Customer feedback from back when clerkmanifesto was hilarious

 

Feeling that I can't in good conscience show you Dr. Seuss style pictures of flowers yet again, but also as yet unable to do anything other than take more pictures and convert them obsessively, I thought it might be a good idea to dig into the vast clerkmanifesto archives.

I quickly found something! It is a laugh a minute riot from another era.

You're going to love this. And it has no pictures of flowers whatsoever!

It's from eight years ago which weirdly seems not that long ago and yet insanely long ago. You know how time is, as you're held in its maniacal thrall just like me.

I've lightly edited this post as it was so close to perfection I could taste it.

Now it is almost as close to perfection as it was before I edited it. Enjoy!

It is time for our annual customer feedback review. If you would be so kind as to fill out this year's Customer Feedback Survey Form we can immediately begin to make the changes to this blog that you have been longing for. Unless you think this blog is already perfect, in which case we won't have to do anything. Which would be nice, because we're really very, very tired.

So tired...

Deeply tired...

Anyway, please do fill out our form:

Clerkmanifesto Customer Feedback Survey, 2026

My number one concern with clerkmanifesto is

A. None. I think it's perfect! Or like, perfect 30 percent of the time.

B. I'm concerned with how tired you are.

C. Ho boy, concern. Plenty of concerns! Pull up a chair. But I mean it in a good way.

D. There must be some mistake. I'm supposed to be here doing the Taco Bell Customer Survey.

E. The narrow and highly particular range of options on your multiple choice surveys.

I read clerkmanifesto

A. Yes.

B. Er, will I still receive a coupon for one of Taco Bell's delicious chimichilangalaquas?

C. EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY!!!!!

D. Answer "C" is making me uncomfortable.

E. Sorry I'm late. Has the survey started yet?

My favorite part of clerkmanifesto is

A. When you pretend you're joking.

B. "Favorite" is a very strong word in this context.

C. Its profound obscurity.

D. Is this clerkmanifesto? It's kind of cute. Do you have any flower pictures?

E. I'd really rather not be pinned down to a single letter choice answer. Oh, foiled again!

My least favorite part of clerkmanifesto is

A.When the hilarity dies down and I am left sadly and wistfully looking at my computer wondering painfully what it's all about.

B. The free kittens. But not so much the crippled ones. I know that doesn't speak well of me but I must answer honestly.

C. When it awkwardly inserts mentions of its corporate sponsor Taco Bell.

D. When it starts going on about how great it is, even if it totally is great, maybe the most amazing thing ever written for the Internet, a work of towering genius and a shining light in a dark world. It is a masterpiece of beauty, vision, and wisdom, and a gift, truly a gift to humanity like no other. I am ever humbled and inspired by it.

E. Yeah. Same as "D" for me. Or maybe "A", although I thought about "B" too for awhile. What was "E" again?

In conclusion I just really want you to know that

A. A customer feedback survey that is functionally impossible to fill out or submit is hardly likely to be a great font of improvement for your little blog.

B. You are undercharging for clerkmanifesto the blog, but overcharging for your wonderful (but expensive) Clerkmanifesto Tea Cosy.

C. Answer "A" is not a nice person, in case you wondered.

D. Your failure to institute any of my suggestions from your last eleven customer feedback surveys only makes me more optimistic that this one is finally gonna be it!

E. All my favorite answers were "E" up until the last one when, oh, curses! Foiled again!

On the problems of developing technology

 

I suppose this sounds like you're in for a real treatise.

You're not in for a real treatise.

Today is just the usual nonsense. But I do want to talk about "the problems" a little. Over the many years of clerkmanifesto since I started playing with video and photography experimentation, I have noticed a couple of things:

1. The really experimental images and technology heavy work I have made is the work that ages the least well of anything out in the history of clerkmanifesto.

2. It's also the thing that I get most obsessed with, so there's plenty of it!

I hope you don't mind. 

I don't mind.

I mean, I don't mind if you don't mind.

But when I can do something entirely "new" in these realms I get very excited about it. 

But also every few months to a year there's usually a new iteration where I can do the exact same thing so much better. So I get excited about it all over again.

These Dr. Seuss pictures I've been showing are a good case in point. I've been taking certain of my images, sometimes because its the best way to make them work, and sometimes because I've become so enchanted with the resuts, and turning them into Dr. Seuss inspired style versions of themselves for probably a few years now. 

Here, this picture is already from awhile ago. Take a look at me with my Seuss Camera from the woods of Minnesota:

Of course, that is already the Seussified version that I showed here a couple years ago. Here's the original never shown photo of me taken with a regular camera:

As you know lately I have been seussifying some recent flower pictures because it turned out to be the best way to make them come alive and have the charm I saw in the flowers to begin with. I had used this technique before, and was happy with it. But this time around the ai image editors I employed had gone through a couple of notable generational improvements since my last experiments. My prompting and my own editing had also gotten better.

So I was a bit dazzled.

In short I had to now go back and look at how all the right kinds of pictures from my history would look through this amazing new lens!

So, I have a lot of pictures from the past few days.

Here are just a few random ones to start you off with. Hopefully we won't find these delightful wonders too painful when we stumble back upon them in 2029 or whenever:

Wait, there should have been a celebration!

 

I long ago stopped tracking how many posts I have written for clerkmanifesto. But in looking around in clerkmanifesto's backstage area, thinking I had an old tennis raquet somewhere, I saw the tab for "Published" posts.

Yes, I have unpublished posts.

We'll leave those to my estate to sort out in the (hopefully) far distant future.

Anyway it turns out my "Published" posts now number 5,026.

I have done this now 5,026 times!

Well, not exactly this, sometimes I use different words.

And I used to talk about shelving more.

But enough about me, let's discuss you!

You have now read 5,026 clerkmanifesto posts!

That is

What?

You haven't read all of them?

OH MY GOD. You are going to be so busy tonight! And I'll let you in on a secret in helping you to get all caught up:

I won't say which, but...

There's one of them that's really really good.

New uses for the history of clerkmanifesto

 

As I may have just barely peeped around the corner of improvement for what is possibly the most intense cough I have ever had, it occurred to me that it might be nice to take care of clerkmanifesto in a way that was gentle on my energy levels.

It takes a lot of energy to cough so desperately and frequently!

And wanting to tell you all about my cough it occurred to me after 13 years of writing clerkmanifesto, and possibly as many as 20 or 30 miserable coughs, I may have shared some of my feelings on this subject in that glorious and exhaustive past.

I have.

I have written about my coughs several times, and I found one post that I felt does justice to what seems to be going on with my coughing right now. 

I think its just the sort of thing to read about on a lazy Sunday afternoon while at least some of us are coughing our lungs out, though we may just barely be starting to improve. 

And so here it is again:

From 2018:

Unlike in yesterday's missive, I will not be ceaselessly interrupting my comments here to cough. Well, I will be, but I won't be narrating it.

But let us take a moment now to reflect on The Cough. What a clever little piece of engineering it really is. One has this whole, essential, air system, with the lungs at the core. And they are really exposed to quite a bit, I mean, they are exposed to pretty much anything in the world. So there's this mucus stuff to protect the system. And if something nasty gets into it, or some virus invades, the mucus goes into overtime and throws itself mercilessly over everything, rendering it mute and neutral. But now one has to bundle this huge amount of cleverly used mucus out of the lungs and trachea and pipes and all that. How is one supposed to get rid of this stuff?


That is what The Cough is a solution to. Get a breathful of air. Compress it in one's lungs, and then blow it out one's throat in an explosion that blasts out the used up mucus into the mouth where it can be properly discarded. 

So the solution to getting stuff out of the lungs? An explosion made of the air that's just sitting there anyway. It's brilliant.

Unfortunately it is pure misery for everyone involved in the process. One could easily use this to prove that the universe is fantastically clever, but cold to the point of sociopathology. But I prefer to picture someone so wildly carried away with a piece of fantastic design that they forgot it was going to be used on real subjects. Although it might all be the same thing. There is no god, really, it's just one great big Mad Scientist.

We come up to date

 

In a fit of precaution, I have prepopulated clerkmanifesto for 12 days ahead of our departure to Montpellier. These last few have employed finding, if not gems from the past, then at least compelling baubles, hopefully. I have written the introductions to these old posts before finding the posts, but I hope to be dazzled by my younger self.

Sometimes I am, and sometimes I am not.

Anyway, with today's post we come back up to date and tomorrow we meet, presumably, my time traveling self, who has now spent some time in Montpellier. Though knowing myself as I do, whether he will have any interest in discussing Montpellier is an open question.

Here then is a final (hopefully) curated visit to clerkmanifesto's past:

One liners

I found a collection of one-liners that struck me as so amusing that I jotted them down on one of the hundreds of scraps of paper I carry in my jean pockets. Then, as there wasn't much else to do with them, I shared them out with various of my co-workers and with an occasional lucky library patron as well.

I started with:

A friend told me I've been acting too much like a flamingo, so I put my foot down.

I like that one even if somehow it's not quite perfect, and I keep wanting to try and edit it. People laughed though.

 No one got this one, and maybe you or I wouldn't either if we were hearing it instead of reading it:

I, for one, like roman numerals.

but either way it's frightfully clever. 

I was also fond of:

Dark humor is like food, not everyone gets it.

which just goes deeper as you think of it.

But there was one of these one-liners that I'd written down and just kind of held onto. There was something a touch uncomfortable about it, and I didn't want to say it. But maybe because of that I ended up having to try it out to see how it felt:

People say I'm condescending, (leaning in) that means I talk down to people.

Perhaps it was just a tiny bit too close to home. One doesn't want people to think 

"Yeah, I can see that." 



Ah well...


They all laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian;  Well they're not laughing now!

Ocean diving

 

As our mysterious neighbors repeatedly slam some door over and over again for some reasons we simply can't fathom, I withdraw from the mortal world of France, accounts of our resettling, and exotic stories of apartment living to disappear into the history of Clerkmanifesto.

As I have mentioned over the last days, to cover time away from a computer and the possibility of a much extended sojourn to Montpellier and god knows where else, I am pulling up a few historic posts so you can get another look at them. It's like I am diving into the depths of the ocean searching for pearls or lost treasures on the sea floor.

If I don't come up, haul me in by my breathing tube.

Here you go, ten years old and not only does it still apply, but perhaps now more literally as well:

This is called

"The Conundrum"

Sometimes I wander the Internet. I don't know what I'm looking for there. Do you? Well, you. Look who I'm asking this of. You have found it. But I am out there looking for my own clerkmanifesto. Maybe that's what you'll be exiled to do as well, as soon as this one is over for the day.

Amid the festive desolation of this vast Internet I kick the tires and poke around in the weeds. How can something so large be so small? At its best I listen to the music of famous and talented people. At its worst I sink down to the comment sections of machine stamped articles where only the names have been changed. And there my heart is taken from me. My blood is stirred. And wild, angry responses to the careless and misguided comment of strangers flood into my mind.

I roll up my sleeves. I sharpen my pen. And only at the last minute, I remember:

These aren't people. This is the Internet.

Another nibble at history

 

As mentioned yesterday, I am taking a wander through the history of clerkmanifesto, just a random stroll, to bring back up something we might like. In a few days we'll be back up to date with posting here in France, and I am most likely already back home in the Belle Epoque City. But to be safe, as I'll have no computer on my trip, I bring you this chosen relic which I must have liked enough to write and publish at one point, and hopefully also liked so much that I thought you would want to see it again, if you have ever even seen it at all.

Wait here and I'll see what I can find...

Ha, I went to 2018 and this one was the very first one I looked at! How could I resist:

Wolves Return to France

It's a good news/bad news situation as viable wolf populations have returned to France. 

The European Gray Wolf went extinct in France in the thirties, but in the early nineties a pair of Italian wolves crossed the Alps into France. Now there are over 500 wolves in France and they are considered to be "Demographically viable", which means, and I'm just winging it here, they are viable in a demographic way.

The really great thing about this is that there are way too many rabbits in France and everyone is hoping the wolves will eat up some of the rabbits. Also looking like winners in this ecological triumph are the sellers and manufacturers of Grandmotherly disguises, who will be expecting increased business for their line in small, outlying villages.  Of course, the sheep herders of France are not happy about the situation and have even brought their sheep to Paris to express their dismay. 

However, it is not the sheep herders who need to be kept happy...

it's the woodcutters.

Looking for wheat among chaff

Occasionally, when I am looking to keep clerkmanifesto going when I am not available to regularly work on it, and I am prestocking it heavily with posts, I look to my history. With thousands of posts to draw from it is nice to bring out something long forgotten and give it one more chance in the light. I don't honestly know if there are any readers besides me who on occasion drift back to some long past clerkmanifesto era and read through a couple weeks or months of little essays or pictures like they're eating peanuts. But if there are out there among you (or even you yourself!) people who do this, it still seems unlikely we will both be covering the same ground on so sprawling a historical record as is Clerkmanifesto, and no one is likely to be rolling their eyes having just read one of these reposts chosen from the thousands.

My motif when doing this historic posting lately is to be random, often pulling unseen an anniversary post that evenly matches the day of posting, but I have had a change of heart. Why not read back until I find something that speaks to me? Why not look for something I'd specifically like to show you again?

So for the next three days, until I know I will safely be back to post again (as far as anyone can know such a thing!), I will go wandering into clerkmanifesto history, among the vast library days, and find something I like.

And then I'll bring it here and see if I can get it to fly a little farther.

 

Green Chartreuse vs. St Germain

 

"Hey?" You ask. "I have been closely following clerkmanifesto's journey to France. And I've put up with stories about Japan. I've endured complicated, deceptive, and curious photography. I've worked my way through exhausting tales of urban design, making a life in another country, and endless discussions of cheese and baguettes. And I have done this because I felt at some point, eventually, you surely must discuss the liqueur situation!"

"It has been excruciating!" You exclaim. "But surely my pet subject will arrive. Won't it?" You ask in agony and desperation.

Yes.

It has arrived.

Today we will discuss the two giants of French Liqueurs: Green Chartreuse and St Germain.

There are other French Liqueurs. And if you continue to look at my new paintings, read about my hate of the medieval village of Eze and how it's emblematic of everything wrong with modern France, endure the opening of gelato season here, and suffer the agonies of reading about why the stroad running along the Promenade Des Anglais is an actual affront to God, I will eventually get to more stories of French Liqueurs.

I am thinking of going all in on the French Liqueurs.

And the astonishing two navigational directions of French Liqueurs are Green Chartreuse and St Germain.

I adore Green Chartreuse. It is an elixir, a toxic confection of life, a mystery made by monks for three hundred years. From a secret recipe, using hundreds of herbs, they have created the masterpiece of liqueuers.

Do you know what Green Chartreuse tastes like? It's lingering at the edge of my throat now. But I can no more tell you the taste than you could describe the secret fourth primary color. 

So I hope you've tried it. 

It's very strong. Take a small sip.

Several years ago the monks who make Green Chartreuse announced that they were going to kind of chill out on the chartreuse. They didn't want to make more and more chartreuse and be a chartreuse global powerhouse. They wanted to be monks who made some chartreuse on the side.

Good for them.

I guess. What do I know?

But that was around the time where one stopped being able to pop into a liquor store and buy a bottle of Green Chartreuse for $55. It just wasn't available anymore.

And then we moved to France. And suddenly, many places had it for sale! That makes sense. It's French. We're in France. This is the kind of sensibility I enjoy! It still has an appealingly uneven distribution and the price varies from maybe 55 euros, if you are very lucky, clear up to 85 euros and more.

I have a bottle.

It tastes worth it.

Come on by.

On the other hand we have St Germain. This is a gorgeous liqueur. It tastes of elderflowers picked in the mountains. It is simpler and lighter and very beautiful. It comes in a graceful, heavy art nouveau bottle. It looks like a classic drink that must have been around for a hundred years, but it is astonishingly less that twenty years old! It's impact was so great on the nascent world cocktail culture reemergence that it became known as "Bartenders' Ketchup" because it is so handy and good and goes so well with so many kinds of mixed drinks. Though I love the Aperol Spritz, a classic, the best spritz to me is the Hugo Spritz, made with St Germain, Prosecco, sparkling water, and mint, if you've got it. Sadly, St Germain was sold to an evil greedy giant Liquor corporation who ran the price up as much as they could and positioned it as a "Global Luxury" brand.

When I came here to France I thought excitedly: "Oh, how exciting! I'll be able to get nice cheap St Germain." Ha. Ha!!! When I saw that somehow it cost as much a 40 euros a bottle I researched the situation and learned all of this.

And I tried to hate St Germain.

Alas, I failed.

The two key liqueurs of France, one pure and noble, magnificent and spiritual. One corrupted and...

delicious.

And there you are.

Seven years ago...

 

Every once in awhile I like to see what we were up to at clerkmanifesto on this day some years ago. I haven't done this for awhile, perhaps because there is a lot going on in keeping up with my adventures of living in France. But that very thing is what has made me wonder today, when everything is not so brilliantly new here, but still feels like a strange dream, what was it like on a clerkmanifesto of seven years ago.

That doesn't mean I'll find anything useful. This is a grab bag moment. My choice is random. It even makes me a bit nervous. When I pull up the clerkmanifesto post for March 17, 2019 we could find absolutely anything!

And then we'll have to read it!

All of the sudden I understand the sheer terror of opening up clerkmanifesto to see what's there: it could be a lot of fun or, 

it could be A DEVASTATING ASSASSINATION OF OUR MOST CHERISHED INSTITUTIONS!

It might also be boring.

You never know.

March 17, 2019 (if you read this already, don't worry, you will have forgotten it)

"The Great Pothole"

You peoples out in the weather gentle states might not know so much about potholes. But out here in Minnesota, especially as the Spring comes, and the frozen ground opens up, we get real potholes, legendary potholes, potholes that nearly made the great buffalo herds go extinct. Let me put it this way: We are known as the land of 10,000 lakes, but they're not lakes really, they're just really big potholes. We got one pothole up here that is 1,332 feet deep and 350 miles across. You hit that sucker and guaranteed you will crack your axle in two.

One of the worst problems with these early Spring potholes is that there is so much water everywhere from the melting snow and frequent rains that half the time one can't see the potholes to avoid them. The road is a shallow river and one drives blindly on the tar road until, BAM! you nosedive into a crater that'll either crack your jaw with the impact or leave you to struggle to undo your seat belt in time to allow you to swim for the surface. 

Out on the river road we've memorized all the really bad invisible potholes, but there's one that's worse than any of the others. My wife and I have both hit it once and it's not something we'll easily forget. I'm surprised our car is still intact. It's not terribly wide, but it's deep, deeper than one would even think possible.

The other day I was out walking and slipping and splashing, as I do, along the river, and I was thinking about this deep pothole. I thought I might like to have a look at it seeing as I was so nearby. I thought I might like to see just how deep it went. So I waited till the road was all clear of cars, and I carefully found my way to the edge of it. A few clear, slightly colder days had cleared some of the waters and I had an unobstructed view into this epically deep hole in the road. I peered down.

It was dark in there.

I peered down and down and down and down.

It was a deep pothole!

I searched for the bottom. I dropped in a pebble that never made any sound. I looked and looked for some sign of the floor. And then, at the very end, way down below, I finally saw something that blew my mind:


Stars.

Old city

 

It's not that old.

The "old city" of my city, where most days we seem to wander aimlessly into, is only about 2,500 years old.

Oh, wait, I guess that is kind of old. 

But the main things one can see walking through are more in the 1500 to 1700's territory. Which I guess is sort of old too. 

Oh I like it! Kind of scrubs off the sharp edges, you know?

From where the tram line runs you go down into the old city, which feels right, a descent, darker and cooler and older. 

This is my favorite "porte" into the city then, and I am sure I have shown a few pictures of it before. But here is one taking my drawing layers to somewhere near its extreme expression:

Postcard at the library

 

In 2022 I sent a postcard from this city to the library I worked at. It was a vintage image of a surrealistic scene of The Reserve, which is a restaurant and an outcropping of rock just past the port area of this city. In the old black and white photograph there was an old sailboat perched on this table of rock in the ocean, with a little bridge to it. It was very much a real scene. Now, and when I sent the postcard, the boat is gone and it is only a fancy restaurant with a fantastical setting floating on an island of rock. 

After my trip someone taped the postcard to the computer area we use when we're in charge of the automated check in machine.

The postcard was still taped up there when I left the library after 31 years working there.

I don't know how many of the traces of me have been removed from that library, or have faded away. I don't know if someone bothered to toss a four year old postcard away yet.

I looked at that postcard a lot, working on the machine late at night. Now I live here and sometimes we walk by the place from that image. I've taken quite a few photographs of it and here is one, in my current style. This was taken from a similar, hopefully almost identical vantage point that the postcard picture was taken from, with maybe a hundred years between them.

The bridge that was

 

If you will be so kind as to consult yesterday's post, I lightly explored the bridges (or lack thereof) in my city. In so doing I came across a very old photo of the river, the Paillon, that once ran down through the center of my city and is now completely covered over by a long park. I happen to have some recent images of my own of the Promenade du Paillon where, in a clear reference to the water below, a shallow fountain extends widely across a section of this park just outside of the vieux vielle:

But what about that original image of all the washer women by the river? 

That is the raison d'etre of today's post! Back in the 1800's it was a river without much water. But I guess there was enough for women to wash clothes in it. It was also prone to flash floods from the water coming out of the hills rather suddenly in storms.

I have remained (relatively) faithful to my historical source image while giving it a great deal of layers and textures in the way I have been working lately. And so as I showed two pictures yesterday of a contemporarily used bridge here rendered in this style, I have today one of this more appealing bridge from a little further back in time, in similar guise, that is no longer with us:

Yearbook photos

 

I have been working on these yearbook pages and they go just as I planned, until I look more closely and realise that there are just a few small problems that I can't seem to fix. So while I have nine or ten of these, full of interesting details, there's always some weak point that leaves me unsatisfied.

So I give up.

But I do kind of like this one Minnesota homage:

sixty-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:

Here you go: a reprint of a post not that much more than a year old that caught my eye because it is about problems replacing staff at my (former!) library. This situation was still going on when I retired, and (I'll admit, to my pleasure) they are not even bothering to pretend to replace me.

Though if they did it would be quite a process...

This Spring's half day In Service Day came and went without my attendance. But the one thing that everyone was super excited to tell me about is the moment when the county's human resources department explained to everyone about the the county's 36 step hiring process.

Over the past years my library has been shedding workers like fur from an old sheepdog. Replacements are ever promised, yet never arrive. Finally, an explanation!

A 36 step hiring process. This, the County thought, would surely explain it to us all!

That was the highlight of the day.

I think it was the combination of the ridiculous, the hilarious, and the quietly insane that people found so appealing. Many people told me about how a hilarious comedy show sketch could be made out of it. I disagree. It would make a terrible comedy show sketch. I don't think any of these people have ever tried to write a comedy sketch! This story barely even makes a decent blog post, though I will continue to apply every one of my formidable skills in that department to do the best job possible of it.

Even that may not be enough.

What it really requires is a freakishly talented Jewish Czechoslovakian writer to bring it properly to life, and even they'd probably need a full novel to do it. 

It would be a funny novel occasionally, but that probably wouldn't be its most salient feature.

By the end of the novel I don't think anyone would actually be hired.

Just like in real life.

fifty-five

 

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:

These should mostly finish off my revamping of old paintings of mine (very old!) that I found when I cleared out the library just before retirement. These have all been cleaned up a bit with an AI pass, varying from anywhere from two to four on a scale of ten in AI alteration. I think these are the last of my dug out old photos, though I can't promise that, and animated versions of any of these could still show up in the future. These being the (probably?) last of these watercolors it would go without saying that I like some better than others. But I said it anyway.

 This is Clerk Manifesto in Kyoto.

The other day I said that I miss nothing, but I suppose some things start to creep in around the edges. In Kyoto, coffee is apparently deeply revered, but more in the form of classic drip or filtered coffee, rather than the Italian drinks I so adore. So I guess I could say this is the longest I’ve gone in many years without what I would describe as a real cappuccino. I’ve seen a few pictures of them around town, but I haven’t managed to find one entirely matching the picture yet.

The regular coffee is very good,sometimes amazingly good, but I’m not sure that’s entirely my thing. In fact, the all the coffee ties into my whole conception of Japan as a kind of 1950s or 1970s version of where I come from, seen, of course, through a completely foreign filter. It’s like America as I imagine it in the ’50s, and in some ways as I remember it in the ’70s outside the suburbs, full of mass transit, coffee drinking, lively downtown cities, and a much more contained, orderly, polite, and well-dressed public.

One thing that particularly gets to me in this vein is how everything here feels like a diner. It’s very much a diner culture. Even the coffee shops and restaurants have this quality, places that function like sit-down diners, not designed to be luxurious or especially comfortable, but built for practicality. And yet the food is always really good, or almost always. Though the extreme peculiarities of how I eat here is a subject for another day.

And that’s today’s report from Kyoto.