After 5,000 posts in this space, I have exhausted all possible titles. So my placeholder title seems good for today. I will try to live up to it.
I mean, except that there is nothing to live up to.
Well, we have no standard anyway. The mark we at clerkmanifesto like to hit has moved around so much over the years that it made us dizzy. So we took it down and put it in a bottle, and now we try to simply enjoy its pale light, the pale light of our ambitions.
Oh, there's the title, The Pale Light of Our Ambitions, but it's too late now.
And I'd rather not get too poetic on you tonight anyway. If I were home writing you a late at night post, sure, poetry all the way, but I am at the front desk of my library and this is serious business.
For instance, a library patron approaches now for my help!
I was going to tell you what happened but it was too boring.
Okay fine. But remember, you asked.
She came to me because the automated self check out machine told her it couldn't help her and she needed to see me. But it turned out that both of her books were actually checked out to her, so the machine probably just scanned one of the books a second time and panicked. It does that. We don't think of machines panicking, but working as I do with sophisticated machines I can tell you that they do panic, and in a way not totally alien to how some people panic. Still, it doesn't look like what one thinks of panic. Machines don't usually sound or act stressed when they panic. They calmly and confidently lie instead.
"I'm sorry. There is a problem with your account. You need to see the front desk." is pretty much just:
"I don't understand what's happening right now!!!"
Oh machine, I understand what's happening now. Rest your weary bolts.
And that concludes our post for today.
I have included a short video for you from a John Constable painting. It has music too. Weird stuff happens, but not for very long.
Weird Stuff Happens, But Not for Very Long
That would have been a good title too.
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