Stair monster

The dark spirit of the library stairs struck again today. In the back room we heard the terrible scream. We rushed out. And there at the foot of our treacherous staircase lay another mangled body. No blood this time. This one went down four stairs hard, more or less feet first, thankfully, but, alas, not straight, and now her foot seemed to be on backwards. That may sound fanciful, but no, that's a fair description. In my minor role I got a good look while conveying some message to the assistant manager, who was tending to the patron. The Paramedics came and removed her shoe. And there it was, a backwards foot, which might not sound like too much until one starts thinking about what it might be like to have such a thing out at the end of one's leg.

I imagined comforting the injured patron. "Don't worry, you're gonna be okay. It's not nearly as bad as the last person who fell down the stairs. So much blood! Then she died! Of course, she seemed okay when she left the library."

Then I might add "You know what? Never mind."

Like most institutions my library can be erratic in its reactions to things. One man smells so bad people are gagging throughout the whole wing of the library he's in. He leaves a wake of unusable, pee-stained chairs behind him, and we consider ourselves helpless in the face of it. But another man has a tendency to remove his shoes over in the chair he likes to sit in and we clamp down hard, insisting that he meet our shoe standard. We might shut down half the library to protect a few minor pieces of technology during some power problems, but drag our feet when the weather sirens go off. And so some minor leak may be cordoned off in a wide, dramatic fashion, whereas the staircase is free to go on maiming people with impunity.

Ah well, fair enough. How do you fix a staircase anyway? Even as it feels oddly dangerous when one walks down it, it's hard to understand exactly why that staircase is dangerous. Perhaps it is all as it should be. Upstairs is the whole of our traditional library collection, all of the fiction and non fiction adult books. So yes, you may be crippled or killed in your pursuit of enlightenment at my library.  But then there is always a risk that must be taken in the pursuit of knowledge.

Unstuck in time

I have a special fondness for time travel stories. They're such wonderful vehicles for talking about fate, free will, and the nature of stories themselves, after all, stories are made out of time itself, and yet they are completely free to travel freely around in it as well. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut has a fine understanding of this. So fine, I suppose, that it is actually where I learned this.

In Slaughterhouse Five, the main character, Billy Pilgrim, is unstuck in time, and moves through different episodes of his life in a non linear manner. I have been thinking about this a lot lately as this is what seems to be happening to me these days at the library. I have worked here for more than two decades. One moment I am downstairs watching the O.J. verdict in a break room that no longer exists and the next I am showing people how to use our programmable paper books which don't yet exist as I write this. For a few minutes I am buried in an endless crush of book returns that I could never hope to get caught up on, and then I am watching our big check in machine toil away for me, taking care of the job handily, as I sip a cappuccino.

Then I am at the front desk with some co-worker. There have been hundreds of them. I turn to this person and ask how long they've worked at the library.

"Almost six months now." They answer. "Why do you ask?"

"I just wanted to know where I am in time." 

 I remember when they'd worked here for eight years.

Long time in library

We get a lot of donations here at the library. There are invariably several carts and shelves and boxes of unsorted donated books sitting in our back work room. While the regular shelving carts and public shelves of my library are more likely places to look if one is browsing for a good book to read, these donations tend to be more interesting, comical, apocryphal, historical, and just plain odd to look through. The donations are at their best for searching through materials without really wanting to read them. They tell the strange history of publishing and culture, they tell of book design, forgotten cultural trends, and in their strange smells, inscriptions, and brittle, stained conditions they even tell the stories of their buyers and owners.

But it was a fairly mundane cart full of donated, not very old, Science Fiction and Fantasy books that illuminated for me just how long I have been living in a library.

I have spent decades now in a library. I am deeply acquainted with a vast array of books and audio visual material. But I am familiar with all of it in a library context. So when I saw a cart full of Sci Fi and Fantasy books, many that I have read, something that you will no doubt understand as completely obvious occurred to me in a peculiar surprise. I looked at all these nice books that someone donated, and I thought:

Oh my god, people actually buy new books!

A brief guide to smart phones

I don't own a smart phone. If I have to make a phone call I put it off for as long as possible. If I still have to make a phone call after all of that then I sit down and write a long, thoughtful letter which I never send.

But that's just me. You might prefer a smart phone. But you may be unclear on what a smart phone is or does, even if you own one. Fortunately I have been making an observational study of them. I think I have them worked out. I used to hold these wee, portable phones in disdain, but now that I understand them I can see their appeal.

Here are the seven things you can do with a smart phone that I have discovered so far:


1. Yell your location at it.

2. Tell it what you're having for dinner.

3. Play hide and seek with it.

4. Have it make harsh, musical noises in quiet places.

5. Put it to the side of your head to initiate its motor vehicle operation mode.

6. Not show someone something on it due to technical problems.

7. Poke it obsessively with your finger.




I do not mean to imply this is a comprehensive list. I understand these are very advanced pieces of technology and so their capabilities grow all the time. There may be as many as nine actual things you can do with a smart phone, and, in the years to come, we will surely see a tenth.

On what's left

It's snowing out. The sky is blue. Walking to work I see spring flowers blooming through the lawns. My ears hurt. The robins shiver. And yet, daffodils!


I am all out of blog posts and so walking along I keep my eye out for new ones, but I find only a tour of old blog posts.

I wrote about that eagle. I wrote about how when people add on to their house around here they make it uglier on the outside and prettier on the inside. I wrote about the "Hippies use the backdoor" sign. I wrote about the dogwalkers joining me on my path. I wrote about the river construction. I wrote about that graffiti there. I wrote about being late and the vicissitudes of time. I wrote about that cat. I wrote about all this stuff, every shrub and house and squirrel and riverboat, every fleeting thought, every dream and complaint and moment of wonder. I have covered this river down to its sandy bottom and I have covered all these people walking around into the last secret pockets of their souls. I have written about every last thing other than having written about every last thing. 

Which I have taken care of now.

Luckily the world changes.

Frothing

I have been waiting for a slow day at clerkmanifesto to present my views on milk frothing.

Why, you ask, a slow day? Why wasn't milk frothing instruction a priority? 

Had I known you were so curious about milk frothing I would have moved it up the priority chain. To be honest I have been assuming all who read clerkmanifesto already have a full understanding of the milk frothing process. I merely thought I'd put out the authoritative statement in case some well meaning barista started wondering why occasional customers, after receiving a cappuccino from them, seemed to be casting a look of bitter disappointment towards them, and so, shaken, decided to search milk frothing on the Internet and were willing to scroll down to page 7,249 in the google search results, which they would be willing to do, if they truly cared. And there they would find this.

I have had two cappuccino like drinks out in the past couple of weeks. One was at a cute American French bistro sort of restaurant, The Harriet Brasserie, that had good food and the proper espresso making equipment. The waitress who made my drink should have known how to do it but didn't. The drink was hot enough to burn. The milk was not creamy, but had ventured into a hard foam. The second drink I had out was at a cafe in a part of town know as the north loop. The cafe seemed to have no name and was marked merely by a small picture of a coffee cup. I had a good feeling about it. I watched the man make my drink. After steaming the milk he poured a small volume out into a sink. The remaining amount was the exact quantity required by the small glass cup. A beautiful feathered decorative pattern adorned the surface of my cortado. The drink was warm, not remotely hot, the milk, of excellent quality, was utterly creamy and smooth, its volume carrying the crema of the espresso into itself in a lush embrace. There was no bitterness, rather a light sweetness of the natural sugars coming through the milk. Smooth hints of chocolate, woodiness, and a touch of flowers rose through the silky milk. It was a lovely drink.

Oh, right. I sort of drifted off there. You wanted to know how to froth milk. Or you didn't particularly, but you started reading this and haven't stopped yet.

So here is how you froth milk:

The steam wand goes in just under the surface of the milk. Ideally the milk should not bubble, rather the surface should bulge and ripple. The volume of the milk will not seem to increase right away but then will quickly do so. Of all things, heat is a reliable indicator. You can feel the heat of the milk through your, ideally, metal pitcher. Your milk will be done when it is somewhere between warm and hot. There is a lot of leeway here. Frothing milk to a decent standard is easy and not fussy. If the milk is not very warm and not much bigger than when you started, keep going. If the milk is uncomfortably hot to hold it's all over. You will have a pitcher full of a very pretty, high, white foam that is sadly not suitable for consuming. Throw it away and start again. You'll get it. And for such a simple thing people will look upon you with admiration, and, maybe, they will even tip you a dollar.

Trolling America

As you know I never talk about politics here, except when I talk about politics, which is most of the time, because everything has politics. Fortunately one doesn't have to always see the politics, sort of like everyone is meat, but we need not really focus in on that aspect, unless maybe there are a lot of cannibals in the area.

Which brings us to today's topic.

Much as I've tried to avoid it people keep asking me to explain the Presidential candidate Donald Trump. Is this because of my diverse international following? Is this because I am so reliable an interpreter of the cultural moment? Is it because I am the last clear voice of a shattered Internet and Trump is a product, strangely, of the Internet and its hunger for round the clock spectacle? Or is it because as writer of this blog I live in a strange fantasy world where everything I say is speculated upon and discussed, and millions of people take their inspiration and clarification from me like I am coffee incarnate?

Probably one of those.

So I will explain Donald Trump.

Out here on the Internet we have Trolls. I think you know all about them, but I'll briefly explain anyway. On nearly every subject and in every public commentary running richly through the Internet you will find Trolls, people who say things primarily for the extreme reactions, emotions, and disturbance they can provoke. There is a burn down everything nihilism to trolldom, yes, but there is a self aggrandizing protest to it too. The troll says that not only don't they like some singer we're all reading about, or listening to, for instance, but they also hate feeling so small, so unable to have a voice, so bitter about being just one voice, when so many other voices seem so big and authoritative out on the Internet. So they troll. Their voice grows in significance as dozens of attentions focus in on them and emotion swirls. It's a nasty mischief, uncaring, but it gets some vote across while remaining immune from argument because every furious argument against it expresses its victory.

So is Donald Trump a troll? Eh, a little, or a lot, sometimes, but that is not the point really. The point is that most of the votes for Donald Trump are troll votes. At this point a large percentage of the Republican Party voters are trolls. Donald Trump is the first great candidate of the trolls. And so easy! You just cast your vote for him and watch the people explode around you. And it's beautiful, if you're a troll, because it's undiscerning. A vote for Trump even trolls Republicans. If you're the kind of person who finds it amusing and exciting to toss an outrageous comment into an Internet discussion imagine how Trump seems: it's like the whole world is some bullshit discussion full of lies and manipulation and false righteousness, and you throw Trump into it and you can watch it all go nuts.

The only real surprise is that there are so many trolls in America. I thought the billy goats kept them under control.

A no good day (with swearing)

Today was a no good day at the library. 

I woke up pasty, sluggish, and headachy from too much wine and cheese, but perhaps more so from too many days worked, and too many days til vacation, and too many things to do in front of me for weeks and weeks. I tore myself away from the loveliness of home and went to work. It was a weekend day, short staffed and busy. Everything fell out wrong for me. The family needing five library cards comes to me. The man on the phone, who I'm afraid may be going insane, calls me to ask what his due dates are so many times that I have memorized not just the dates, but every nuance of his voice and manner, the meaning in all his hesitations, and every detail on his account. I help a woman who has been registered with two library cards and has copious fines on both. I help the young family struck with 75 dollars of fines on their account for a small mistake, their wee, adorable children clutching their precious library finds tremulously as we work it out. Co-workers are bizarrely inconsiderate to me. The machines won't work right. There's something wrong with my milk for my coffee. The rain is coming. My toe hurts.

And then I am putting away some books on the Dalai Lama. There is the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama said:

Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

And really, that's okay. But just for today, if you will indulge me, and I swear it is only for today, can I simply say:

The Dalai Lama never had to work for a living in a fucking library.

Friend of birds

It was a beautiful spring day today, and don't think the birds didn't know it. The Robins were in particularly good spirits, and the little various Wrens, whose names I do not know, were at great pains to point out to me all the new flowers, kindly, but as if I were a blind person who had never been outside before. We wondered together if we'd ever seen flowers in Minnesota so early, all while it was still March. I said I thought I might have seen some tiny flowers this early during a warm March a few years ago, but the little birds weren't quite so sure. Then again I suspect that very few of these birds would be in a position to remember, so few of them being more than three years old to begin with.

Better by far than any early flowers, and even better than the perfect fifty degree weather, was being so befriended by all those small birds, by these songbirds. They alighted upon me, and, not shying, let me enjoy their company without reservations. I tell you this, dear reader, that when the wild river turkeys make you their student it is wonderful, and it makes you feel wise and shamanic. When the Eagle joins you, and becomes your partner, it makes you feel important and powerful, like some wizard on a quest. But when the songbirds invite you into the bosom of their society, it makes you feel like you are in a beautiful fairytale. And that is the best feeling of them all.

By the twisting of fate

Two incidents of pure prescience have been visited upon this blog in the past few months. Or, to put it another way, magic has come in through the side door, as it does. In the first incident I outlined the secret curse of my library system, a problem manager at a library branch location that was calving off employees like a dying glacier in the sweltering arctic of the global warming era. No sooner had I articulated this deep, ten year long problem of my library system than the offending manager suddenly fled her job under mysterious circumstances and lifted the curse in a single move.

Then, oddly, I wrote a letter to a Bald Eagle, asking it to not fly above me when it accompanied me on walks, but rather to fly beside or in front of me, so as not to strain my neck, for to gaze upon a nearby Bald Eagle was irresistible to me. I'll admit to the silliness of the post. I am aware that it may be hard for you to fully credit the strangeness of my walk on the river the day after I wrote it. But I swear to you that I have never in my life been so close to a flying Eagle, despite the great many I have seen here in Minnesota. One hovered and glided sometimes as close as five feet from my shoulder, and, even when it drifted farther away, it always stayed scrupulously at my side. It never positioned itself, in thirty minutes of my walking, at an angle the least bit difficult for me to see.

So wishes are suddenly being answered here. Strange wishes, wishes I did not know were wishes, joking wishes, but they are all answered nonetheless.

And it makes me wonder, what shall I wish for? I have the ear of the gods here. What dreams would I like to see made real? I have a magic space right in this nest of words. What seed shall I plant? What spell do I invoke?

But no, that is not the nature of magic. There is nothing that works like that.

The gods are not wise so much as mercurial. Sometimes you can get what you work for, but that's just science. By the laws of magic, and by the holy and unholy world alike, you can never get what you wish for. Wishes can only come out better or worse, above or below, east or west of how they were cast.

And so here, where over and over the future is predicted, and what is written magically comes to pass, the future will again and again be conjured up.

But not by me.

The ambitious new quote

I have for a long time endeavored to come up with a quotation, a Bartlett's level quotation, that meets the standard of my now classic:

"It's not the sneeze that's such a problem, it's what to do with it after."

I have come up with this:

"I am filled with energy for all difficult and virtuous projects, so long as they begin tomorrow."

It was a great idea to come up with a new quote. I have no idea why it took me so long to get around to it.

An observation

I'd rather not indulge my occasionally voracious appetite for scathing critiques of a (smallish) proportion of my co-workers. So perhaps we can just present this as a moment of observation, a footnote in my day of library clerking, an explanation for how some things, that seem so mystifying in their aftermath, happen.

You will need a small amount of preparation. At my library we send things in transit mostly by using boxes. One puts stuff in the right box (hopefully), and when it's full one places a lid on it and stacks another box on top (again, hopefully, though, as we're about to see, not always). 

One of my co-workers walked over to these transit boxes with an extra thick talking book, made from a real tome of a novel, the kind of talking book with thirty discs in it. Because this co-worker is, um, not inspiring at her job, I looked on to see what would happen, much in the way you might see a person drinking from a flask, talking on the phone and fiddling with their car radio all as they drive their car and find yourself compelled to see the end result of it.

So she came to the box with her talking book. She saw that the box had room for perhaps two more modest sized hardcover books, but not for her talking book. In a strange, birdlike confusion she regarded the situation for a long time, frozen almost. Then, finally, she crouched down and began rearranging the contents of the box for several minutes. But apparently no amount of rearranging could change the fact that there was not enough room for her talking book without it extending an inch or two above the surface of the box. And so that's how she left it. 

She seemed slightly baffled by the limits of her ultimate result, but I read too a look on her face that said that she had done the best she could possibly do.
 
What did I do?

After she left I pulled one hardcover book from under the talking book and, with it, started a new box. But, admittedly, I did it mostly to fan the delicious flames of my righteousness, which are sometimes all I have to keep me warm when the backroom of the library gets, as it sometimes does, cold and lonely.

Crow: herald of spring

As you probably know, the crow is the state bird of Minnesota, and one look at these delightful birds will easily answer the question: Why is the crow known at the herald of spring?

When the great philosophers weigh in on which is the cutest bird, there is never much dissension. Oh sure, a few of the philosophers might bring up the Japanese long-tailed tit to try and keep it interesting, but what bird could ever be cuter than the crow? With its not too twee, but ever endearing caw caw caw call, the wee crow will make even the most grizzled Nietzschean's heart melt. Look at the crow, darling tailored and all feathered up dashingly in its raven colored suit! Look at the funny little curve of the crow's beak! There are twenty crows! They are attacking a hawk! Now they are eating some dead thing! What kind of dead rotting flesh is that, dear crow? I bet it's yummy. Now the twenty crows are attacking the hawk again! Is bad old hawk after their babies? Good for you crows! Where are your babies? I want to see your babies.

I have never seen a crow baby. Can you imagine?

If a crow is that cute, what must their toddlers be like? I bet they're as cute as kittens. Oh my god. I think I would just fall over squealing if I ever saw a bird as cute at that!

Dear Bald Eagle

Dear Bald Eagle:


I don't know if you receive letters, seeing as you're a bird (no offense), but because pictures of you are so prominently featured at my local post office I thought a letter was a good enough bet as a way to reach you. I certainly don't have any better solutions. Yelling at you 300 feet over my head is neither seemly nor likely to be heard, and I certainly don't have an email address for you. Guessing your address as baldeagle@gmail.com seems far more likely to reach a shaved headed patriot than a noble scavenging bird of prey such as yourself.

But you are probably wondering why I'm writing you. I'll get right to it.

First of all, I was so honored and delighted you decided to accompany me on my walk this morning. I can't tell you how thrilling it was to look up and see you soaring in the sky above me. And that you stayed with me for two whole miles along the river was incredibly friendly, so you should know all that off the top. Plus, and I really hope you won't think I'm just buttering you up, I do think you're very majestic. Yes, majestic, that's you, and so it was very awe inspiring to see you overhead, really amazing. You're one impressive bird (I hope you don't mind me calling you a bird). But the fact that you're so majestic is kind of the problem.

You might not know this, but you're so majestic that I kind of have an unwritten rule that if you're around it's a special occasion. And my job on this special occasion is to look up at and be inspired by your birdish majesty (no offense, I don't know how you feel about being a bird). And I am glad to do this looking. It's very inspiring and ennobles my spirit. Unfortunately it hurts my neck, especially after, like, half an hour of it.

So the reason I'm writing you, respectfully, is to ask that when you come for a walk with me, you don't fly directly over my head, rather, ideally, you stay out in front of me, to the left or the right. Or you could just generally stay to the side of me. You can also be directly in front of me or even behind. Just, overhead is, and this is my thing, not a criticism of you in any way, it's difficult. If you could change your position I would be deeply appreciative and would be even more ennobled by you, and would enjoy our little walks even more than I already do, and I would defend you against the other birds who I think are just being a little jealous.

Anyway, thank you for your time and attention to this matter. See you on the river!


Your friend,



F. Calypso

Two ways of doing a job

I don't know why this fictional scenario came into my mind this morning, nor do I know why I decided I should immediately recount it to you here. But I try to trust that if I make the vessel here then it will fill with light all by itself, at which point I can cry out "Shazam!" and take all the credit for everything.

A person goes to a Doctor and says "I got more than nine hours sleep last night and I'm still incredibly tired!"

The Doctor says "Hmm." And begins a very thorough examination. The Doctor asks the person many questions, like "Do you often have insomnia?", "Do you snore?", "What do you eat before you sleep?" and so on. The doctor conducts several inconclusive tests and then, ultimately, recommends that the person go to see a sleep specialist. The Doctor gives the patient the name of the best sleep specialist in town and finishes the appointment.

Another person goes to a Doctor and says "I got more than nine hours sleep last night and I'm still incredibly tired!"

And the Doctor asks "How much sleep did you get the night before?"

The person replies "Four hours."

The Doctor says "Sleep shortage is cumulative. Get another good nights sleep and you'll feel much better." 

The moral of the story?

Sometimes you have to put the light into the vessel yourself.

The trail home

I adore analogies and use them all the time. What is language, after all, but a kind of tapestry of analogy. So too are all stories analogies, in their way, just not usually particularly direct analogies. Analogies, I believe, don't lock down the understanding of things. They open them out and allow for wider and deeper ways of looking. But I accept that perhaps I use analogies too much of the time. For instance there is one particular analogy I love to use at the front desk of my library...

When patrons at my library are concerned about getting a replacement library card, and they fear that important information or requests on their library account will somehow get lost in the exchange, I use the house key analogy.

Here it is:

Your library card is like a key. Your library account is like a house. So when we change your library card (and your library card number) we are merely changing the key to your house, but your house and everything in it remains exactly the same.

I give this analogy with great gusto, and usually with quite a few more words than in the above, and I endorse it all with number of enthusiastic hand gestures. And while to me it is the clearest and most perfect analogy, I always seem to catch a glint of confused alarm in the eye of the person I am giving the analogy too. When I'm done talking and gesturing to the person it always looks as if they're about to ask a question, and then they think better of it. Then they sort of drift away.

Maybe I'm too enthusiastic about the analogy. Maybe analogies are terrible ways to communicate things. But I still believe.

Here is an analogy for clerkmanifesto:

Writing every day a short essay for clerkmanifesto is like laying a trail of breadcrumbs away from myself. And when I am done they show me the way home.

I think this is why birds show up here so much.

Gift to patrons

Dear Computer Patron:




We at the library have noticed that you really love our computers. You are on them all the time, everyday. I've never talked to you here at the library because you just quietly use our computers. And that's okay. In fact, I'm not really sure what you look like. I just see your back mostly, and the solitaire game you play all day on our computers. There's a few of you out there like this. I'm not spying. I try and avert my eyes from your screens, but the screens are all glowy and colorful, and, well, I have a questing, curious sort of personality. I guess I don't try to avert my eyes too much. So I hope you don't mind that I see you playing solitaire on your computer.

I'm not judging.

In fact, we at the library are delighted to have you here. You're always welcome, and we have plenty of computers for you to play solitaire on. You can stay there all day and up until nine at night, at which point the computers shut off.

But then you have to leave.

And that's where I worry about you a little. Where will you go? What will you do?

This is why we at the library have gotten together to get you a little something to help you out. I'm not saying you need help. We're not judging you. We don't expect you to change your behavior. We're not asking anything of you. This we give you freely to do with as you wish. If it helps you out it helps you out. If not, we merely meant well.

What is it?

Here you go. It's a deck of cards.

Quotes for the ages

I am an aficionado of the short quotation. I have in this space covered the master, Mark Twain, who, even though he didn't say all the things he said, is still so far ahead of everyone else with what he did say that it hardly matters. I have even dabbled in writing the quotation myself, achieving a peak of success in 2015 with:

"It's not the sneeze that's such a problem, it's what to do with it after."

So I'm just saying I'm highly attuned to the tradition of the quote. This weekend I saw one of the most brilliant movies, well, ever, The Big Short. It used a few quotes, and the quality of these quotes reflected the quality of the movie. One was by Mark Twain (naturally) and read:

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

And then, disarmingly, it gave us this marvelous quote:

"Truth is like poetry. And most people fucking hate poetry."

And then for attribution it cited the above to "Overheard at a Washington, D.C. bar." Which just goes to show that you don't have to be Mark Twain to pierce the heavens.

During a rather enjoyable weekend of clothes shopping with my wife I myself overheard a quote. Two women were talking, one of them far more than the other, and she said:

"There could be a great book of things I say, but I'm too scattered to write it myself. I would need someone to follow me around and write down what I say."

I have decided, for today, to be that person.

The code

Among all our codes at the library I work at, among what we do say and what we don't say, one of our strongest strictures is that we don't talk about not working. Of course, this isn't just my workplace. All over America talk about not working while working is dangerous stuff, far more dangerous than discussing politics, probably because it's a kind of politics within itself. Officially everyone is working all the time. Everyone is supposed to be working, again, all the time. But one way or another most people only work about half the time, except for the people who work all the time, most of whom do far less work than the people who work only half the time, unless they're wildly underpaid and have few options, which is a different discussion.

I know, it's complicated. You can read that paragraph again if you want, and I'll wait here.

It's complicated because lies are complicated. Ideology is dangerous stuff. We don't work all the time in our jobs, but it reflects badly upon us to say it about ourselves directly. And since we don't like to lie we try to believe the lie so we can think we are telling the truth.

I'm not keen on any of this. So if I trust you, I will make a joke about not working. I will occasionally be frank about goofing off. I will be disarmingly direct about doing nothing for a bit. I do not court trouble at my job, but I believe part of my job is to let in a little fresh air.

So there I am joking about my seven coffee breaks, or how each book needs to be read before one can shelve it, or about how I embrace the times of slowness at my library as an opportunity for lots of delicious staring into space. And, if you work where I work, or are under similar strictures and taboos, you might find that appealingly irreverent, slightly refreshing, or possibly, if we're both lucky, a tad amusing. And you might want a piece of that delicious candor.

I just want you to understand that does not mean joking or referring to my not working. It means talking about your not working. And that's the main thing I came here today to explain.

Daylight savings

Dear President Obama:




I did not know who to bring this issue to, and normally I would not have bothered you, being as you're the President of the whole United States, but I figured that at this stage of your presidency you don't actually have much to do and might appreciate one last problem you can sink your teeth into. If this isn't your sort of thing perhaps you would be kind enough to pass it along to Joe Biden, who may even have less to do than you now, if that's possible.

So, right, you want to know what this is concerning. Fair enough. But before I start I wanted to say that this is not something I have complained about before. I have heard others speak against it, but I personally have had no problems. I just think maybe something has gone wrong with it this year, something very wrong. And I wanted to let someone official know.

Yes, I suppose you've guessed. I'm talking about daylight savings time.
 
I'll try to be coherent about this issue, but it's difficult because I am so exhausted.

I had to get up to have an early coffee with my wife at seven in the morning the other day, which was a pleasure, except it was confusingly dark outside. My state of bewilderment dogged me for 12 hours until I looked out the windows of the library I work at and it was dark again! 

What are we saving this daylight for? We need it now!

Of course all of this is complicated by how overcast it has been here lately. But I don't suppose you could do anything about that. Though if you can, please do, as it sure couldn't hurt. Frankly, as it currently stands, every two hours I have to either have another macchiato or just lie down on the floor and sleep for 20 minutes. If you could have a word with the time people, or maybe get together some temporal physicists I'm sure you all could get this adjusted properly because it is currently a mess!


Anyway, I trust you'll get this all worked out and taken care of. At the least it's a way better bet than you getting your Supreme Court Justice appointment through. Those people in Congress are, like, frighteningly insane. You should mention that in your next speech.


Good luck with your retirement, and thanks for your attention to this matter.




Regards,


F. Calypso