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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.

My missed calling

I was reading, or more accurately, having read to me in audiobook form, the novel One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde. Jasper Fforde is an author I have met once in person, and on numerous occasions corresponded with, though that always seems to end with him politely ignoring me and me feeling a little embarrassed by the whole thing. 

I'm a fan.

Anyway, without explaining this extremely difficult to explain book, there is a passing mention of how Madame Bovary is one of the worst name droppers in the entire fictional world. No, I can't explain it, sorry, read the book. But while I was aware that one is supposed to have something of a distasteful disdain for namedroppers and for their attendant character trait when it comes up, I instead had a sudden realization:

I would be a huge name dropper!

So it's a good thing I don't know any famous people.

Except Jasper Fforde. 

Did I mention that?

Dear Google

Dear Google,


I would like to draw your attention to a few errors involving your search engine.

1. When one types in the search "Library clerk blog" no actual library clerk blogs show up in the results. Mostly what shows up are expired job postings, with a smattering of outdated salary listings. I'll admit a couple of blogs last updated in the 1980's rear their ugly heads, but they don't appear to be written by library clerks. I will admit that of the 473,683,220,252,254,810,005 Google searches last year there were a total of no searches for "Library clerk blog", but it could happen at any time, and you are asleep at the wheel!

2. My blog has had billions of views! These views are almost entirely generated by bizarre Russian spam engines whose purpose eludes me. I am not eager to see these disturbing statistics from Russian spam sites, but since you (Google) insist that they are noteworthy, and tell me about them constantly, I feel strongly that they should effect my page rankings, and I should appear at the top of any search with any of the following words: "Vampire",  "The",  "Blog",  "Stat", "I don't understand", or "Russia". It's a simple matter of consistency in your system.

3. Though I consider it a flaw, I understand that I don't often use the phrase "Library clerk blog" on my blog, and so, accordingly, I don't leap to the top of searches with that phrase. However, I have now used each of the following phrases several thousand times: "Best blog on the Internet", "Greatest blogger", "The only reason to turn on your computer", "Shaman of the Internet" and "The", and so I expect, naturally, to have these reflected in my page rankings.

4. When I conduct a search that goes beyond the simple things that lead me to giant corporate blog sites or massively popular pages of other kinds it is rarely easy for me to find what I am looking for. Instead I find semi legitimate sites that are very good at gaming your system. I am terrible at gaming your system, but I did come up with an idea. If you would direct all ambiguous searches to me, at clerkmanifesto.com, I, for my part, would try to cover every aspect of human knowledge and experience. This may sound extreme, but you, with probably some of the most clever technical people in the world, are clearly not getting anywhere doing it your way.

5. Look, I know that you are tempted to dismiss me as a crank. But I honestly don't expect for my blog to appear in the top five searches for everything all the time. I am merely pointing out that your automated search systems are missing some important things. I know not everyone on the Internet is searching for clerkmanifesto.com! That would be silly! But if some random person types into your search engine "Animals", "Turkey", "Bob Dylan", "The Internet", "Blogging", "Van Gogh", "Library", "Work", "Coffee", "Vacation", "Halloween", "Disney", "Marcus", "Cats", "Love", "Minnesota", "Patrons", "Co-workers", "Jasper Fforde", "Poetry", "Books", "Satire", "Reading", "Rome", "River", "Moose", "Marketing", or "Writing",  well, then, the chances are that they are probably looking for me. At least, I'm pretty sure there's a good chance they're looking for me. I'm just trying to help you help them find me.

I am sure we only want what's best for each other.




Thank you for your time,
 


clerkmanifesto.com

How I hate them

After nearly two years of blogging the clerkmanifesto I have become aware of how I am both extremely well suited to it and extremely poorly suited to it.

The fractured, new subject every day quality of blogging, the requirement for concision, the way I can sometimes complete something, a whole post, in as little as half an hour to an hour, the ability to share it around within a few days, the ever ready vehicle for all my whirring fevers of theories, jokes, satires, raves, and reveries. This blog is like having a perfectly tailored suit of clothes. It fits me everywhere, it moves with me. It is beautiful.

And yet I don't do so well out on the Internet. I sort of hate the Internet, and my blog is a creature of the Internet. But it's not exactly the Internet, and hating it isn't quite right. It's something else, something I struggle to express.

Fortunately I think I have found a way to say it.

I warn you that you will probably find it a bit off putting or even alarming. You may even be a little concerned for my mental health. And well you should be. It is one fierce emotion.  But speaking truth to our feelings is the first step to recovery.

Here it is:

I hate everyone who is not reading this.

I hate them. I hate them with a great hate.

Seven billion people or so, and I am hating them all, hating them from the bottom of my heart, hating them forever.

Oh how I hate them.

People I admire, my favorite authors, Ursula K. LeGuin, Jasper Fforde, Daniel Pinkwater and so on. I hate them. I think I even hate my favorite dead authors, Kafka and Farley Mowat and the like who could at least try. I hate old friends who aren't reading this. I hate that person who is sitting next to you, your dog, your cousin, my favorite soccer player Messi, random strangers. Oh how I hate them all! I hate people who do beautiful things, I hate artists, the campaigners for peace and justice, my nice co-workers, all those friendly library patrons at the library I work at. If they are not here, reading this, and oh how incredibly many of them aren't, I hate them.

Did I mention that I hate them? I hate them. Hate, hate, hate!

One simple line to cross. On the not reading clerkmanifesto side of that line my hatred rains down, heavy, endless. A rain of fire? A rain of water? No, a rain of dazzling drenching hate. I hate the hosts of angels in the heavens and I hate the demons in hell, but not if they read this. Convicts, Saints, custodians and presidents. I hate Reddit and Facebook and Google Plus and Stumbleupon and Boing Boing. I hate every road that does not lead here.

There is a hierarchy to it if you want. I certainly hate people more who have had the opportunity to read my blog, who have heard of it, or those who choose not to click on some link to it, or those who read it once and said "whatever" and never read it again. I hate all those people the most. Whereas someone in China, or maybe just someone who could hardly know such a thing as this blog exists, them I hate just a tiny bit, comparatively speaking.

Though you mustn't get me wrong, I still hate them.

I hate them all. I hate every single person on the planet and floating in the void. I hate people I cannot imagine, through history and in the future, every intelligence in all of time and space, who is not reading, or has not read, this.

I am not a sociopath. I might even be the opposite of a sociopath. I am a writer.

And my audience is everyone I do not hate.

Lake Superior

This morning I was telling Jasper Fforde about Lake Superior. 

Oh, why yes, I write ol' Jasper Fforde all the time these days. 

This would be very impressive if he wrote back, but we are more in the communication category of, say, a small child saying prayers to god. I write him on faith. I like to pretend he is enjoying the letters. I haven't lost my mind or anything. He asked on his website for Wild Library Tales, so most days I send him some past blog post with an elaborate introduction. He did write back once that he is busy with a writing deadline and said that vaguely good things are probably coming my way. It was short, but nice. But I think I already told you about most of this and it is not our point here.

Our point is that I was talking about Lake Superior, on whose shores I will soon be staying, to a person from another land. And when you explain things to strangers, sometimes you see them in a new light.

Lake Superior.

My god, what a smug name! That's got to be some kind of lake to go around with a name like that. Superior. Imagine a mountain called "Better Than All the Other Mountains" Mountain. I'd think one would approach such a mountain with a critical eye. A mountain like that had better well have its majesty act together, it better be big, interesting, and picturesque. 

Yes, I am going to Lake Superior. Have you been there? This is a lake that has thrown down the gauntlet!

Lake Baikal, Lake Titicaca, Lake Victoria, Lake Michigan, The Caspian Sea, Lake Aralb, Great Bear Lake, Lake Tanganyika, Lake Malawi, Great Slave Lake, Great Salt Lake, Lake Ladoga.

And then there is the Superior Lake. One lake to rule them all.

Lake Superior.

Well, you will hear no dissent from me. I could, for vacation with my wife, with enough effort and sacrifice, probably manage to go about anywhere. And yet we will go just a few hundred miles north. We will go just to sit and look at a lake.

And count ourselves lucky.

31,700 square miles. 1,330 feet deep. Three quadrillion gallons of water (ten percent of earth's fresh surface water, enough to cover North and South America a foot deep in water). Two point seven billion year old rocks on it's shore. The most oligotrophic lake in the world.

Lake Superior. 

Yes, it means better.

Romantic comedy

As you know by now Sunday is the day where we discuss procedural matters on clerkmanifesto. Just how dedicated a reader you are is fully illuminated when we discuss our flexon algorithms and the curious retention rates we are experiencing among new readers in Madagascar. It is also a day where we get very self referential. During the other six days of the week I refer to myself or to my blog a scant 98.2 percent of the time, but on Sunday this jumps wildly to 99.1 percent of the time. The figure is even larger than that if we don't count the time I unintentionally left the text body blank one Sunday. Did you know that the reddit "minimalism" page linked to it, and to this day it is still my most heavily viewed page? It has over 14 million thumbs up.

Today we will discuss my recommended books page. I am honestly not sure why I bring this up so much. Trust me that I say this utterly without recrimination, but almost no one visits that page. It is too complex, probably, for newcomers, who we don't really have around here anyway, and it is mostly old hat for, well, you. Hi. Plus it's ramshackle and constantly under construction. But strangely I feel like one day it will suddenly be, if not done, than at least highly presentable. It will come into its own. So I keep picking at it, fiddling, improving, connecting, all in little ways, but with bits of forward momentum that I tell you about on many Sundays, as if you'd be far more interested in that than in another tale of a deranged person at my library.

The newest change to my recommended books list was precipitated by a moment of jealousy. One of my favorite co-workers (I know, there are many), who is no longer around much, told me about being out shelving in the DVDs and being asked for recommendations on Romantic Comedies. I'm afraid I no longer remember the rest of that story because I was so overcome with jealousy from not being asked that question myself that I was no longer thinking clearly. I have an absolute thing for Romantic Comedies and the only other things I am as keen to offer my opinion on are Caravaggio, Mysteries, Science Fiction, Jasper Fforde, Videogames, Bob Dylan, CDs, Anarchism, Ursula K. LeGuin, late Tolstoy, Messi, The Kinks, the 1974 Los Angeles Dodgers, drug legalization, tomatoes, coffee drinks, Bernini...

Oh, sorry. It turns out that I was trapped in a list that actually, technically, had no end whatsoever. But that being said I am very keen to recommend Romantic Comedies. Indeed, I was so keen at the thought of someone else being asked for a recommendation that I decided to open the floodgates and breach my limit of only recommending books on my recommended books list. So I am going to add a Romantic Comedy section. As always it will harbor within it links to appropriate blog posts. Off hand (pun intended), the only immediate link I can think of is to a post called "Anger" that will be linked to from the recommendation of Moonstruck ("I lost my hand!"), but there may be more out there.

So what's on the list? Am I going to make you go to the dreaded Recommended Books page to see?

No, I'm not going to make you go there. I'm not even going to give you the link. You'd have to really work for it to go there. And as to what's on the list, it turns out this whole post is a bit premature. I haven't even started to add this new section yet. But for starters my obvious choices of the Romantic Comedies I love and recommend include:

Moonstruck
Notting Hill
Love Actually
Music and Lyrics
French Kiss
Holiday
Tin Cup
Wimbledon
Two Weeks Notice
50 First Dates
Management
New in Town
About Time

Well, I'd have to think about all the other ones some more, what with the high standard there is for love.

After Romantic Comedies, now that the wall is down, I'll no doubt be adding albums.

I will say this though:

My recommended books list will be and is clever, engaging, diverse and idiosyncratic.

My list of loved albums (CDs) will be overwhelmingly accurate and brave and deep and wide ranging and critically astute.

But I must confess that this list (possibly any list), but definitely my list, of Romantic Comedies will be a bit treacly, oddball, giddy, and hopelessly aesthetically and politically unsupportable in every way.

I just thought you should know.

Wild Library

An author I rather go on about a bit here, Jasper Fforde, has, on his ornate, entertaining website, a section called "Wild Library Tales". It is devoted to library stories that others have submitted. There are almost no stories there, but there is a funny picture of the author. The link seems semi abandoned and outdated. I decided that it was my sort of thing, so I am sending Mr. Fforde some of my library stories.

I have a lot of them.

This is probably a violation of my non marketing vow, but I've decided to pretend it isn't. It remains to be seen how hard I will need to pretend.

But the real reason I am telling you this is because it got me thinking about my library tales and how they aren't wild at all. I'm pretty sure most of the good library stories have to do with things being incorrectly filed. I know, weird. But it's a library, and stories in a library are naturally ornate, low key, humorous, thoughtful, ironic, whispered.

Yes, wild things happen in my library occasionally, but they are not at all my favorite stories. Once, many years ago, a mentally disabled young man with a group home, generally a pretty friendly kid, came running down the checkout lanes and leaped on one of the group's leaders. He knocked her to the ground in one of the most visceral attacks I've ever seen up close. There was an intense thud of flesh and bone and flesh and bone and pure rage all meeting as hard as they could. The young man was like a bulldog, utterly compacted, stout, dense. He was pulled off the group leader quickly, but five hard working people were required. The group leader was not lastingly hurt. The whole thing was over in seconds, and they were all gone from the library in minutes. But for 20 seconds it was absolutely wild in the library.

I do believe that Mr. Fforde, when he includes a wild library tales section, means it with a certain touch of playfulness and irony and a wide sense of the word "wild". And I eagerly take the suitability of my stories in that guise. It's my bread and butter here.

Nevertheless, if a tornado rips through my library sometime this summer, I'll probably give you a straight up account...

eventually.

The fourth post

Yes, I was going to write about something new and interesting today. I have a long list of subjects and was about to pick one when I saw a certain, evocative book on my shelving cart and all my plans flew out the window. Or they would have flown out the window except this is a building with tons of windows and yet none that can be opened. So I guess all my plans just got stuffed in my pockets for now because I have a new plan.

I'm going to talk about Jasper Fforde.

Yes, again!

But I am going to talk about titles, which I haven't much talked about. And furthermore I am going to talk about Mystery titles, which I have never talked about.

Which is why you have that tingly I'm-there-at-the-invention-of-the-wheel feeling.

The book that I came across on my cart is a mystery novel called The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde. This book is part of the Nursery Crimes series which as yet consists of only two books. These are two of the greatest mystery novels ever written. Curiously enough these two mysteries are shelved in the Science Fiction section for reasons I would take far too long to explain, and, in the process, would vehemently insult my library slightly more than it deserves.

But besides not explaining why The Fourth Bear is shelved in the Sci Fi section I am also not, mostly, going to talk about why this is such a great mystery novel.

This may be disappointing to Jasper Fforde, but I'm not sure about how the rest of you will feel. But, oh man, the things I could tell you!

But won't.

No.

Because I am going to talk about this puny, great, three word title instead. The Fourth Bear.

Mystery novels are not bad at titles, except when they are bad at titles, at which point they are the worst of all genres at titles. Gimmicks like numbers, letters, puns, and repeated word schemes in detective novel series are not necessarily bad, but tend to lock themselves into a system of diminishing returns, and before you know it your mystery novel is struggling to make a crime pun out chocolate cake for the third time or you're forced to work the number 22 or the letter "X" into your title and have it be vaguely related to your actual book. On the other end of this scale are the scads of terse, tough titles that are also mostly fine, but, whether I like the book or not, fairly interchangeable.

Most of my favorite mystery titles lean towards a simple, evocative elegance. The Big Sleep is a beautiful, tone setting title. I'm also fond of Tony Hillerman, well, his books, but some of the later titles too. Coyote Waits in particular is quite nice. But oh, The Fourth Bear is most wonderful of all to me. It starts off by placing it in all those pun based, theme books contexts, but is more allusive, complex, witty and referential. It's no cheap pun, but a clear, direct reference to the Goldilocks story, fairy tales, nursery rhymes, but all hitting the edge of it from the perspective of dark mystery, overcoats, hard boiled street corners, clues, police procedurals, mystery. Neither is stated directly but, as we stand close to each, a noir mystery and a fairytale, we see them dovetail with lovely, perfect matching, and simple grace. "Aha!" we say. "They belonged together all along!" But we're in on the joke too, and take our pleasure in getting it.

And that, marvelously, is how the whole book is too. 

You can't always trust a librarian's recommendation

I don't think of it as very much my nature to accord too much respect to others. I am by nature, wounds, experience, or some combination of the three, prone to a sometimes overly rich skepticism. At the ends of the fiction and genre fiction shelves, on what are called the end caps, are places to put featured books from our collection. I felt I was observing some of this skepticism by assuming whoever was in charge of putting those recommended books out there wasn't doing that good of a job, and that I should feel free to put an occasional book I love onto an open end cap space. Still, I never have replaced books out on the end caps. I always assumed they were there for a chosen reason, even if they sometimes seemed a bit random and not to my taste. And I always had a slight twinge of feeling like "Is this okay my putting my own choices out here? I don't want to mess anything up." Just a slight twinge.

Yesterday I was shelving in Science Fiction and the person either wholly or largely responsible for filling the end caps came back to show a patron something. The patron satisfied (hopefully), this librarian headed back to the desk, but on the way she randomly grabbed a book, without breaking stride, and placed it in an open end cap.

I was amazed. 

I am too innocent again. 

Here, I'll go find it.

Lawless Land
by Les Savage, Jr.

It's a western, in hardcover so a bit anomalous for the predominantly paperback western genre, not horribly greasy or worn. Sure, no one here at the Library has read it, but we at the Library thought you might especially like this one.

On the other hand there's this nice newish copy of The Eyre Affair that's just slightly more ideally sized for the spot...