Quotable classics!

 

Clerkmanifestoland announced

  

I continue to work on so many projects that none of them are exactly finished. And a lot of them I'd like to finish, but they're... involved. So while I've been showing you some one-off pictures outside of usual posting times, I don't want to do that here, even if it's a little tempting. 

So instead I will just tell you about one of the biggest projects: Clerkmanifestoland.

It's my theme park!

I thought it would be super nice if clerkmanifesto had a theme park of the multi billion dollar variety, and so I have sort of started developing Clerkmanifestoland. It's always been a idle daydream of mine, but now the photo generators are just (barely) good enough to use to help sketch it out. So here's what I can tell you, as I am mostly holding off on showing the pictures for now.

A. Clerkmanifestoland has five lands in it: 

1. Saint Minneapolis (home of the ride "Voyage to Catcher in the Rye") 

2. Bugheart Sur Mer (home of the ride "Fox and Skunk in Arles")

3. Dreamland Rome (home of the ride "Condeluded")

4. Library Storyland (home of "The Maze of Cataloging")

5. Clerkmanifestoland Wilderness (Home of the ride "Stunt Road Wild Ride")

B. The symbol of Clerkmanifestoland is the bugheart (of course), and the entry plaza has a huge bugheart fountain.

C. The mascots of Clerkmanifestoland are Fox and Skunk (naturally).

D. The Clerkmanifestoland gift shops obviously have all kinds of merchandise, but specialize in tea bowls.

Oh, you want to see a tea bowl?

I don't want to give too much away, but I can show a tea bowl certainly:

You might be thinking: "That's pretty expensive!"

Each one of these is bespoke. 

But don't worry. We have cheaper stuff like this:

"Oh." You say, a little taken aback. "And does this stuff sell?"

Well, these shiny young couples in the land of Bugheart Sur Mer, which has some nice gift shops, seemed to make quite a few purchases:

My guess is they just got off the charming dark ride "Fox and Skunk in Arles".

But that's a story for another day.

Addendum:

In case you forget the five lands of Clerkmanifestoland, here's a handy reminder:

Wishing they were there

 

My God!

 

Vintage pictures of the library

 

I'm so absorbed in the vast powers and capabilities of ChatGPT's new photo generator and editor capabilities that though I am accumulating huge amounts of images, I don't have time to polish them or even add them as extra posts here. But in the interest of letting you have a taste of the kinds of things I am working on, I do have a little series of library pictures (one of many, many series) that I will call the "The Daguerreotype Series". These are pictures of the library from the second half of the 1800's.

I was tempted to say "from back when I started" but that's a kind of a joke that's vastly older than these photographs pretend to be!

Anyway, here's our little trip down memory lane (if you're 150 years old). There are so many! And I'm sorry about the damage, but all of these pictures were metaphorically dug our of our oldest archives, stored in damp County basements for decades and decades. But despite all that, if you look carefully you will see that for all this time, libraries really haven't changed as much as we might think.

Clean up on aisle nine

 

I was at the front desk of my library when a large man, walking by in the distance with a robust container of orange soda, suddenly became self conscious. "Is it okay for me to have this soda in the library?" He asked.

I was very tempted to respond "Only if you don't spill it." But I held my tongue because I didn't think my cheek would get much play with him. I said he was allowed because, yes, he is allowed to have a covered drink in the library. But I'll admit something about his asking gave me misgivings.

Or presentiments?

Two minutes later the man was back.

"I spilled my drink in the bathroom. Can I have some towels or a mop?"

I gave him some towels.

"These aren't going to be enough." He said. "I spilled the whole thing."

Boy, I bet he was thirsty now!

I investigated the bathroom. The spill was partly under the stall and partly out from under the stall. It looked like a nuclear meltdown of some kind.

"I'll take care of it." I said. I did not believe there was any equipment or situation in which he would be able to take care of it himself. He had failed to inspire me.

He left contritely, but not quite contritely enough for my tastes. I think I needed him weeping with regret. But that's just me.

I went to the janitorial closet and got a mop and rolling bucket. There were two mops and buckets! I put soap and water in it. It all smelled... funny. And the squeegee part of the bucket didn't fit in the bucket very well.

I began mopping, and the third time I squeegeed out the liquid from the rancid mop the whole bucket toppled over.

I would not have described the process as "going great" so far.

I took the bucket back to the janitorial closet and got the other mop and bucket. Now I knew why there were two mops and buckets! One of them was just there to trick people!

Then I mopped, though it seems more accurate to say I sopped up orange soda mixed with vast amounts of soapy water and some ice. Then I wrung it out in the stable bucket contraption. I did this 30 times. There was a drain on the floor I could sort of sweep the liquid to, but it didn't work as well a the wringer contraption.

The floor was very wet and slippery when I'd finally had as much as I could take. I went looking for the "wet floor" sign. All the kings horses and all the king's men couldn't come up with the "wet floor" sign, though we all were sure we had one. Much later I found out from the night cleaner that it was tucked behind the trash can in the break room. But at the actual time of the wet floor I simply left the "Bathroom Closed for Maintenance" sign on the bathroom door until the floor air dried, for about half an hour. There's another bathroom upstairs, and a handful of specialty bathrooms here and there as well.

After I took the "Bathroom Closed for Maintenance" sign down, I told my story to a few co-workers, but it wasn't a really great "oral tradition" kind of a story.

It was more of a blog post.

 

More exciting completely random outtakes

 

History illustrated

 

Occasionally lately I have been using the clerk manifesto time machine to visit random blog posts from the same day in the history of clerkmanifesto. But today, while I am going to be showing you a historical gem from clerkmanifesto's past, we come at it from a different angle. I have been featuring a lot of quotes in pictures here over the past week. Some of these are new and some pulled out of clerkmanifesto. So today I have the post from which I took a quote, and a new picture featuring it.

First is our new picture:

And then here is the original post from which the quote came, back on June 22, 2022. It has the appropriately apt title of "Retrospective":

I suppose everything everywhere all averages out to explain everything.

Lately I have started cruising through some of my old blog posts. Apparently I am close to having written 3,500 of them! If that doesn't seem like a lot to you I suggest going and trying to read them all. That should bring you round to it pretty darn quick!

If you did, for some odd reason, attempt to plow through all my blog posts I think you might waffle between the same two reactions that I have:

1. Wow! These are terrific. Who can explain the perfidy of the Internet!

and

2. I guess I can see what people don't see in this.

Over ten years of writing here I have worn away my caring about either of these responses, as to a nub, like the toe of a sacred statue kissed to nothing.

Libraries: The Apocalypse

 

I just have the one picture, and though I said I was going to just put up pictures without comment during clerkmanifesto extra innings, so to speak, I have a hard time not commenting.

Thus the 5,000 posts of clerkmanifesto.

But what is my comment?

It is the answer to the question: Do people really pee in your sinks at the library?

Sure, probably. I don't know why not.

But then, I also don't know why they do.

Me, and also me

 

Surely I've told this story before, but there should be a provision for how many times I think of a story in relation to how many times I tell it. Like, if every once in a while I think of a story (and "story" in this context is a little grandiose, let's call it a trifling anecdote), but have already told said anecdote to you here, then probably I should be able to contain myself and maybe never tell that story again. But what if I think of the anecdote eleven times a week, every week? Maybe in that case, after eight years or so, I should get to tell the anecdote again, albeit with a long justifying preamble.

I think so.

To set the stage: 

One can return items from other library systems to my library. We take books from other libraries all across the greater metro area systems, put a slip in the book that identifies the system, and ship it to an agency that disperses the item to the appropriate system. It is mildly irritating to have a dozen books come in on the automated machine that the machine cannot recognize, and to have to take those items out of our exception bin, put a marked slip in every one of the items, and put those all in a red box we have along our "outgoing materials" wall. But it's all part of the game.

Which brings me to the Me, also Me.

Me, when 20 kids books that belong to another system come rolling through our check-in machine:

"Why can't these fucking people return their fucking books where they got them!"

Me, when a library patron asks "Can I return my Washington County library book to your library". ":

"Absolutely! Any time. No problem. You can return any item from any one of the public libraries in the metro area to us, and we'll send it back to the library it came from."

Adjustment to comments quote

 

It's a new picture, though you'll have seen the quote, and the first time you did there was also an elephant. But I added the word 'only' as I think it makes the meaning more clear. And a cat man on a railing. And it's just different in general.

I'm going to bed now.

1776 to 2025: The Apocalypse Series

 

Here are three pictures I have been working on. They are along the lines of my travel posters of Randy Newman's "Let's Drop the Big One and See What Happens". This one speaks to our own impending retirement emigration, albeit in a dark tone. But not that dark a tone, I mean, it has a kitten!