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: