Volume 14 is finally available at your local bookstore

 

Yes, Volume 14 in the annals of clerkmanifesto is finally here. And you can pick it up at your local bookstore. It should also be noted that it is, like everything related to clerkmanifesto, completely free!

That doesn't mean valueless though! That's just how we're programmed.  Remember: 

Capitalism nibbles at the brain.

Anyway, if they tell you they don't have Volume 14 at your local bookstore, I urge you to make a scene.

 The whole "Karen" thing has given quite the stigma to making a scene, but sometimes is simply has to be done.

Just, it's better if it's done right. And over something super important.

You know, like Volume 14.  I mean, wouldn't you like to be able to sit down in a comfy armchair with a nice cognac and be able to read stuff just like... this?

Or, maybe not this exactly, but many posts in clerkmanifesto are slightly better than this one!

So go ahead and create a fuss.

Don't worry, though, the store will probably have it.

The history of the city in fiction

 

I don't like these kinds of stories:

Tomorrow we report very early in the morning for a required medical exam that was set in motion at the point we validated our French visas. I refuse to go into much detail about it except to say it is compulsory, brief, simple, and nothing to worry about. 

And I dread it. 

I have dreaded it from the moment it was scheduled back some time in December. 

I like these kind of stories:

I was reading to my darling wife, as we do each night. Our current book is an Agatha Christie mystery chosen not least because it involves the Blue Train, the train that back in the Agatha Christie days went overnight to the Cote D'Azur. It is one of the novels featuring Hercule Poirot. He shows up a bit late in the procedings. Then everyone gets off the train. And then there's a scene...

...that takes place a five minute walk from where we were sitting reading.

The bookstore

 

In the spirit of unadorned photography from around my Belle Epoque City, I have some pictures to show you today of a bookstore, or "librairie".

But a few things before we go. First is the funny, and initially confusing reversal of the English words "Library" and "Bookstore", something that led me to confusion and misunderstanding the first time I went to Paris. A "Library" in French is a "Bibliotheque" which, at least to me, sounds like it would be a bookstore, whereas, as stated, a "Bookstore" is, in French, a "Librairie" which, of course, sounds like it would be a library. It's all a bit Goose Juice and Moose Goose from Dr. Seuss, where the trouble comes when Mooses dream of goose juice and Gooses dream of moose juice.

As an aside, we walked to what we remembered as the truly amazing main library here in this city, which shares a sort of fabulous complex, bridge, and elevated park, with the modern and contemporary museum. But the whole thing was closed down for some major refurbishment project and had no indications of when it would open again. 

But, on the subject of unaltered photos, here are a couple pictures of the terrific dragon fountain in the park above the library and museum:

Anyway, to return to the subject of bookstores here in France, I haven't been into very many. After all, while they seem terribly appealing, how terrible to be faced with so many intriguing books that I AM INCAPABLE OF READING.

Nevertheless, the one pictured below, elaborately Christmassed up, looked so full of charms and treasures, we did venture in to just its vestibule to moon at its displays and all the promise of its antiquities. We could not bear to enter its front doors though, and instead we wandered off to buy chocolate.

Interesting and other stories

 

twenty-one

  

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

Some spare dodos and avocados of death:

eleven

  

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

I was telling you the other day about my old t-shirt designs, and I showed you a computer generated, cleaned up version of a dodo design from Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair. I also lamented the loss of the other shirts from my quarter century old set of hand painted book shirts, including one referencing Daniel Pinkwater's mostly forgotten classic: The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death.

I'd kind of like to read The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death again, now that I'm mentioning it.

But in the meantime I set about recreating my shirt.

I got it... generally correct. And I do like it, whether entirely accurate or not. I made half a dozen versions of my design, but as with that earlier dodo shirt, I'm going to just go with my favorite here:

nine

  

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

Once upon a time, more than 20 years ago, I made a series of t-shirts using fabric markers. My idea was to reference books I was particularly fond of, but in a more oblique way, through imagery, or sometimes through something of note that exists in the world of that novel. I made four designs, which, back then, was the work of many weeks, unlike now, where it is the work of many minutes.

The books I referenced were The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, One for the Money, something I can't remember, and The Eyre Affair. The other three are lost to time, though I really wish I had that avocado one. But I did keep one of them, the one devoted to Jasper Fforde's Eyre Affair (and its sequels, though there were barely any around back then). Once, when he was doing a reading in my town I even got him to sign my shirt!!! He liked my shirt. He even took a picture of it.

Cleaning out my locker at work I found this last of the shirts. The shirt is ill-fitting and old, but the drawn design on it was still clear. I took a photo. Then I asked my AI to make it a little neater and cleaner. Sometimes my AI disappoints me. Sometimes it produces something to work with that can be good with some effort. And sometimes, like with this, it's exactly what I wanted out of the gate.

I thought some about what I wanted to show you in regard to this; the original shirt image, the first successful rendition, or maybe everything altogether, but in the end,  I feel like just putting my best foot forward. So here is the one, finished, clean version of my design. 

I am even thinking I might make a new t-shirt out of it.

I visit the Scholomance

 

I went out for dinner with my friend Marcus the other night. This is something we do a few times a year, though after I am living in France it may happen less frequently. Presumably if we do manage to continue to do so in the future the meals will be better.

Naturally I took pictures of Marcus so that I can make various cartoons and portraits of him (more on that in another post). Curiously Marcus had a request. He wanted me to make a version of cartoon me in The Scholomance.

Somehow I did not manage to get why he wanted a cartoon of me in The Scholomance. He wasn't keeping that a secret or anything. I think I just somehow neglected to ask. My mind had immediately gone spinning off into the curious project.

For those of you who have missed it, The Scholomance is a fantasy trilogy by Naomi Novik. It's the best one since Lord of the Rings, as far as I'm concerned at least. The books mainly take place in a kind of grim, magic High School without teachers. This is a horrible, monster infested place made of grimy metal and set hanging into a void of nothingness. It is terribly dangerous, deadly even, but safer than the outside world which is fantastically deadly for adolescent magical youth. The school is a bleak, dangerous, desperate place that nevertheless is a little world that gives these kids a chance to make it to adulthood.

This rough description is not the main thing for me to tell you just why this trilogy is such a masterpiece. Surely I have done that already in clerkmanifesto a couple times in the past. This sketch is merely to give you the setting of the following pictures into which I have cast myself.

Ideally you would read The Scholomance Trilogy first, then check out my pictures. But you can probably also take them as they are if you want.

As to Marcus's request, assuming he's out there? 

Here you are.