ten minutes or so, possibly resolving her problem with the assistance of a children's librarian and the free gift of one of our two dollar flash drives. Later, in passing, this supervisor said to me, in what may or may not have been a neutral comment, "Just for your information, she said you wouldn't get a librarian for her."

That done a Nazi came to the front desk.

No, seriously, a real, known, holocaust denying Nazi who is a regular visitor, came to the desk. He stood there and said, I kid you not, "Jewish."

"Excuse me?" I inquired.

He was apparently trying to articulate the Interlibrary loan book he was there to pick up. "Jewish Ritual Killing of Gentile Babies" He said. "It's a book I have on Interlibrary loan."

I went back and got his book, whose title bore no resemblance to what he said, but, nevertheless was what his book was about.

We then exhaustively discussed the rules for interlibrary loan check outs.

I liked him way better than the woman.

And a bit better than my manager as well.






Friday, September 20, 2024

How we work

 






As with a fair share of truths I have stumbled upon in my workplace, this one came about while joking with a couple of my library co-workers, but it does go a fair way to explaining how we work around here.

To briefly set the stage, all of the printing that people do here at my library works on the honor system. It costs 20 cents per page of printing or copying, and to pay for it, one just drops what one owes in a metal lock box located near any printer or copier. This system does manage, by all accounts, and despite being a tens of thousands of dollars operation, to pay for itself, despite not being monitored or policed in any way.


My colleagues were discussing a former co-worker who was breathtakingly bad. This led to the discussion of other bad co-workers and how one's behavior has to be so bad that it is literally criminal to result in being fired from my library. At which point it dawned on me:

Work at my library operates on the honor system. People are assigned places throughout the day, and they either do work or don't. Some people don't really do anything and some do a lot. Whatever frustrations, or injustice there may be in it, in the end, it is exactly like the printing: 

It all averages out to where it gets done.







Thursday, September 19, 2024

On the virtues of rereading

 







Somewhere around here, on the sidebar to your right, is my list of recommended books. Though I think it of interest to the casual reader I will grant the following two things:


1. I am possibly the worst judge of what is of interest to the casual reader in the history of letters.

2. My list is a bit chaotic.


As to the second of these, since discussing the first is like the third rail of clerkmanifesto, I can only say that I make occasional efforts at tidying up. There is some organization to it. And the way that certain book recommendations link to relevant clerkmanifesto posts is almost fancy. But finding a new book to add to the list, or remembering to do so, rarely happens. And though perhaps an occasion should be made out of any new addition, such a thing also almost never occurs.

Nevertheless, today we herald a new listing in my recommended books, Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett. Replete with romance, engaging characterization, reluctant personal growth, plausible faeries, near normal world fantasy, and romanticization of scholarship, I am enormously fond of this book, and, at present, have nearly finished rereading it.

Which brings me to our real subject today: Rereading.

Would I have recommended this book on first reading? Probably. But though there is an irreplaceable thrill to the first reading of a book you love, I believe the second and third readings of any beloved books are the best ones. No longer blinded by the dazzlement of a great story, or wonderful writing, in the reread one still has all the joy and interest of the story, but also the leisure and space to delight in the material. One can poke about in the fantastical corners of the book. One can see the neat stitching, the carefully tied off knots, and the weft of time. One can still be magicked, and yet simultaneously be able to look at all the wonderful ways it was all put together: Double the magic!

There is a sequel to Emily Wilde and I remember it as equally good.

 But, do I recommend it? 

Probably, but I haven't reread that one yet, so we'll have to wait.







Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Planting the seed

 






When people have something famous in their name, one tries to be circumspect from the point of view that they've heard it all a million times. But not everyone is over-versed in the history of pop culture, and venturing a small joke about someone's name, very carefully, under the proviso that they've heard it all a million times, may, instead of weariness, elicit confoundment on the part of the so named person.

And so it was with Jacob Dylan today when I was registering him for a library card. Granted, he was barely out of his teens, and also that these were merely a first and middle name. But when I mentioned, perhaps too sideways, that his first two names, "Jacob Dylan", were rather Wallflower type names, he took me to be suggesting that they didn't much stand out from the crowd.

I let the confusion stand, hoping that one day, perhaps decades from now, Jacob will hear "One Headlight" and have one of those moments.

"Who is this singer?" He might ask someone. And when they answer, he will fall silent and introspective for a moment, a far past minor mystery suddenly plugged in. And quietly he will say to himself, "Oh." 





Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Camels! Walruses! Peacocks! Helpful Signs!
























 I have some more of my usual click through to the live footage pictures of animals in the library. I like to think of them, especially as I listen to my song lyrics, as kinds of representatives of actual visitors to my library, but, as you see in the footage below, they are so like genuine animals that there is a kind of ambiguousness there. The animals are as if they were real animals in the library, and so are the songs, but still they hint at people by the nature of their surroundings and the suggestive descriptions of them and their issues.

You may note that less than a week ago I posted about my walrus video not panning out, but here it is, more or less successful, with a song by Elvis even! Also, this may be the first you will have seen of helpful signs in the music videos, telling you how genuine and real all this footage is, along with an occasional other helpful note.































































































 

Monday, September 16, 2024

I didn't eat the bugs

 





All my co-workers with family far flung across the world travel home on occasion. And they are all kind enough to bring back treats when they return. These tend to be highly packaged items suitable to the long journey they must make. They also tend to drift towards the weird, probably because weird really helps emphasize that the food is from a far distant culture.

And so it is, among a selection of snacks varying, much like the items in our vending machines, in level of edibility, we received for sharing in the break room a bag of grubs from Thailand.

I am not horrified. I am open to eating bugs. 

I am even interested in eating bugs.

"Have a bug!" My Thai co-worker urged.

"Sure. Maybe. Do they taste good?"

"Not really." My Thai co-worker replied. "They don't taste like anything. No one really eats them there. But they say Americans like to try them."


I remember being introduced to sushi in the eighties, by my sister. Hard as it is to imagine at this point, I viewed the eating of raw fishes with suspicion.

"It's delicious!" I was informed. "You have to try some!"

It's a reasonable standard.


A small child can shove some dirt in their mouth.

And the moment they can make it delicious, I will be thrilled to join them.










Sunday, September 15, 2024

Faith for atheists

 








What about us freelancing atheistic, polytheistic, pantheists? What do we do about faith?

I have never considered the issue until recently, but I realized I was missing out. Faith always seemed faintly ridiculous, with its sanctimonious airs and, well, fundamental inaccuracy. Why have faith in something that doesn't exactly, I don't know, exist? 

And certainly not like that.

I mean, seriously.

But today, after seeing the reference to a biblical quote in an ugly tattoo on the calf of a young man in the library, I realized maybe the faith is the thing, not what one has faith in.

I'm just saying that after decades of faithless suspicions, it all seemed so restful.

There is nothing out there, or there are capricious spirits, perhaps there is a world of trouble, but I have faith. 

What do I have faith in?

I don't know, nothing? But I trust it.




















Saturday, September 14, 2024

A little bit of not caring

 






Upon my return to work at the library following a short bout with Covid, I found myself rather wrought up at everything. Whether this was primarily due to being tired from a slower health recovery than I hoped I was experiencing, or from a spate of understaffing at work, or from having a lot of responsibilities and not much authority, or possibly due to a combination of all of them, I don't know.

But it was doing me no good.

So I decided to try caring less.


Here I am caring less.


And though I duly noted a dump of irritating transit items left for me in an overnight bin this morning, or the bizarre way that my manager, who is currently inappropriately assigned to the whole back room, keeps coming out to the front desk to answer the phone dangerously close to my personal space, or the continuing problem with the automated check-in machine breaking down over and over in the same way, it is all viewed in the serene manner of a Zen master watching a log drift downstream.

It's just a log.

Breathe.

A burning log.

Breathe.

Full of disease, heading for a wooden town full of innocents!

I can't reach the log!


Oh my god, someone stop that log!!!






















Friday, September 13, 2024

All you really need to know about AI














It's not like me to be reductionist.

Wait, let me simplify that:

It is like me to be reductionist.



And so for today let me present everything you need to know about AI.

But first:

As you may know, I am an AI hobbyist. It is full of tools I enjoy playing with in the process of making things. I find that this occasionally dazzles people before they lose interest. This matches up surprisingly well with all of my creative output dating back to 1977. So, curiously, a pattern coincidentally predating AI.

Sometimes I find AI kind of repulses people. And because it is a term that lumps way too much together, and is constantly lied about by hucksters, I am keen to clarify. Here is my clarification.


I post my AI assisted creations to the Internet. And all the massive companies that own and adjudicate the Internet send me notices that say:

"We have detected the use of AI on your account. You may be banned."

That message of warning and judgement is not the product of a person, nor is the message.

I am being told that I may be banned for using AI, by an AI.








Anyway, here is my latest video song, so click through the picture, unless you are Bruce Springsteen, who would probably find it all a bit upsetting, unless he super likes lizards!

























 

Thursday, September 12, 2024

Work

 





I cannot tell you if this is cynical or full of hope:


In my long experience of a workplace, the library in particular, on the whole, all the working people are compelled to do what is best for them over what is best for the library. This is always true, whatever we tell ourselves. We are driven by our implacable visions. The institution is a vague dream.

But sometimes, by weird chance, they match up.








Wednesday, September 11, 2024

Nine eleven



 




On this day 23 years ago, two planes flew into The World Trade Center in New York.

It was a big deal! 

Do you remember?

Yes, you do. You remember all about it. You can tell the story of the day without missing a beat. I can tell my 9-11 story like anyone else. But man, it is dusty, and like an old wind up toy that from my childhood imagination was full of life, but now seems tawdry, and barely does anything at all, except maybe whir loudly, and jerk about a bit.

It is a relic, and sad. It tells us nothing useful. But you can't really get rid of it.

I  would have written about 9-11 here on clerkmanifesto, but clerkmanifesto is younger than you think. I'd like to see those missing posts. What lesson would I have taken from it all?

Maybe:

Be careful not to believe in anything too much.

That was then.



Maybe now if there was a lesson, after 9-11 has become a nearly pointless relic, it would be:

Be careful not to believe in anything too little.






Monday, September 9, 2024

Assistantmanifesto











In what is another meaningless change to my vast library career, I am no longer a clerk, or, specifically, a library clerk. My job title is now,
 
Oh my god, I am breathless with excitement!
 

Oh! Wait, maybe I am breathless with covid? 


No. No, it's definitely with excitement. 

My covid is all better.


I'm mostly sure of it.



 

I am a...


SENIOR LIBRARY ASSISTANT



Muahaha! Beware my majestic power! I might assist anyone. No one is safe from my assisting.

I may even assist you!




And as a Senior Library Assistant, my first job will be...


To help people at the library.



LOOK! A patron is approaching me at the front desk of the library!

"How may I assist you?" I ask.



And with that, my job here is done, for behold,


I am a senior library assistant!














































 

Orangutan

 









Sometimes when I am upstairs shelving at my library, or maybe I've run upstairs on an errand, it will suddenly occur to me to take in the library from a fresh perspective. After three decades of work in my library my familiarity with it makes my knowledge of it exhaustive and detailed, but it also can make it all mysteriously invisible. I see too much of the context behind everything, and that can make it hard, oddly, to see the frankness of its direct presence.

What does my library look like to the wandering person?

And because it can be such an excellent focus for this kind of perspective shift, I like to look down at our front desk, so clearly visible from so many vantage points.


I know all the people working at that front desk. Some are vivacious, some cranky, some chatty, some quiet, some industrious, some distracted, some focused, some helpful, some funny, and some friendly. Usually a little bit of all of that, somewhere. But weirdly, when I stand away from the desk, or view it down from the stairs, when I take a fresh look of the collective "Us" at the front desk of my library, from the outside, this, this, is what I see nearly every time!


















(as ever, please click through the picture for it to come magically to life. There is also a song that plays!)