A personal exploration of a famous person's birthday

 

Today is a very famous person's birthday!

Yep, Teddy Roosevelt.

I just thought it might be worth noting, I mean, in case anyone wanted to, uh, wish him, and only him, "Happy Birthday".

"Well that's odd" you comment instead of wishing Teddy Roosevelt a happy birthday, "You don't usually mention birthdays around here."

No. That's where I have to stop you. I just mentioned my friend Grape's birthday four days ago, so it could be said I mention birthdays every four days! And if I don't mention Teddy Roosevelt's birthday now, I have to wait 365 more days!

I'm not upset. 

Just so you know.

I appreciate the give and take.

"Okay," You say. "I'll bite then. What's so great about Teddy Roosevelt that we have to celebrate his birthday?"

I mean, nothing in particular really. It's also Dylan Thomas's birthday.

Just, you know, in case you were interested.

The mansion garden

 

I may have a few champagne problems living in this Belle Epoque town, but I could happily go take pictures in the mansion garden every day forever. And at the end of the picture taking, I can go down the almost secret path by the garbage, still surrounded by flowers, climb the almost secret stairs, and have the platform at the top of their property wall all to ourselves to gaze out at the ocean from.

Then I come home and sort through the pictures; little birds, blazing flowers, ancient sprawling trees, fat bumblebees, giant curling leaves, and the crows. Sometimes, as I have before, I show a pleasant roll of unedited pictures, and sometimes, like today, I spend hours doing all sorts of mad science on the pictures, unable to stop myself as I run one more pass or one more edit until I find it is quite late, and I need to put together the clerkmanifesto post for the morrow pretty quick, because the day is long gone and my time with you is nearly over.

So while in the future I may present my garden pictures here in a more orderly way, for this post I will just be running off to my file of new pictures from my work today and grabbing a few things that catch my eye.

Maybe they can catch your eye too?

Don't worry though, they'll probably give it back if they do.

Les flics

 

Hey, I have a real live french term today; Les Flics.

That's, like, French for "The Cops", man. And let me tell you, the cops seem to be the same everywhere!

Even in France.

I have come a long way from my old neighborhood where the cops were constantly strangling people to death. Okay, not constantly, sometimes they shot people in their cars too. But either way, protests seemed to result, and in the end shattered shop windows along my local streets ended up covered in boards and an occasionally building was burned to the ground. 

Just like where I am now!

Just exactly like where I fucking am now!

And I know to a distant viewer and to all the confidently confused people of, say, Reddit, or the Internet in general, or, like, The New York Times or Le Monde, there are a lot of different narratives flying around, all with very real accompanying video footage, and it seems really hard to suss out.

I am not here to suss it all out for you. I just want to point out the most absolutely obvious thing in the world:

The police, les flics, are not doing their job.

1. You have videos of les flics beating innocent people.

2. You have videos of les flics in great mobs facing off with protesters with things being hurled in both directions albeit with the things the police are hurling looking far more dangerous.

3. You have videos of people looting shops on extremely public main streets and there are no police around at all.

So, police beating innocent people. Not their job.

Police fighting protesters? How is this relevant? How is this a police job? They are in no way throwing their bodies on the line or standing desperately protecting anything but the street behind them. Why? It seems based on a theoretical prevention. But shouldn't someone commit a crime before the police start enforcing the law on them...

Like, maybe breaking into shops and wantonly stealing stuff?

I am pretty far on the left in any reasonable political spectrum, but even I could handle these two simple ostensibly conservative concepts:

1. People sitting, marching, even protesting? Not really that much of a police issue, but I can grudgingly accept their keeping an extremely tolerant eye on things.

2. People actually smashing shop windows, stealing from places, and burning things? Okay, reasonable for le flic, Monsieur Policier to intervene.

If only they would.

Fun and frolic with clerkmanifesto

 

I once embarked on a vast attempted migration of clerkmanifesto to my own fully hosted site called "Life is a fountain". This grandiose venture had something to do with problems with google's blogger (the hosting platform where we are now), and was also because I was struck with a wave of creative ambitions in response. Life is a Fountain was a very explorable site, with lots to look at, read, and even watch, but suffered from two problems that ultimately lead to its demise and to our retreat back here to the homely clerkmanifesto that is in your hands at this moment.

1. Packed to the gills with content, the whole Life is a Fountain site ran too slowly for the whipsnap patience of modern internet users.

2. No one actually reads clerkmanifesto, other than you (hi and thanks for coming by) and even fewer people read Life is a Fountain, which created a weird black hole in which it regularly received less than zero views, a minus number!, which was fascinating, but only for a little while, and started to upset math itself.

Math is more sensitive than one would think.

I can relate.

So back I came here, having kept it live and up to date the whole time of the experiment, much to math's enormous relief.

And here I still am years later, focussing on the main daily postings and leaving all that sidebar, interconnected stuff to itself.

Until now!

Now I decided to clean up these sidebar features and offer a few more gateways into the vast histories and content of clerkmanifesto. It is no great reworking, and I still refuse to change the now antiquated look of clerkmanifesto, but I have gotten rid of outdated elements on the sidebar that long ceased to be relevant. And I have added a few more usable features for the so inclined. Like, as I write we have a tribute to Grape for his birthday up top. I also now have some links to highlighted posts of the past. Even way down below I have a "picture of the day". A picture of the day! I wonder when I'll remember to change that? Because, after all, this is all meant to be changeable, and over the next while I am guessing there will be all sorts of shenanigans over on the sidebar to your right.

Even I can accept that clerkmanifesto isn't always "good". But it definitely is "always" which makes for a ton of it! So much that I have long since despaired of organizing it. But slowly I am leaning more into all that history, and trying to make tunnels and warrens and rooms in this colossal collection of clerkmanifesto content, connecting the past and present and letting it all run together and reemerge in new, hopefully distilled and more curated ways.

"Condeluded."? You say.

Yes, what a wonderful idea! Among the new features is an actual search box. If you aren't exhausted from today's information heavy post, try typing "condeluded" into that search box and see what you get!

Or not. I'll take care of math if this upsets it. I'll fix math a vermouth. Math loves vermouth and that usually calms them down.

 

How we remember Grape's birthday this year

 

On October 23 clerkmanifesto enjoys remembering Grape's birthday in one way or another.

"Why?" You ask.

Oh, because October 23 is Grape's birthday.

I know that's not what you meant. I was just teasing. 

We like to remember Grape's birthday because, well, a lot of reasons... 

hey,

let's do a top ten list!

Top ten reasons why we like to remember Grape's Birthday!

1. Because he is a dear old friend.

2. Because we just did it once 13 years ago and, boom, it felt like it was just kind of a thing we do, which is a bit similar to how there are now over 5,000 daily clerkmanifesto posts; sheer accident.

3. Maybe it will make Grape happy! Don't you want Grape to be happy? It's his birthday!

4. It is a nice way to share a lot of stories about Grape and about growing up.

5. We have a very similar birthday so it becomes a way to talk about myself! And gosh, isn't that a fascinating subject!

6. Not that Grape isn't a very interesting subject too. 

7. The tax write offs on it are spectacular. You should try it just for the tax savings.

8. I'd totally do the same for you if I knew your birthdate! But I respect your sense of privacy.

9. To make amends in case it was me who misplaced our historic genuine friendship rattlesnake rattle that we shared back and forth for decades. But having moved out of an entire life, and gotten rid of everything I owned with meticulous detail, I think maybe Grape has the rattle, but who knows? And if it is my fault the rattle has gone missing, at least I write a notalgic rattlesnake revering post every October 23rd.

10. Because I am always looking for material on clerkmanifesto that I think will appeal to a wider audience. Not that I have ever found any or know what it looks like.

I know that today's honoring of Grape's birthday doesn't include any new stories or really anything all that much about Grape, but we try to honor his birthday in different ways each year and this is how we are rolling in 2026. Meanwhile, as I am taking on more ambitions about creating a more lively and up to date sidebar to clerkmanifesto (to the right here, and probably more about it tomorrow), I would like to direct your attention to the very top of our sidebar features where you will find a series of opportunities to wander through a bit of highlighted history of Grape on and in clerkmanifesto. This is a time constrained feature though, so if you are reading this a bit past publication date it likely won't be there, though hitting the "grape" tab should get you a less curated collection of the same sort of thing.

Oh, and one last thing. Just in case he's reading:

Happy Birthday, Grape.

A reversal

 

At the risk of clerkmanifesto becoming fundamentally just a place to catch up on news about me, I feel compelled to follow up on yesterday's post concerning our moving.

We were moving.

We had agreed terms with the landlady and were preparing to give notice in our current place.

And then the lease never came.

And then it never came some more.

So I guess we're not moving... quite... yet?

The story seems to go:  Because we opted to not buy any of the previous tenant's weirdly overpriced and unpleasant furniture the landlady, who is very fond of the previous tenant though she also considers the tenant's furniture weirdly overpriced and unpleasant, nevertheless wants to help her out by maybe choosing a new tenant who might want to buy her furniture.

One of the challenges of moving to a new country is that one has a kind of impulse to ascribe individual events, interactions, and encounters to a national character. But I don't think French people are bad at keeping their word or weird about their tenants' furniture. There are just weird people out there. 

You know it's true. Weird, awful people.

So watch yourselves!

And it goes both ways. People all over France are probably meeting us and thinking: "But I had no idea! Americans are so warm and witty!"

No they aren't! They're about half of them stupid nazis just like French people. You just got lucky.

I mean, unless they don't consider talking to people who speak their language like drunken toddlers to be lucky.

 

We are moving! and other low information updates

Because clerkmanifesto lives outside the law we remain, let's say, unspecific, as to our location. Admittedly, like when I worked for the Roseville Library, this is more in the realm of plausibile deniability. Put geographically, it's like if I lived in San Francisco (I once did!) and only spoke vaguely about being in a large Northern California City from Victorian times, and I was constantly posting images of the Golden Gate Bridge. One could figure it all out if one wanted to, but that's where clerkmanifesto's superpower comes in handy: with just the twelve readers who pretty much know what's going on through personal connection, or by default, or simply don't care, it's not the sort of thing nefarious elements in the web are inclined to pursue. 

We thus remain at large!

And now we are moving, next month. If all goes to plan.

My pessimism is always of the "I'll believe it only after it happens" variety, and even then, who knows? My pessimism is even retroactive in the "Maybe I just dreamed the whole thing and I was always here anyway" style.

I mean, if that's a pessimism style. Which it probably isn't. It's probably metaphysics.

Where are we moving to?

Oh, it's super exciting! We are moving to the cutest little pedestrian street across from a neo gothic church in...

Ooops. I almost spilled it!

In the meantime, how does this effect clerkmanifesto?

Oh yes. Definitely!

Resorting to flowers

 

Away as we are on an apartment scouting trip I am scrambling around for some nice things to post while I'm still at a computer with all my tools readily at hand. Luckily I have here some pictures of flowers and gardens. I was going to draw on these pictures, but I quite like them just as they are. So perhaps need, even a bit of desperation, is lending a hand to send these photographs, just as they are, taken during a long early fall wander through a lovely old posh garden near the sea, out to you.

You don't mind a bit of the real world, do you?

You are probably a genius!

 

As we have dashed off across the country, on a laboriously long train ride, back to one of my favorite cities I have seen, to hopefully look at an apartment we may want to and even be able to rent, I am eager to stuff clerkmanifesto's cheeks full of food to delay the moment when I have to start posting from my phone. 

Posting from my phone is not easy and sometimes looks funny.

And so, what a fabulous time for a...

Clerkmanifesto Classic!

The Clerkmanifesto Genius Quiz

Are you a genius?

How can you trust your own highly invested self-assurance, or, conversely, that your noble humility won't muck up your scientific evaluation.

That's where this test comes into play.

Yes, you may have taken a genius test before. One of two things invariably happened: 

1. They said you were a genius because your qualities and abilities matched the ones that they themselves had and over-valued. Or

2. They said you weren't a genius because they were jealous, jealous of your genius.

Either way they had an axe to grind, a chip in the pot, a cliche nailed up on the metaphor for all souls to see. Oh how I hate them.

On the other hand I don't have an axe to grind. Except against Republicans. And fast food sandwich restaurants. And the rich. And most dog owners. And Kazuo Ishiguro. And the Internet. And Centrists. And the country of Poland. And managers. And the publishing industry. And all the people who don't read my blog. And God. 

And especially those bloody disingenuous people with their damn genius tests!

Oh how I hate them. I hate them more than anything in the whole world! I hate hate hate the genius test people!!!!!

Not for anything they ever did to me. And not really for anything they did to anyone else. But for, well, er, um, actually I can't think of anything right now. And, so, um, maybe I don't hate them all that much. Maybe I like them. I haven't worked that out yet. I have to think this over.

But that's not the point.

The point is, well, it's around here someplace. Hang on while I look.

Oh. I know what it was. It was that you should take my test. 

My god it's hard. Incredibly hard. Awe-inspiringly hard.

No, not the test. I'm referring to writing the introductory comments.

The test is actually pretty easy...

If you're a genius!

 The Clerkmanifesto Genius Quiz

1. The name of this test is:

     A. I'm going to have to think outside of the box for this one, aren't I? Clever!

     B. Ah, you no fool me. Trick question. You tell me what the name of this test is!

     C. The Clerkmanifesto Genius Quiz.

     D. I see, weeding out the weak on the first question.

     E. I'm supposed to expect a first answer to be a "C" or "D", but it's always "E" to throw people off.

2. The most common mistake the blog author makes in writing Clerkmanifesto is:

     A. Its for it's and it's for its.

     B. No, wait, it's it's for its and its for it's. Yes, that one.

     C. Functionally "A" and "B" are the same and so must be a set up for "C" to be correct.

     D. Mistake? But there's never been, oh, I see, wink's as good as a nod to a blind man. Mistake indeed!

     E. I hate to be the one to tell you, but just when Clerkmanifesto has the golden ring in its grasp it gets distracted by the meaning of the universe.

3. The meaning of the Universe is:

     A. Probably around here somewhere.

     B. I just pick whatever letter choice tells me which letter choice to pick. This question doesn't have one of those, but this one is at least closest in spirit.

     C. Oh man, do these get any harder? Who doesn't know this?

     D. People like the "Answer "C"" guy just drive me crazy. Fine, everyone knows, so just tell me for god's sake!

 
     E. Can everyone just settle down here? The answer is "Love", or sometimes "Revenge". Like 90% "Love", 10% "Revenge".

4. How many questions are in this test?

     A. Oh man, this is a mindbender. We, taking the test, can see how many questions there are, but you, still writing the test, cannot. How then will you fill out your multiple choice answers?
          a. Right, I didn't think of that!
          b. b.
          c. How many points do we get for answering the questions in the answers? I'm asking for a friend.
          d. It's not that big a deal, he merely needs to take a fair guess at what the answer will be and then stick to it as he completes writing the quiz.
          e. I'm a friend of "C". Did "C" leave me any messages?

 
     B. Three?

     C. On the 4th question it's almost always "all of the above" or "none of the above". Look for one of those to show up as a choice and choose that. Don't worry, they won't both be in there.

     D. It can't be many more now as most of the thematic and narrative elements have played through.

     E. I'm going to skip this one and come back to it later if there's still time left.

Scoring:


We have automatically scored your test. Well done. Your score is:

43



What your score means:


1-10:


Yes, congratulations! You are a genius. But more the garden variety type that hangs out in the four corners area of the U.S. mistaking train themed murals for the real thing and unsuccessfully hunting flightless birds.


11-20:


You are a hard core genius who, well, you've already deduced the rest of what I was going to say.


21-30:


Hello Albert Einstein!

(This zone range is reserved for Albert Einstein. If by error your test result fell into this range and you are not Albert Einstein please double check your results, resubmit or, if still in the 21-30 range, send an error documentation report to our trunk office. We apologize for any inconvenience).


31-40:

))(__+|\+?>>><&^^^%&$><.<.


41-50:

I'm kind of embarrassed you read my blog, but, like, honored.