Walking to Work, Some Notes from a Morning Walk on the Mississippi

Approximately once a week I walk part way to work, mostly along the Mississippi River. I am reluctant to be more specific about my route, situation, and schedule as I'd rather not alert the geese any more than is necessary. The geese make me a little nervous when they group up on the path and though it might seem over-cautious to you, I wouldn't put anything past these surprisingly large birds, including their monitoring of my blog. Although, if they are monitoring my blog, well, I can really use the readers, regardless of motives, so... Hi geese, thanks for coming, check back here often for updates on my river walking schedule!

Anyway, as I walk along the river, naturally, like anyone, my head fills with possible blog posts and indeed everything I see becomes something to blog about. In that spirit, and with a need to discharge all this excess blogging energy, I present to you "Some Notes from a Morning Walk on the Mississippi" which I would almost certainly expand into a book if either a publisher asked or I had more than 5 remarkably skimpy ideas of material scrawled briefly and illegibly in a notebook.

1. How to spot a bald eagle along the Mississippi River.

Walk with your head down composing blog posts until you see a small group of people gathered at the edge of the path looking up into the trees. Look where they're looking and pointing their large telephoto lens cameras. It is always a bald eagle.

2. Graffiti Update.
If you go here you can see my only slightly tongue and cheek review of the "Hangman" graffiti piece on the river. That artwork is now completely painted over, which is okay because though it was clever, it was also, to be blunt, ugly. Fortunately there's loads of pretty graffiti pieces now located mainly under the Franklin Ave. and Hwy. 94 bridges, including what I think is possibly a new piece, the inter-related "World" (?, hard to see) and "Naive". Near these complex and coloristically interesting pieces (I love that sort of ocher in "Naive" with its rich olive green overlay) are a couple of small simple pieces called "Statistically gaining knowledge" which presents both readable and unreadable elegant calligraphy line work.

3. A Rule for Mixed Sports Exercising on the River.

Based on my observation I strongly advise against going jogging with someone who is biking, unless you are super fit.

4. Major River Road construction project process.

From Franklin Avenue, past the gang of geese (Hi geese!), all the way to where I turn off toward Ted Mann Concert Hall, they are pulverizing the road down to its dirt bed. I would think I would hate this for being noisy and interruptive, but, no! It turns out I am very enthusiastic about this project. For one thing it means there are no cars whizzing by on River Road, and while River Road is not normally trafficy there are always cars whizzing by and I wish they'd cut it out, which, temporarily, they have. For another thing, the whole project seems to tap into my inner, primal 5 year old, and I find all the machine work very compelling, like dinosaurs and firemen. A big, super powerful, munching machine drives slowly, slowly along, steadily eating up a 5 to 10 foot wide swath of road and then spitting it out way at the top into a big dump truck that drives along in time by the muncher's side. It doesn't take very long to fill a whole dump truck so they have 10 or more of them going in a giant loop. The dump truck fills, drives forward and away, goes to dump somewhere, and comes back from the rear to get in line again. It just works for me.

5. An amateur birder's list of birds that I mostly don't know the name of but definitely saw.

a. Bald Eagle (yes, yes, follow the telephoto lens!)
b. Geese (Hi geese!)
c. Little yellow headed birds with more yellow at the top of their tail you can only see when they open their wings.
d. A woodpecker that I thought was a duck at first when it came in to land on the side of a tree. It made a lot more sense when I realized it was a woodpecker since ducks rarely hang out on the sides of trees.
e. A huge, gigantic owl! (not really, I just thought this might make the geese a bit more, I don't know, cautious, or humble). 

Wild Sounds of the Library

My public library produces a collection of some of the widest range of voices outside of an opera house, or, no, maybe an opera house located in the middle of a poorly run zoo. I'm not saying it's noisy, just that it's all over the map. Sometimes a visitor will come to me and whisper softly and I will think "You are now in the idea of a library. In this actual library I could not possibly hear you amongst all this sheer animal screeching." And yet other times that same soft whisper will seem ostentatiously loud, carrying unobstructed to the farthest reaches of the library. To further demonstrate I here provide a little random tour of some of the voices and types of voices and human sounds to be found in my library.

1. Weird low level droning somewhere between humming and singing, soft, but with a peculiar indiscernible reach, usually produced by people alone in the stacks. Comes in uninterrupted hour long chunks.

2. Peaceful, murmurous talking of two friends. They have usually run into each other in happy accident and there is a faint note of guilt in their voices from their feeling they shouldn't exactly be having a conversation here, but they are too happy about the whole thing to come up with an alternate solution. As a side note this often blocks half of the staircase.

3. Cell Phone Voice. Like a loud version of number 1. You may be well aware that people on cell phones often talk very loudly about very uninteresting things, but you might not know that people who talk on cell phones in the library refuse, for some reason, to let the person on the other end of the line talk. Once, many years ago, we had a troubled patron who used the public phone we had then, to have long, ostentatious, delusional, fake conversations with her imaginary boyfriend. All cell phone callers are sort of like her.

4. The rich array of animal sounds. No, we don't have many animals in here. Guide dogs, ants, mice occasionally. We used to have a hamster. There's a dog that comes in for children to read to once or twice a week even though science is fairly sure dogs don't much understand storytelling. None of these animals make much noise. It is the people who make so many animal noises that you could have a fun Saturday afternoon here tracking them with a list, kind of like going birding. Children produce the sounds of any number of actual birds, mostly raptors, and their high strange call-like screeches can be heard anywhere in the library. Chimps at play is also generally loud and produced by children, sometimes during distress, sometimes joy. Snorers can do the big cats, and some of our volunteers specialize in the ungulates. You will often hear them hunting requests out in genre fiction. The small noises of squirrels and gophers can be heard over by the DVDs by people making little sucking noises with their teeth and mouths as they industriously browse. We clerks, when gathered, are surprisingly duck-like at a 12 pace distance. The bathrooms, which I mainly try to avoid, are rich with aquatic sounds, primarily fish, but, occasionally, alarmingly, dolphins and seals. Also you can hear the chuffs of bears coming from the stalls there as great effort is engaged in. Though those bear noises sometimes also abruptly punctuate the usually quiet internet computer areas. I have never understood the source for those.

That is hardly a complete list, but I feel it is more than adequate to illustrate my point. It makes me feel self-consciously deranged for having this whole discussion and yet also strangely compelled to get a long list of animals and on some noisy afternoon see how many I can check off. I'll try to resist this, but it's going to be touch and go.

Story From the Front Desk

My colleague was helping someone at the front desk. The person wanted his fines partially waived because our automated check in machine jammed in the after hours. Agreeing to waive said fines my co-worker helpfully informed the man that if the automated return shuts down he can use the giant mailbox-like return as a back up.

"I tried to use that" the man said. "It was locked."

Whoa, I unlocked that bin myself. So I irresistibly entered the conversation. "I unlocked that bin myself." I said with immense gentleness and grace, er, or I said it curiously, or defensively or playfully or something.

"No, it was definitely locked." the man said "I pushed and pushed, but I couldn't get it open."

I love it when the solutions are this simple. 

"You have to pull."

My First Contest!

Hi, it's me, your blogger, and I'm piping up here to say that there is a little contest now live with a post maybe one or two below this one, depending on when I post this, it's the one about comparing something in my blog to Flowers For Algernon. It has to do with how it has all kinds of clickable links in the text. You can just read the post below too, the contest kind of lurks in the background, and so is more accidental or extra. It's not a puzzle exactly, just a sort of reward for thoroughness.

And with that I leave you the lyrics to this song, which doesn't have much to do with the contest, only with my quest to become the greatest library blog ever. I saw this musical at the Pantages theater I think, in Los Angeles somewhere rather a long time ago. It was actually only an okay production, I liked the book better. Still...


The Impossible Dream from the Musical "Man of La Mancha"
Lyrics by Joe Darion

To dream ... the impossible dream ...
To fight ... the unbeatable foe ...
To bear ... with unbearable sorrow ...
To run ... where the brave dare not go ...
To right ... the unrightable wrong ...
To love ... pure and chaste from afar ...
To try ... when your arms are too weary ...
To reach ... the unreachable star ...
This is my quest, to follow that star ...
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far ...
To fight for the right, without question or pause ...
To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause ...
And I know if I'll only be true, to this glorious quest,
That my heart will lie will lie peaceful and calm,
when I'm laid to my rest ...
And the world will be better for this:
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach ... the unreachable star ...

Secret Sauce

"What is that secret something in your blog that makes it so special?" people don't ask me, because my readers are very special people who like quietness and reflection. But I'll tell you the answer. The key to whatever success of clarity and articulation my blog achieves comes down to rehearsal. No, I do not have a practice blog somewhere else. I rehearse before a live audience, like the Marx Brothers. Did you know that during the heart of the Marx Brothers' movie career, before filming, they would take their prospective movie on the road and perform it live, test it, tweak it, change it, try things out. Then they'd come back and make the movie? They did, and their movies are very funny. And so I start thinking of something I might blog about and I take it on the road too. However my scope is a bit smaller, and instead of touring, say, the Rocky Mountain States, I tour the library. In the break room: "Have you ever read The Long Walk, I know it's kind of terrible, but this retirement makes me think of it." At the phones: "I have a theory about twitter." Over by the filled bins: "So this guy comes up to E. and wants part of his fines waived..." (oops, no link because I don't think I've written this yet, but I have told the story five times in preparation!). I try out my phrasing. I see what parts might be engaging. I add more parts or maybe my co-worker says something that leads to a different take on it all and I tell it again. Then, when I can, I write it all up.

Do my co-workers ask me "Hey, what's with all these odd little stories, absurdist humor, clerk philosophy discussions all of a sudden?" No, they don't. Is it because they are special people who like quietness and reflection? No, it is because even though my blog is actually less than a month and a half old, I have been rehearsing blog posts for my entire career at the library. I just never knew til now that I was supposed to write it up and put it on the web.

It's like finding home.

More peculiar comparing aspects of my life to books, now featuring 'Flowers for Algernon' and 'Can I Keep My Jersey'

(Note: this is a super linkable blogpost, just, you know, in case you want to try clicking things in it. Some are what you think, some not, none are dangerous.)



There is a wonderfully done daily cartoon strip called "Unshelved". It is about life in a library. If you work in a library you most likely have heard of it or seen it or read it. If you don't work in a library you probably don't know it, but you could know it because I believe its reach and success is wider than just the world of libraries. One day recently, having one of those occasional marketing feelings about my blog, I wrote to one of the authors of Unshelved, Bill Barnes. I told him how much I liked the strip, thanked him for it, and said he could absolutely ignore the remainder of my email. Then I told him very briefly about clerkmanifesto and suggested if he briefly mentioned it on his website I'd be supremely grateful. A few days later he wrote back a really nice note about writing awkward notes to people when he was starting out, and how he would mention me on twitter. I checked later and he did. It wasn't "Best library blog I ever read, clerkmanifesto.com" but more "Clerk who blogs about libraries, clerkmanifesto.com" which, to me, was plenty nice enough.

Flowers for Algernon, well, I really feel like you know the story, but, to be safe, it's about a mentally disabled man who undergoes an experimental procedure that, for awhile, makes him a genius, but it does not last and he goes back to how he was. Yes, it's a great book. Can I Keep My Jersey, by Paul Shirley, is interesting enough. It's his story of the years when he was almost, or barely good enough to play in the NBA and would get called up from the minors, or come back from European leagues to super short stints as a not very good player, hardly playing at all, in the NBA.

When Bill Barnes of Unshelved mentioned me on twitter the number of views of my blog, over the course of about a day and a half, increased by seven times! It was very nice. I could look at my little graph of page views and there would be this giant spike. Actually, at first it was just a huge increase, but now it's a giant spike because things have, on the whole, returned to normal again. My views went way up. Now they are mostly back to where they always were. 

So then, to trivialize these nice books, I am absurdly saying this Bill Barnes spike event is my blog's equivalent of going for a week to the luxurious and fabulously well paid NBA and then returning to the crappy motels of the CBA (a kind of NBA minor league, now defunct), or, even more ridiculously, like returning from geniusness to being mentally disabled once again. Yeah yeah yeah, I'm doing the whole dry silliness thing here, fine, yes, what we are talking about is tens of views increasing to hundreds of views, with many of even these views being done by bots (yes, actual robots view websites, a story for some other time!). But my joking here is, as usual, on the square, and so I want to say, to Bill Barnes, and to you my faithful readers, even if I have fallen from my brief reign as the 2,147th most popular library blog back down to 4,278 once again, it was worth it. It was all worth it just to glimpse the stars.

My Clerking Career as Stephen King's "The Long Walk"

Someone I have worked with my whole lengthy career here has just retired after 37 years. And the book I keep thinking of in relation to this is The Long Walk by Stephen King. If you have read this book you are maybe thinking this is a pretty macabre book to think of in this situation. If you haven't read The Long Walk I will tell you now all about this book so that perhaps you, too, can think me macabre.

The Long Walk takes place in a vaguely defined dystopian American future (aren't they all?). Every year in this world there is a big national endurance contest/event in which a large group of teen/young adult boys (300 or so?), all of them volunteering, vie to be the single victor who wins wealth and fame. The rules are simple but comprehensive (and I think beautifully conceived and laid out by Stephen King). You walk. There are no breaks, no excuses, you just walk. A minimum speed is enforced. Eating and drinking are done on the fly. I forget exactly how bathroom breaks work out (also on the fly?), but basically, if you lag or stop long enough you get flagged. If you get flagged 3 times within a short enough time frame you are on the spot, summarily, executed, shot in the head actually. Last person walking wins.

Do you begin to see why this is macabre? I am the main character in the story. Clerking for decades is the long walk. Shelving, checking in, registering cards, ordering supplies, helping people, coming in day after day, I am walking, the long walk. Other co-workers are out on this endless walk with me. They are always there, separate but on the same walk. Sometimes I walk with them awhile, sharing life stories, dreams, irritations, small talk, sometimes they drift off ahead or behind awhile, but always I'm aware of them. In some sense, horrible or not, we are always together. And when one of these co-workers moves on, liked or disliked, essential to the happiness of my work life or a constant irritation to me (or, more usually, somewhere in-between), when they quit, when they find some other job, when they move or when they retire, it's just exactly like they've stopped walking, like their blisters started bleeding and became too painful, or they were suffering horrible cramps, or even like it all got to them and they just didn't care anymore and so they sat down in the middle of the road, got flagged 3 times, and then got shot in the head. Over.

And I just keep walking. And they're not there anymore.


That is a seriously dark vision. This reality of my job is not actually, normally that dark. And these disappearing co-workers of mine are not generally dying. Often they're moving on to at least somewhat happier, better situations, occasionally not, but it is very rarely something tragic that is driving and defining their end here. Often, I suppose, they're off on some other long walk, just one that's not my own. And if they visit, come back, say hi, I am delighted to see them. But it's never the same. They don't work here and so they're on free time. They're like bystanders in the long walk, watching the event but uninvested. They may remember what it was like, but things change constantly and all this stuff, tiny social things, work rule change minutiae, only has weight when you're right there. Walking the long walk. They can go catch a movie or go home or plop in a chair and read. I can't. And all these other clerks here are walking too, until they stop, like the visitor did. And the corpse of their clerking is dragged away. But that corpse is already behind me, because I keep walking.

"It was so nice to see you. Come by again." I say if I like them, but that's all the time I have now. I have to get to the front desk, or go shelve these books, or get that phone. I have to keep walking. I have to keep walking and walking and walking.

Not so funny and only barely interesting anecdote that I tell you at risk of being mushy

So I am shelving some large type Romances and an octogenarian down the aisle from me is perusing our very thin collection of Western large type books. I get this feeling he doesn't know about our regular size print, somewhat thicker collection of Westerns. I don't believe in totally unsolicited intrusions, but we catch each others' eye and say "Hey."  This seems to be a bit of an opening.

"Do you only want large type?" I ask "Do you know we have a section of regular Westerns?"

He visibly perks up at this. No, he didn't know about the other section. I offer to show him and he invites me to lead him there.

I have already registered that this man, while seeming well enough, needs to walk very, very slowly. So, in leading him to our richly arrayed row of Westerns I walk as slow as I can possibly walk, which to me is more like standing and moving a bit, but I soon see I am leaving him behind so I slow down. He apologizes for needing to go so slow. I say I really don't mind, that they pay me hourly and so I am making more money this way. He expresses that he can see the truth of that. We arrive at our destination and he is happy with the wall of Westerns. I return to my shelving.

I really truly 96% don't mean for this to be any kind of self-aggrandizing. I just wanted to tell you that this little kind of thing is my very favorite part of my job. I don't know exactly how to say what this "kind of thing" is, except it's this. And it makes me happy. I don't know, maybe only for 5 or 10, or 30 seconds, but it makes me happy.

What's with all these books?

Sometimes, like now, I just can't find anything to read. Or, I can find tons of things to read, everything at the library ends up sort of interesting to me sometimes, everything. I just can't find anything that seems that great once I'm reading it. I am not a "Too many books, too little time!" person. I am more a "Where are all the great books person."  At least I am sometimes. And one of the things that completely confounds me is that I am surrounded by an astonishingly rarefied collection of writing. Millions and millions of people are writing books. It is even a bit of a cliche how difficult it is to get published. So this tiny, unprocessably tiny group of superstars/publishing lottery winners actually makes it into print after other people stake their livelihoods on thinking it is of sufficient merit and conceivable popularity. Of these books the great majority are almost instantly forgotten or lost in the shuffle. But some smaller amount are of enough notoriety and buzz to get reviewed. Some of these books get bad reviews, some pretty good reviews and some, very few, get glowing reviews. These are the books I am constantly running across at the library, stashing away, taking to the break room, carting in mammoth bags to my home, books that get "A"s in every magazine, semi-rare publishers' weekly starred reviews, best books, New York Times Bestsellers, pick of the months etc. I am often amazed at how I'll just completely miss the book when even the angels are singing its praises and am now only finding it 4 years later, when it sits forgotten and rarely checked out on our shelves. Either way, I read the first 5 or 10 or 40 pages. It's pretty good. I put it down. I go on to other things. I find it in my chest of library books many, many weeks later. " I guess I better return it."  I think, without even a touch of remorse.

Is this sour grapes? Is it an argument that our whole grand human ability to make art is overrated? I don't think so. I think some of it is just mood. Lately I keep hearing music I like, but the books aren't working out. Mostly what I'm thinking is that maybe this whole filtering system isn't all its cracked up to be. The hype isn't necessarily wrong, or a lie, it's just that stuff is everywhere, people are wildly different, and the magic of art shows up in crazy places, is ungovernable, combusts in a moment of alchemical magic. It might be under a bridge or long since weeded from most libraries across the country. It might be an ink drawing on a coffee shop bathroom wall. It might be handwritten in a notebook by someone's bed or it might be a group of songs a friend plays for you in your living room. Are these things the greatest things ever? Are they Bernini, Bob Dylan, Jane Austen? Eh, why not, depends on where you are and how you're feeling.

Sort of One of Them Shaggy Dog in Non Fiction Stories

I am very leery of bringing this blog down with too many complaining posts. I am trying to keep that balance of analysis and comedy, folly and wonder, against my deep down clerk predilection for joyless criticism and raw despair. So it is only with great trepidation that I bring this short tale to you from my recent sojourn in the non fiction section.

There I am, merrily shelving along, composing super fun and happy little blog posts in my head when I come across Careers for Perfectionists and Other Meticulous Types by Blythe Camenson YA 331.702 C18C 2007 just strewn onto a shelf in the 500s. This is not a book that was pulled out of the stacks, looked at, and reasonably set down in a near location to its proper order. No, this book is sitting there crookedly, rows away from its Dewey Decimal location. I must set my cart very carefully aside and out of the way in order to head all the way back to the 300s. There, where Careers for Perfectionists and Other Meticulous Types by Blythe Camenson YA 331.702 C18C belongs, two other books sit, out of order! These must be put in order and, really, the whole shelf these are all on is just sloppy. It is not out of order anymore, but books are pushed back and not lined up at all with the front edge of the shelf as they should be. Not only must I fix that, but this shelf is also packed full while the one below it is less than half full! After shifting some of the end books from shelf one to the start of shelf two I can finally head back to the shelving I was working on. Unbelievably though, when I get back to my cart I find that it has been moved! Not a lot, just an inch or two, but I left the perfect amount of passage. There was absolutely no reason to move my cart at all!

I eye a patron down the row who looks extremely suspicious. This maybe causes them to set down the book they are reading, rather furtively I think, and move quickly on. I straighten my cart carefully and head down to collect the book Stop being your symptoms and start being yourself : the 6-week mind-body program to ease your chronic symptoms by Arthur J. Barsky and Emily C. Deans. It's a 600s book! I am telling you, it is too much. Sometimes it is just too much!

Local Arts Review: New Graffiti Under Bridge at End of Greenway by the River

This is a review of the new graffiti work that was done sometime during the last couple of weeks. I call it "Hangman" as it is mainly a large, purple paint depiction of a hangman game. It is located by the river under the Greenway bridge. I don't know how long this installation will be up, but as it is in a street level, highly accessible place, I expect the city should manage to obliterate it pretty soon, so if you're interested you'll want to go see it right away.

What I liked about this piece:

One crucial element that "wild" graffiti (as opposed to "sanctioned" graffiti) has is that it is in conversation with danger. Fundamentally it is the danger of being caught that underlies this kind of artwork. A graffiti piece can express this danger in a variety of ways; the extreme physical peril of it's location, the sense of complexity in a piece and thus the implication that the artist must work extraordinarily fast and still stand exposed for a long time, and finally the extreme exposure of painting art in a highly visible and observed (and obviously illegal) location. Anonymous' (anonymous to me!) piece, the purple "Hangman" is a witty play on these issues. While hidden under a bridge it is still in a very active and accessible location, and the implication that our insouciant artist(s?) sat down (so to speak) to a very public game of hangman implies that they give no thought to capture and prosecution, indeed that they are so calm in their peril that they are even bored. Rather that the elegant or ugly hurrying motif of graffiti, they instead find themselves killing time with a game of hangman.

What I didn't like about this piece:

While "Hangman" is a conceptual success, aesthetically it struggles. The purple paint is a nice bold choice and the artist seems to know how to use a spray can. There is even the suggestion of some worthy stylistic cartooning in the actual hangman himself (the 'guesser' appears to have lost this game) and in a side figure (one that has nothing to do with the hangman game and so somewhat dilutes its conceptual power). Unfortunately the whole piece comes off crooked, a bit scatter-shot, and ugly. This sloppy visual sense only fuels our dismissal of the piece and washes out a lot of its considerable narrative power. This piece need not be beautiful, but it is not served by ugliness, and being so near to some of the best graffiti in the cities only makes its weak sense of visual consciousness and wanting skill stand out more.

Should you go see this piece?:

It's worth a look if it's not gone already, but do so on your way to the more completely realized pieces that are nearby, notably "Pretty fly" and "Human power" under the Highway 94 bridge.

Teatime With Bob and Bunny!

Enjoy a special teatime interview with a retiring Carol and the half Swedish Gloria. Flags fly and Bob asks all the pertinent questions about Scandinavian Royal Unification. Scones are eaten and we briefly glimpse a crumpet.

More Tips For You! How to Argue Your Fine.

Who would read a Library Clerk blog for mere entertainment? I don't know. I think people are here to glean valuable insider information. That is why today I have more tips for you! Today's valuable insider tips are all about how to contest your library fine.

1. If your fine is tiny, just let it go and pay for it. Yes, you are right! Yes, it is the principle of the thing! But you can achieve a tiny greatness here for only ten cents.

2. If you're sure you have been fined unjustly (and your fine is not tiny), contest it! I don't want you paying us money that you don't owe us. We're just blowing your money on too many James Patterson books that'll be doorstops in a year anyway.

3. If you decide to refrain from contesting your fines, please also refrain from bitter martyrous muttering as you pay it. If you contest unsuccessfully you can mutter bitterly if you want to.

4. Be specific: "I returned that book the same day I returned 6 others I checked out at the same time." is great! "But I never return books late!" is profoundly unimpressive.

5. Be confident. If the choice is between you're pretty sure you returned those on time and our computer system's specific accounting of the time it came back being 3 days late I will go with our computer system, as it is more dispassionate about and uninvested in the whole thing.

6. If you get caught out as wrong, go like Bugs Meany and concede the fight. "I am positive I returned it in the afternoon on Thursday before Sasha's soccer practice." met with "Yes, but it was due on Tuesday and that's why there's a two dollar fine." should conclude the contestation.

7. Please refrain from irrelevant arguments and faulty reasoning arguments. "I didn't realize the book was under the seat of my car." is a sad anecdote, not a reason for fine removal. "If it was due on the 22nd and I returned it on the 24th I should only have to pay for one late day, the 23rd." is bizarrely compelling, but actually wrong in a way that is very hard to discuss.

8. You don't even have to be right! You are actually allowed to ask for mercy. "Wow, I just totally lost track of time! But $24 is a lot of money for me right now with my impending surgery. Is there anything you can do?" I am waiving half of your fine here for sure, god, maybe even more. But first I'm checking your payment history, so be forewarned this will only work once or twice.

9. Don't let the clerk blow you off. "You don't have to pay it now." should be met with "Yes, but I don't think I should owe this money and would like to resolve it now."

10. Invoke the manager. This can help clear up logjams with people who don't like to get the manager or it can get you to a manager who will usually waive at least some fines because they don't easily have anyone to pass you off to and have to get rid of you somehow eventually. Be forewarned though, more than half the time there will be no manager around and the clerk can happily dispense with you by helpfully presenting you with a business card, or even just a name.

You are now fully equipped to contest your fine. Good luck. Fight the good fight.

The Twitter Lottery

Like anyone who eschews twitter I have been mystified by it. What could be of interest that is merely a sentence long? The answer, of course, is nothing. Wait, no, the key here is that the answer is not "Nothing". The answer is just incredibly close to "Nothing". Once you get into that lottery-like territory it all falls into place. Twitter is roughly like spending 7 seconds of your time on a one in 275,000 chance of enlightenment. Understood this way twitter becomes no different than all its relatives; lottery, channel surfing, slot machines, surfing the internet. One plops their nickels in, their 5 seconds of attention, their puny effort of a mouse click, and who knows, something extraordinary, something exciting, illuminating or visionary could, technically, happen. I mean, statistically it does, every 40,000 (or whatever) times you do it. Because we humans are so wretched at calculating the real meaning of astronomical odds we continue to persevere on the basis of our deranged hope. After all, it does pay off sometimes. You found this.

Dirt

You know, blown up like this it doesn't look so much like dirt. Coffee, maybe? Still, I admire the creative effort, and it cleaned off easily.

Living the highlife on a very special day!

Hevel

I always kind of liked this one, Hevel. So go, if you like theological business cartoons of 1994. If you don't I have some posts below that are more non-theological non-business and have no cartooning and furthermore can barely remember 1994. Kind of a win-win situation if you keep your standards for winning super reasonable.

Oh, and my link to Hevel up there will probably change as I post new cartoons, so don't panic if it is no longer April 27 and you get an old cartoon about teeth, or comets. April 27 cannot last forever alas.

A Bloggers Manifesto

It has been only a couple of months since I began my (largely unstated) quest to become the greatest blog on the internet. I have been hardworking and occasionally obsessive. I have posted at least once every single day. I have burned through years worth of meticulous essays on the art (circus? theater? banality?) of clerking. I have been (fairly) careful, and (pretty) structured in my approach. I have even marketed my blog, erratically. And now I come to this place.

What is this place? Not to get all personally revealing here, er, not to get a bunch more personally revealing here, I'll just say, in the normal scheme of things, this isn't the place where I'd exactly give up, but it's the place where I'd start to give up. But in thinking about this giving up some part of me is understanding there isn't really anything to give up on. I just sort of like this. I like cracking the code of my work life. I like thinking a lot about how these mundane days work and figuring out how to say it. I like making my work day more conscious and concentrated, and my breaks and lunch into frantic episodes of eating and typing and writing. I like hurling it all into the world, testifying to and expressing things on multiple levels. And you're welcome to it if you want it.

So instead of fading away, I think I'll become slightly broader and less measured here. I'll have less scheduled, morning posts and now just posts. If they come in clumps so be it. Short, long, loose, tight, pictures, anecdotes, trifles, irrelevancies, scrupulous analysis and oddball homemade TV shows. I'll be posting them and re posting them. I'm sure you'll sort it out. And so will I.

How a Clerk Copes, Your Guide, Part 1

Institutional Library work is truly not a bad gig if you can get it. But as one examines these library jobs, in a descending order of power, things do tend to coarsen a bit as one goes on. Down nearish the bottom, out among the proletarian clerks, one finds it can still be a good way of life, but a life also beset with both mundane and strange trials and tribulations. That is why any library clerk out there is going to need to at least dabble in coping mechanisms. Every clerk has one or two going, but a creative clerk with energy might run 9 or 10 different coping mechanisms at various times.

"Whoa," You might ask "What are these fascinating clerk coping mechanisms and where can I find out more about them?"

Well, I typed into Google "Clerk Coping Mechanisms" and did not find the results helpful. Perhaps some kind of a Library Blog explaining them would be useful. If only there were a library blog dedicated to clerks! But that's silly. Who would write a blog about library clerking? And where could you find it? I can't find it on Google. I looked. I think maybe Google is broken! I know that it is broken because there is such a blog and it is right here! Luckily you are already here, don't have to go searching hopelessly on the broken internet for such a thing, and, best of all, right here and now, I am going to introduce you to the exciting world of:

Clerk Coping Mechanisms!
(a new series because there are so many coping mechanisms!)

Our inaugural coping mechanism is: Supreme Self Confidence!

In this coping mechanism a clerk considers all that they do right and true. They are better than anyone else and they don't suffer fools gladly. They are the engine that drives the machine and others are mere auto-detailing, like pinstripes, or maybe, if you're lucky, leather seats. They will complain freely and enthusiastically about others, but don't really need your help with that. If you complain with them they give off the sense that you haven't fully earned that right as you are not, well, them, and you're just sort of lucky they are not at present complaining about you. 

Tools of the supreme self confidence coping mechanism:
1. Impatience.
2. Being really good at some parts of their job. Their ability to run with that bit of data is almost endless.
3. Energy, this takes a good deal of energy.
4. Ability to harden heart, a la Pharaoh.

What are the benefits of the supreme self confidence coping mechanism:
1. Most of us are already halfway to this one already, so there's a big head start on it.
2. Gives a delicious feeling of imperviousness. 
3. Makes the day go fast. Anger propels you forward like a rocket. 

Downfalls of leaning too heavily on the supreme self confidence coping mechanism:
1. Your co-workers can, conceivably, start to fear and loathe you.
2. You develop a strong tendency to get in trouble with your bosses, as you don't bother to hide your goofing off since you believe too firmly in its rightness and justification.
3. Megalomania, promotion, unceasing rage.

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