The return of I E Skin's Guide

 

Way back in the mid nineties, not so very far back for some of us to go, I experienced one of my ever so modest peaks of public artistic success with a weekly comic called "I.E. Skin's Guide to All that there is to Know". It ran in a weekly paper in the bay area for a few years and then it went away.

Or did it!

Maybe this here, right now, clerkmanifesto, is really I.E. Skin's Guide to all that there is to Know!

Sort of, I guess, whatever.

This is not the first time I have mentioned my old alt weekly comic, even at some point bringing forth the historical comics here, or maybe posting to an auxiliary clerkmanifesto site that was easily viewable and is still link listed on the sidebar here. Doris the super intelligent alien and even the character of god, stalwarts of I.E. Skin's Guide, have appeared here as well over the years of clerkmanifesto in various ways.

But I can't say I have ever done a proper resurrection.

Until today, because, why not?

Our first return, a sort of let's get our feet wet, is a reworking of an original cartoon of I.E. Skin's Guide, but with some redesigns and a little modern rewriting.

For the second cartoon, we venture into the wholly new, featuring none other than fox and skunk.

Metadistential

Yesterday I came upon the new word metadistential.

Well, I mean, I wrote it.

Did you know that the most famous clerkmanifesto post of all time was in the coining of the word "Condeluded" meaning to be confused in one's own interest. 

Had I struck gold again?

Not that there was any gold for me in "condeluded".

However, I did become super famous and acquired, let's see:

Zero new readers.

Welcome to each and every one of you.

And now was the magic was about to happen again?

Metadistential. Here is how it appeared yesterday:

 Sorry, I didn't mean to get all metadistential.

Whoa, metadistential.

I think I have a new word.

I was pretty excited, naturally, what with all the fame and glory headed my way.

Metadistential.

Metadistential.

Metadistential.

Now all I had to do was come up with a meaning.

Actually, I had the meaning.

I just can't explain it.

No, I'm not being clever here. That is the meaning: To know the meaning but not be able to explain it.

No, it's actually not very likely to catch on. It's too...

too...

metadistential.

The best new song

 

If someone wants to point me to new music I am ready to listen. I should be studying modern jazz or global fusion or something, instead of scrolling through my corporate Internet feeds, smeared as they are with the patina of real people to keep me hanging on in hope and addiction. 

THERE ARE NO REAL PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET!

Even here on a clerkmanifesto, I am just a figment of your imagination until you step away from your phone or your computer. Only then do I exist.

"Oh" You say. "I see. It's all there."

But only later, not now.

Sorry, I didn't mean to get all metadistential.

Whoa, metadistential.

I think I have a new word.

But we'll get to that later. Or not. 

My point is:

I have a hard time finding new music.

And I have a hard time having the attention span for new music. And if I expect some instagreddit feed to point me sagely in the right direction, it's not happening. They just keep showing me Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, which is comforting, but possibly a bit played out?

But then, today, by purest chance and scrolling I hit something absolutely electrifying!

Alas that it is from 1966.

A dead Lou Reed recommended it.

How did I miss this?

Well, I'll still take it, ancient as it is. And in case you somehow missed it (there was a ton of interesting music coming down the wires of 1966!) I hearby share it with you.

This is exactly the kind of song I like. And what an experience to hear it for the first time (at least that I'm aware of). Like, it's a nice mid sixties soul song, and the singer has an interesting clear voice, higher it seems than what I would usually hear here.

Here here!

And the lyrics have a good, heartfelt, heartache to them, and then,

Holy crap. The song is just ripped open. Completely unhinged with feeling.

I can't stop listening.

I have to go listen again. Join me if you like. But we are done with all art and creativity for the day. We are just living in shadows...

https://youtu.be/5TOaUxgkLSg?si=hPXXyO0dVS3l2r8W

The third color

 

This is my third attempt.

I have been trying for three days now to introduce some assorted photographs in my latest style I call "primaries" because, roughly, basic colors come into it, even if they aren't always the "primary" colors. I applied this technique I'd developed in a new city we loved to some older photos and thought a few were kind of interesting and worth sharing. And also, though I had several ideas for posts I wanted to make for you, or to write from scratch, my time was limited and I thought it might be easier just to show these photos that I'd already worked on and finished.

So I set down to introduce the pictures and commentary came out instead. Twice. It's almost happening again now!

Sometimes I think it might be simpler to, when posting photographs, simply post the photographs. And when I'm writing I can just be writing. 

But then I think of the days like these past few: I like to take the pressure off. To set off under no obligation. 

My favorite plans in clerkmanifesto, are the ones I break.

More attempted fun

 

I used to write a really proper, pointed essay-like post nearly every day. Serious stuff like, I don't know, this one from 2019:

On Tuesday nights I work the front desk with a Buddhist co-worker. Sometimes reincarnation, monks, and light Buddhist themes come up in discussion. This Tuesday she came across a copy of The Four Noble Truths: A Guide to Everyday Life, and she was pretty interested in it. So she showed it to me. I looked. I'd seen the book already.

So I handed it back and said:

"In my past life I was a Buddhist. In this life it's my only one."

Wait, that's it?

Hmmm. That doesn't seem so hard. But I've always got so many pictures to get posted here. So writing a proper three paragraph essay like that is often out of the question. I just write some introductory comments and before I know it,

BAM

The whole thing is way longer than my proper essay might have been.

I am not paid by the word!

I AM NOT PAID BY THE WORD!

Actually, I'm pretty sure I do this for fun.

Retirement paperwork

 

None of the old retired people I talked with so much about retirement warned me of the paperwork. They were all "Oh, it's so great I wish I had done it much earlier! Now I'm going to go drive somewhere to walk around the block again."

But no mention of the paperwork!

We spent all day today on paperwork; paperwork, accounting, translating, filing, bookkeeping. It was a lot of work. Although I will admit, the move to a foreign country really piles it all on. I remember a cute, snarky old t-shirt popular in the eighties, or maybe it's still popular? "Join the Army; travel to exotic, distant lands; meet exciting, unusual people and kill them."

A classic, no? And so it comes up in my mind, thinking "Work a full adulthood; save to bravely retire to a fabulous foreign land of harmonious lifestyles, and sit inside all day doing paperwork to stay there."

Not that I'm complaining. Not me. I don't have to drive somewhere to walk around the block, I can do it right out my front door!

And, AND

If I get tired while circling said block there will be a perfectly pleasant cafe to plop down at and have a Negroni, or something.

Or I can once the paperwork is done, I mean, which it is for today.

We'll see what the visa office has to say about it later.

The city in its glories

 

I have more pictures today of the city we returned from, full of old churches, marble streets, flowers and fountains, lovely parks, and the illusion that all is well in the world.

All is actually well in the world?

Oh, okay, my mistake.

I'll do my best to enjoy it.

Primaries

 

Oh, no, you read my title? Not political primaries. My sense of doom is too great for that. For a few moments let us retreat from the end of the world and the incipient doom of Nationalism and Capitalism. Let us sip the rarified air of pure color.

Primaries.

Actually, I am most often using five colors in these pictures, but I think you'll take my point.

Yesterday I showed and talked about the contemporary museum featuring a vast architecturally centered work all in green light. But there was another museum we went to that was built into an old submarine base, where 360 degree projections of moving images wrapped around one, telling the story of Matisse, or Frida Kahlo, or whatever show they have going at the time. The images bounce through the old heavy arches and among the dark still waters of the mirrored and haunted bays.

I don't know why I'm telling you about this.

Somehow that casting of light informed these images as well, though I find I cannot yet explain it.

Here are some pictures of the city we were in for eleven days. This is how it was to me, and maybe all the more now that it feels like a dream. It is the usual moments of a European city, with rooftops and staircases, parks and fish and birds, cathedrals, fountains, and transit. But all, I hope, a little special.