Thursday, October 31, 2024

Temperatures to plummet

 






Late at night on the automated check in machine, working yet again an evening at my library, I conjured, in my mind, an astounding tale of the shortcomings of my co-workers. And maybe you really would like to hear it. But you'd best go fishing in the waters of the great river of the history of clerkmanifesto. There are many accounts like that. And admittedly tonight I might have written another. But the end of the work night came so suddenly upon me, and I was busy, and a lovely fellow who rarely works at the library anymore was working just for the night, and wanted to watch The World Series, and talk about baseball.

So it all slipped away from me.

And now I am home. 


I talked with my absolutely lovely wife. 

I had a pecan whiskey. 

I sat down to write.


And everything is wonderful.







Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Zombies for Halloween

 







I have been working with zombies.

Artistically, not actually.


This is not like me. I am more a ghosts and goblins and all the pretty glowing lights of purple and orange. I am a Linus in his sincere pumpkin patch sort of Halloween person. I am all in for the only slightly scary but also slightly comic sort of Halloween aesthetic. 

But there is a corner near where walk, and it spoke to me today. It whispered for me to put a zombie there. So I took a picture of the corner, and when I put all my ingredients in my AI oven to make zombie, well, it came out serious.

It was one hardcore flesh eating zombie!


I'll show it to you tomorrow maybe. I kind of want to make it even worse. But I advise you to not watch it.

Don't worry though, I'll fully warn you.



Tonight when we were closing the library, or just me, when just I was closing the library, two young men came down the stairs. They were the last of the day's patrons. One of them was wearing a T-shirt that said, in big letters "I love brains" Which is nice and suitable for a library I think. But then, in smaller letters underneath, it said "I wish more people had them".

Maybe you'll see where I'm going with this.

As I was ushering them out, I said to the kid with the T-shirt: "You could dress as a zombie for Halloween and wear that shirt."

He looked down at his shirt. 

He seemed to like the idea.








Tuesday, October 29, 2024

The nature of miracles

 







While technically, as you read this, I am back home from a brief passage from being 59 to being sixty, all magically conducted by a river in Wisconsin, actually, I am now writing from late in the night as part of my preparations before going. 


I have been posting little bits of animal human videos for you, like bread crumbs to lead clerkmanifesto to my return, but midnight struck and I realized, tired, that I could write something far quicker than I could assemble pieces of another video. They're complicated. I love making these strange pieces of ephemera, but they make me wish that the days all had a hundred hours in them. For something that's supposed to be so quick, a great labor saving device, they take forever to make.



Maybe that's the real secret of all new technology: For all the time it saves, it asks for twice as much in return.






Monday, October 28, 2024

Cat at the clerkmanifesto bar

 
























This introduction will remain largely the same for the next few days.

Luckily it's super entertaining!




Because I will be away for a several days, I have to, by personal contract with my soul, put together a small collection of ready to go posts for them to roll out regularly in this space while I'm gone. My simple solution was to put together some of the videos I have been working on relentlessly, and show one of those each day.

But in clerkmanifestoland, our best plans grow mushrooms. Now, late at night and needing to bring things to a conclusion, I just have hundreds of pieces laying all around me, and almost nothing done.



All of the complicated AI footage I have been working on pertains to Clerkmanifestoland, or Clerkmanifesto City. And though I would like to bring more finished films, really what I might describe as odd little faux promotional films, how about we settle for some works in progress?

As ever, click through the picture to roll the movie.



Today we venture to the rougher part of Clerkmanifesto Town and are finally working with the images I have been using this week.


This one oddly feels a bit like a self portrait to me.





















Sunday, October 27, 2024

Dog and Cat by the shore




















This introduction will remain largely the same for the next few days.

Luckily it's super entertaining!




Because I will be away for a several days, I have to, by personal contract with my soul, put together a small collection of ready to go posts for them to roll out regularly in this space while I'm gone. My simple solution was to put together some of the videos I have been working on relentlessly, and show one of those each day.

But in clerkmanifestoland, our best plans grow mushrooms. Now, late at night and needing to bring things to a conclusion, I just have hundreds of pieces laying all around me, and almost nothing done.



All of the complicated AI footage I have been working on pertains to Clerkmanifestoland, or Clerkmanifesto City. And though I would like to bring more finished films, really what I might describe as odd little faux promotional films, how about we settle for some works in progress?

As ever, click through the picture to roll the movie.





I think this one will do for my birthday as it is sweet and optimistic. The scene also looks a lot like the little town where we are planning on being relocated to a year from now. Though perhaps this one is just ever so slightly more fanciful.

Although not as much as one might think.























 

Saturday, October 26, 2024

Another day at the Clerkmanifesto Bookstore


 









This introduction will remain largely the same for the next few days.

Luckily it's super entertaining!




Because I will be away for a several days, I have to, by personal contract with my soul, put together a small collection of ready to go posts for them to roll out regularly in this space while I'm gone. My simple solution was to put together some of the videos I have been working on relentlessly, and show one of those each day.

But in clerkmanifestoland, our best plans grow mushrooms. Now, late at night and needing to bring things to a conclusion, I just have hundreds of pieces laying all around me, and almost nothing done.



All of the complicated AI footage I have been working on pertains to Clerkmanifestoland, or Clerkmanifesto City. And though I would like to bring more finished films, really what I might describe as odd little faux promotional films, how about we settle for some works in progress?

As ever, click through the picture to roll the movie.


Today's picture and video is, in addition to yesterday's, a little older, so perhaps I don't have to tip my hand so soon on my newer footage.
























Friday, October 25, 2024

A little cafe by the shore


























This introduction will remain largely the same for the next few days.

Luckily it's super entertaining!




Because I will be away for a several days, I have to, by personal contract with my soul, put together a small collection of ready to go posts for them to roll out regularly in this space while I'm gone. My simple solution was to put together some of the videos I have been working on relentlessly, and show one of those each day.

But in clerkmanifestoland, our best plans grow mushrooms. Now, late at night and needing to bring things to a conclusion, I just have hundreds of pieces laying all around me, and almost nothing done.



All of the complicated AI footage I have been working on pertains to Clerkmanifestoland, or Clerkmanifesto City. And though I would like to bring more finished films, really what I might describe as odd little faux promotional films, how about we settle for some works in progress?

As ever, click through the picture to roll the movie.



Today's, the first one, will be the most finished.  





















 

Thursday, October 24, 2024

Good night library







As the night settles on the library, in the backroom, I start to quiet a little in my spirit. This is largely possible because in half an hour I am off of work for awhile in order to celebrate my birthday. It is not too grand a celebration- indeed I am only away from work for five days, but it, curiously, will be my last birthday marked while I work at the library. This time next year I will be retired, if all goes to plan, and will be on the south coast of France, which sounds half like a joke, a good joke. But it isn't a joke.

I have already learned a French word or two.

Verite.

So that's a start. 


"What will happen to clerkmanifesto!" You cry out in a state of nearly unhinged panic.

The same.

I will continue to attempt to crack the riddle of the world.

It's up to something.

I am sure of it.


I am hoping the French appreciate my efforts.









Wednesday, October 23, 2024

Grape and Kamala turn 60

 







There is no refuting it; once you get to enough birthdays the numbers start to feel a little random. There are just so many of them! And what kind of meaning does a person want to attach to even a fairly even number like sixty, let alone, I don't know, 62, or 59?

Are these interesting questions?

Not particularly. 

But I am turning sixty too! And so I think about age, and these numbers, and yet I can't quite get them to be all that interesting.


On Grape's birthday, which is today, we like to reminisce about some happy times with him; a summer of miniature golf for instance, or crashing a car, swimming with hundreds of sharks or taking peyote. And so we need not particularly dwell on numbers. But that said, today I don't have much of a story. The time I am thinking about was too sweet, too complicated and yet simple for that, but fortunately I do have something else pertaining to that time in my bag of tricks.

Anyway, the period I have been thinking of was when he was a best man at my wedding and came out to Chicago, where myself and friends and some family had taken over the house of a friend of my mom in the lead-up to the best and most essential day of my life. It was a few days of drinking and midnight swimming in Lake Michigan, assembling a wedding outfit, and generally wandering the city. It was a moment of calm sweetness, all of its own thing. I have a picture of Grape from this time, 1991, so maybe he doesn't look exactly like this today. We are on the grass, by the lake. He is lying on me.

Despite the fact that this was merely a snapshot, if you click the picture, well...

He comes alive, like when I remember the time.












Tuesday, October 22, 2024

The people of clerkmanifesto city

 














As promised.

Threatened?

Warned?

Suggested?

Today is the second set of lyrics for songs pertaining to a long held vision of clerkmanifesto as a place on the worst edge of the most forgotten part of Internetland. Presumably this will all become a song. Combined with meticulously assembled ai generated footage, I will ultimately produce a music video so powerful that it brings me to an almost beatific level of exultation. This will swiftly be followed by an inevitable crash, possibly in a mere few hours later. And that will quickly be followed by peace and acceptance.

And then I'll have a new idea and it will all start over again!



But for now, this is my new idea.






And these are its lyrics:




The people of Clerkmanifesto,

Have a business to run,

But if you dared to ask them,

They'd say it's for fun.



(Chorus)

By the bars,

And cafes,

Broken bricks,

And bad days,

Clerkmanifesto,

Pays,

Clerkmanifesto,

Pays.



The town of Clerkmanifesto,

Is run by the mob,

But if you ask who's in charge,

They might give you the job.



(Chorus)

By the bars,

And cafes,

Broken bricks,

And bad days,

Clerkmanifesto,

Pays,

Clerkmanifesto,

Pays.



The shops of Clerkmanifesto,

Are open in the darkest night,

But if you dare to shop there,

Get ready for light.




(Chorus)

By the bars,

And cafes,

Broken bricks,

And bad days,

Clerkmanifesto,

Pays,

Clerkmanifesto,

Pays.



The future of Clerkmanifesto,

Is as dark as its darkest lane,

If you're crazy enough to walk it,

Be prepared to go sane.




(Chorus)

By the bars,

And cafes,

Broken bricks,

And bad days,

Clerkmanifesto,

Pays,

Clerkmanifesto,

Pays.




(Chorus)

By the bars,

And cafes,

Broken bricks,

And bad days,

Clerkmanifesto,

Pays,

Clerkmanifesto,

Pays.








Monday, October 21, 2024

Oh lord! Please god, not poetry!

 













Well, I mean, it's not poetry, exactly.


I wouldn't make you read poetry!


I mean, not unless it rhymes.

It's okay if it rhymes, isn't it?


These are actually lyrics anyway, not poetry. With these multi-part complicated projects that take days and days to complete, sometimes a person just has to show some of the building blocks along the way. The pictures yesterday, for instance, have already largely become ai video. And those pictures as videos relate to these lyrics. So slowly it all builds up, and if you want, you can be along for the ride the whole way!


I have written two Clerkmanifestoland, or Clerkmanifesto City songs so far.


Here is the first:





In Clerkmanifestoland,

We take the strangest,

Things for granted.

In Clerkmanifestoland,

It's not the seeds,

That are planted.



(Chorus)

Through the garbage,

And the weeds,

Through the garbage,

And dark deeds,

Clerkmanifesto,

Clerkmanifesto.



In Clerkmanifestoland,

A restless spirit,

Needs some drinking,

In Clerkmanifestoland,

A drunken people,

Are all thinking.



(Chorus)

Through the garbage,

And dark deeds,

Through the garbage,

Something feeds,

Clerkmanifesto,

Clerkmanifesto.



In Clerkmanifestoland,

Without the dark,

We can't see,

In Clerkmanifestoland,

It's not our fate,

To believe.




(Chorus)

Through the garbage,

Something feeds,

Through the garbage,

It's just me,

Clerkmanifesto,

Clerkmanifesto.




(Chorus)

Through the garbage,

And dark deeds,

Through the garbage,

It's just me,

Clerkmanifesto,

Clerkmanifesto,

Clerkmanifesto.















Sunday, October 20, 2024

Sunday picture day!

 








Every Sunday is picture day at clerkmanifesto! 

It's not?


But

but,


I'm so touched you noticed.


But wow, it totally could be picture day on Sundays! And today is Sunday. And I have loads of pictures.


What kind of pictures? You ask warily.


Ah, I answer wisely.

This is where you get to use your eyes!


So that's pretty neat.



Where are these pictures of? You wonder.



Clerkmanifestoland. The seedier part.
















































































































































































































Saturday, October 19, 2024

Fox for Halloween

 








My music videos can take so long to put together that I was tempted to eschew comment here, and merely place the link, and thus the video, as today's post.

But I'm a talker, or, er, writer. And there is one aspect of today's video that I couldn't resist discussing.

I have been working on fox videos, though until today, I haven't shown any here. And in that process I have written lyrics for fox songs and set out to employ an extraordinary tool called "Udio" to make a suitable song out of what I wrote. I love the picture ai generators I use, and I love, though am often frustrated by, the video generators out there as well. But these music generators might be my favorite, because their surprises are the kind that can change everything.

Today's video is an excellent example of this. Coming up with a two minute song like this "fox is your heart" one can involve making dozens upon dozens of generations, maybe up to a hundred, carefully listened to, discarded, and altered. I may tweak my lyrics to nudge the results in a better direction. I don't know when to give up. And telling the computer what I want it to do with my song lyrics is an absolute crapshoot. I might have dozens of different ideas for where I want the song to go. Every rare and thrilling once in awhile I get just what I'm looking for. But also, rarely, and just as wonderfully, I get something that goes way out of what I was looking for, but is nevertheless so fantastic that it changes everything.

And that's how I got a Halloween song today!

Getting the song in this video caused me to spend hours redesigning all the footage I'd already worked on to make the whole thing come together properly. 




It was worth it.







(as ever, click the picture)












Friday, October 18, 2024

My masterpiece

 






My masterpiece?


Well, maybe I should walk that back a little.


I worked forever on this music video, or, in layman's terms, two days. And when I finished it before bed I felt a kind of elation. My masterpiece! I put it up on YouTube and went to bed, but it took awhile for me to fall asleep. I was fizzing. I mean, have you seen this thing?



Oh, right, this is the introduction, so you haven't yet.


Well, by introduction this is...

A music video of the creek and falls near my house. Yes, my dear wife and I live in the heart of the toddling city of Saint Minneapolis, but this almost secret place lies a short walk from our home and any reader of clerkmanifesto will have seen miles of pictures of this area. I wrote a song for all my footage and magicked in an animal here or there. I edited it all together and, voila.

In the morning I watched this music video without the sound to see what it might look like on YouTube. 

Maybe it's not a masterpiece after all then?


Maybe it needs the music to live and breathe?


Maybe I have lost all perspective.


But in the end it doesn't matter. I have had my fun, and now it is yours. It can be a masterpiece if you want it to be.




Instructions:

As ever, click through the picture. It really does need the sound I think. Also, I have cheated tradition here with the picture not being the first frame, rather from a few seconds in. But I will also include the first frame if you insist on that experience. Either picture will take you to the two minute video:

































Thursday, October 17, 2024

American kittens






Some of you may know that there is a much-talked-about election coming up in my country. But some of you are malignant foreign bots crawling through the Internet and so might not know about it yet. So let me explain. 

Hmm.

Where do I begin?

It's kind of hard to convey.


It's like an early Jerry Lewis movie, or maybe Mr. Bean if you're a younger bot, combined with someone mercilessly drowning a kitten? Does that help? And we're thinking of rescuing the kitten, but we're not sure if the kitten deserves to live?

I'm just trying to be neutral.



We talk in code a lot these days in my country. Someone got on the elevator with me where I live. After I responded to their pleasantry by saying that I was doing well, they said they were doing well too, or "as well as I could be in this stressful time". That was all they said, and yet I knew exactly what they were referring to, who they were voting for, and why it was all so stressful. 

They didn't want the cat to get drowned!

I said I didn't want the cat to get drowned either. In a way that felt like being some sort of spy, or possibly in a way that would protect us from being round up and put into a camp.

Not the fun kind of camp. 

The kitten drowning camp.


For pretty much the whole of my American life we were a frank people. Indeed, the only people who had to talk in code were the racists. Everyone would think they were scum if they said something directly racist, but if they said it in code they could thrive and prosper and secretly drown kittens.

But now, well, that cat's out of the bag.


Well, at least that's one cat.


We'll see about all the others in 19 days.






Wednesday, October 16, 2024

All been done before

 








As I wind down my library career (that sounds too fancy. How about "my library sojourn"?) I find that our staff suddenly consists of a cadre of young people, people much the age I was when I started here. Thirtyish. And some of these young people are lively, and come up with ideas for the library.

"I wish we had merch."

Or

"They should have interesting authors on In Service Day."

Or

"We should have a library team."


And as an elder of the library, I am here to meet their enthusiasm with the cold dose of history.

We have done everything already. We had merch, we had authors, and have you ever heard of "The Dewey Decimators?" And like the Ancient Mariner, I am here to tell them all about it. These are long, harrowing stories meant to curdle their bones.

But it's not like I'm all doom and gloom about their fresh new enthusiasms. Sure we have already done everything... 


But we didn't do any of it very well.










Tuesday, October 15, 2024

The voting public

 





I am on the phones for the first hour my library is open on Indigenous Peoples' Day. I receive 879 phone calls asking if we are open today.

Yes, we are.

For the next hour after that I am at the front desk of the library, so I walk out to replace the people who were already out there.

"It was wall-to-wall phone calls asking if we were open back there." I tell them. "At least you probably didn't have to answer that question from people at the front desk."

The desk people looked at each other a little sadly. "Actually, we kind of did."









Monday, October 14, 2024

Monday

 





Monday is busy at clerkmanifesto!

Over the weekend readers rest their eyes and turn their attention to simpler fair like 18th Century French Verse, but with renewed energy, they come here to clerkmanifesto on Monday morning, roll up their sleeves, and...

Well, you know the rest.

You're the one I'm referring to.



"Me?" You ask shyly, but a little bit cautiously proud.

Yes, you are the pride of clerkmanifesto!

You get a little embarrassed. 

You think to yourself "He's probably talking about some other reader."


No.


Don't get me wrong. I think the other readers are fantastic, but you are the pride of clerkmanifesto.



You are quiet for a long time.


"I've never read any 18th Century French Verse." You say in a small voice.


Oh, I was just being silly about that part.







Sunday, October 13, 2024

Time crawls, but it accumulates

 








"Time crawls, but it accumulates." Said the nearly sixty year old man.

"That's me!" Cried the nearly sixty year old man excitedly, upon seeing himself in his own blog post.

Well, when I put it like that it's not as impressive.


Do I think too much about time? I fleetingly wonder.

If I consider the last couple of days it is merely a few minutes of consideration altogether. But over the course of a lifetime? 

Empires have fallen.


Time crawls, but it covers leagues. Why not consider time? Time has all the answers!

But it has way more questions.







Saturday, October 12, 2024

Elephants remember

 






As I very nearly promised yesterday and the day before, here are my short elephant poems about elephants turned into videos!


I remembered, just like elephants, who are famous for it. 


I looked this up. Elephants really do have good memories. They use their brains to remember! They have ten and a half pound brains!

I think I might have a ten and a half pound brain too. It sure feels like it sometimes. It may contribute to my back and neck problems.


Anyway, click the pictures below, and have your little ear plugs in because, oh lord, boy oh boy, you are in for

for...


Something? 


I don't know.