Sweet potatoes

 

As you well know, sweet potatoes are not potatoes. This is one of those surprising, on the face of it, facts. And like many quirky, anecdotally friendly facts it's one that the average person will learn so early in life it becomes at once notably odd and mundane.

Because the truth is sweet potatoes look a lot like potatoes. They are named in relation to potatoes. They even act a lot like potatoes. So despite all I know to the contrary, it is hard for me to shake the feeling that they are a kind of potato.

Being, as I am, on the Internet, writing an essay that at first glance looks as if it might be informational, I felt a responsibility to look in detail at this sweet potato versus the regular potato issue. So I did.

And I quickly became unbelievably bored! 

I just have never been interested in what's a tuber and what's a root vegetable. Botanical classification is not super interesting to me. Not deep down. And inevitably yams are going to come into it.

I WON'T HAVE CLERKMANIFESTO HIJACKED BY YAMS!

That might be the real problem.

Today I had some kind of frozen sweet potato product. They weren't bad. But they weren't great. The truth is a sweet potato conjures the sense of a potato, only sweet. It's an interesting idea, a "sweet" potato. A sweet potato is like a potato, but sweet, sort of. But also it's sort of not...at...all. It's an uncanny valley situation. It's almost a potato, but the texture is somehow wrong in a disturbing way. It's simply not a potato. 

So we need to let sweet potatoes be sweet potatoes. I was able to enjoy these frozen sweet potato snacks when I stopped trying to have them be potatoes. They are best when they are what they are. They need a new, more independent name.

NOT YAMS!

That's taken. And I absolutely refuse to go into it.

But how about we call them "oranges"?

Magical blogpost

 

No doubt this blogpost will seem like magic to you. For as Arthur C. Clarke postulated: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The advanced technology at play here is that this blogpost is entirely reader suggestion driven. Every bit of it is driven by suggestions and comments written in the comment section below. 

To take part simply suggest in the comment section what you'd like this blogpost to be about, and the post will slowly transform to speak to the very thing that was suggested. Thus, if someone were to write in that they would like this post to be about the Tokyo DisneySea Theme Park, readers here would soon find themselves reading about how DisneySea (along with Tokyo Disneyland) is the only Disney Park not owned by Disney, but is licensed by Disney and owned by the Tokyo Land Company. How instead of making these lesser parks, the personal attention thus lavished on these Disney Parks by a company whose (nearly) whole business it is, makes these, by most credible accounts, the best of all the Disney Parks, and specifically makes Tokyo DisneySea, with its seven themed lands based off of real and imagined "ports of call", to be generally considered the finest amusement park in the World. 

So go ahead and wield your magic pencil with a subject suggestion of your own in the comment section below to see how our complicated algorithms absorb and answer to them in the text of this post. They do this not just by artificial intelligence, adapting to keywords in your suggestions, but also through a direct neural interface with the author of this blog, me, and by tapping into my previous 3,000 blogposts for material, making it so that each alteration of this post, at your suggestions, is in a sense authored by me, by my past writings, and by the artificial intelligence program I have written to run this elaborate process.

If you write a suggestion and it doesn't appear to be promptly responded to in this post please give it time. While the automated rewriting process of this post should be instantaneous, the amount of computer processing required for it is generally beyond my means and so the AI changes have to be queued at a Super Computer in Finland that I have limited, low level privileges with. Please be patient and check back later.

Finally, if you see a suggestion or question in the comment section that already seems to be answered or spoken to in the text of this post, remember that this post adapted in relation to the comment. This post is in a sense written in pencil, ever erased in bits and rewritten in new pencil. People aren't being "obtuse" to what's already here, rather, none of this was here when their comment was made.

Have fun!

 

Lemonade again

I had many complaints about my post yesterday entitled "Negativity".

People found it too negative. They complained about it. They said that for a post expressing disenchantment with negativity it was kind of downbeat, and, well, negative.

Because it was such a short post I can include it right here for you to review:

Sometimes I get so tired of all the negativity and complaining. Mine, yours, theirs, enough with the negativity already! Enough with all the "complain, complain, complain"!

And when I've really, genuinely had enough with all the negativity, when I'm up to my ears in it, I do what everyone else does:

I complain about it.

But I do want to say that while this post, for humorous effect, ended on a negative note, it needn't end there. When I am truly sick and tired of all the negativity and complaining, after complaining about it, I do take my inspiration and propose a whole new positive outlook. I ask that we all try to be positive about things for a change.

Preferably starting with everyone else.

I'll be along shortly.

Negativity

 

Sometimes I get so tired of all the negativity and complaining. Mine, yours, theirs, enough with the negativity already! Enough with all the "complain, complain, complain"!

And when I've really, genuinely had enough with all the negativity, when I'm up to my ears in it, I do what everyone else does:

I complain about it.

To live outside the law

 

 

 

Bob Dylan and I were drinking together. That's all we do. Well, sometimes we talk, but mostly we drink. Lately it's cognac. We were drinking cognac. I can't remember the name of the cognac, sorry. Cognac can get very fancy. This wasn't that kind of cognac.

"I read that book you told me to." Bob said.

"It's Only Slow Food Until You Try to Eat it?" I asked. I hardly even knew he heard me when I recommended it. He just kind of grunts at a lot of what I say.

He grunted.

"Did you see where the author quoted you, as a way to talk about how his friend was about foraging?" 

He grunted again. 

Maybe you thought I was kidding about the grunting. 

I wasn't kidding.

"To live outside the law you must be honest." I quoted, referring to the Dylan line that the book we were talking about quoted.

"Eh." He said, though that might have been a grunt. Not that there's much difference.

"Oh come on!" I cried. "That might be your greatest line. It's biblical but also wise, insightful, and down to earth."

"I probably stole it somewhere." Bob mumbled.

"Did you ever read that poem by Emily Dickinson?" I asked. And then I recited the poem, which is one of the advantages of poems.

Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne'er succeed.

To comprehend a nectar

Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host

Who took the Flag today

Can tell the definition

So clear of victory

As he defeated – dying –

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph 

Burst agonized and clear!

 

"Hey, that's good." Bob said drily. "Maybe I'll steal that too."

"To try slowly and humbly and constantly to express, to press out again, from the gross earth or what it brings forth, from sound and shape and colour which are the prison gates of our soul, an image of the beauty we come to understand- that is art." I replied.

"What does that mean?" Bob asked.

"I don't know." I admitted. "It's by James Joyce."

"We're in one of your blog posts again, aren't we?

"I apologize." I replied.

"Eh." Bob grunted. "S'al'right." And then he swirled his cognac and peered into it as if divining secrets.

"C'mon man." Bob said. "I just like the color."

 

Positivity

 

 

 

 

At my job at the library one of my co-workers came by announcing a free class we could take. My County is offering a 4-part series on the power of positivity and how positive psychology can improve our lives and make us better, happier employees and people.

Some of my colleagues took this with a positive light, figuring out the transit time and parking time they can be paid for not working. An included lunch came up as well.

But I was sitting in a little corner, on lunch, with an injured back, grimacing, thinking:

It's hopeless. I couldn't possibly get any more positive than this. 

Dear Publisher: Me and Emily

 

Dear Publisher:

When Emily Dickinson died they found a bunch of poems stuffed in her desk drawers, or her mattress, or her pockets, or whatever. Then they were like, "Wow, look at these amazing poems. They are some of the greatest poems ever written!" And then hundreds of millions of people read them and were all "These are great, but what's a purple host?" 

Oh Emily, I can hear the purple host right now.

When I die maybe they'll find a sheaf of my unsent letters to the publisher. And they'll say "Wow, look at these amazing letters to the publisher. They are some of the greatest letters to the publisher ever written!" And then people will read them and love them and take them to publishers like you. And they will brandish them before you and say "You should feel ashamed of yourself!"

To which you would respond "How on earth is any of this my fault!"

To which I can only reply now, ahead of time: 

"Good point."

Yours,

Feldenstein Calypso

Romantic Comedy wizard

 

As the number seven world authority on romantic comedies I am constantly asked to recommend romantic comedies to desperate people keen to find a good romantic comedy in a world that disdains them. And as a great adorer of the romantic comedy I am always happy to oblige. There are few situations in which I am not happy to grill a person on their Romantic Comedy preferences, general movie tastes, historical reading patterns, preferred acting styles, taste in music, and endless related questions for hours, all to determine the perfectly tailored for them to watch romantic comedy movie. 

But there are only so many hours in a single day!

And there are only so few of me!

And if, hypothetically, more than three people a year asked me for a romantic comedy recommendation, or, um, a lot more than three, hypothetically again, I would need a back up plan.

This is the back up plan!

In this very blog post I have created a series of wildly varying and diverse scenarios that will lead you to the perfect romantic comedy. If any of the following scenarios are true for you, simply click the link below it, and your carefully selected movie will appear before your eyes.

One day, in the months to come, the true romantic comedy connoisseur will find their way to my future Romantic Comedy Finder website that the popularity of this prototype will lead to. After that, desperately in search of more romantic comedies, you will be lining up at my library to receive my one on one advice. 

By then you will be so far gone you will be easy prey for my extremely advanced suggestions like When in Rome, or Sidney White.  

But we get ahead of ourselves. Let us start at the beginning:

1. I hate romantic comedies and never watch them. But I am naturally embarrassed by how poorly this reflects upon me. Maybe if I watch just one really good romantic comedy, that has complexity and is well made, I could like it and begin to be a whole person. And then, maybe, slowly, I can begin to love again.

Try this one!

2. I've seen a few romantic comedies, the ones people talk about: When Harry Met Sally, that one that won best picture, and they didn't do much for me. Do they get better?

Yes they do! Here you go.

3. I have seen loads of romantic comedies and am always looking for something new, but until they make a new one, what should I watch again?

This one definitely bears rewatching!

4. I've liked a few romantic comedies, but sometimes they get a little, I don't know, cutesy. Is there a romantic comedy with a bit of...  salt? Something a bit... off center?

Sure, try this one.

5. I am acclaimed actor Christian Bale and I disdain romantic comedies. I read your post a couple years ago making fun of me. But until I see a romantic comedy movie that makes me burn with shame over my dismissive comments, I must continue mocking everything you love.

I throw down the gauntlet!

6. I'm bored. I'm depressed. I want a movie that delights me with no effort on my part. Silly, absurd, romantic, lay it on me. Oh, it should take place in beautiful, glamorous New York.

Okay.

There. That ought to get you started. I think you'll find there's something for everyone here. 

You're on your way.

The measure of all things

 

Sometimes I write things that I think are universal, and I send them out on the Internet, and it turns out... no, it's just me.

And sometimes I write things that are just about me, and I send them out on the Internet, and it turns out... yes, it's just me.

Which is maybe why this is a little room we're in now, among the smallest on the distant, hidden alleyways of the Internet. And why you always have to come close

to hear, 

and then sometimes I'm talking a little too loud.

Do you ever have times where every book you read is so good that its success seems simple? And it feels almost like any book you read, of no special renown, will be wonderful, quietly wonderful? 

And sometimes no matter what book you read, it won't work. And you'll wonder why the author can't get it right. And that while it seems so simple,  a story, a character, a phrase, apparently making a decent piece of art is extraordinarily difficult.

Well I think that must be universal, but maybe it's just me feeling that way.

But maybe, just maybe, whether we love or hate anything in all of art, great or terrible, tiny or magnificent, it's all our own fault.

So let's let all the successes or failures of this one, "The measure of all things", be on you.

Read this blog, get a thousand dollars!

 

Read this blog, get a thousand dollars. It's as simple as that. One thousand dollars to do with whatever you like.

It's not easy out here on the Internet, and there are so many entertainment venues of such magnificent quality, like, um, Amazon, and Uber, and, er, Google maps, that sometimes it is hard to attract new readers. But we are so confident in the quality of this website, so sure that a single exposure to the content we have on offer will make any prospective viewer into a lifelong devotee of clerkmanifesto, that we are offering a thousand dollars, in cash, to any new viewer.

"Wait," You wonder "What if I've already read your very famous and intriguing blogpost Read This Blog, Get a Thousand Dollars! Am I disqualified from this amazing offer?"

Yes. 

How to write compelling content for the Internet

 

Hi. 

I was wondering how to write compelling content for the Internet. So I came to this post entitled "How to write compelling content for the Internet", but all I found here was someone wondering how to write compelling content for the Internet.

No, now my head hurts too.

But okay. I won't leave you high and dry. As soon as someone figures out how to write compelling content for the Internet I will immediately post it here as a blog post called "How to write compelling content for the Internet". 

But beware.

Not everyone considers the same things "compelling". For instance some extremely idiosyncratic types love all that self reflexive, hall of mirrors, fourth wall breaking puzzle type content. But it's not popular and thus so hard to find that fans of stuff like that end up having to write it themselves.

You like that kind of thing?

Well, if I come across any I'll post it under the title "How to write compelling content for the Internet". 

Keep a close eye out.

The Benefits of bureaucracy

I am not a fan of bureaucracy. I hate bureaucracy. It's not just its obtuse, inhuman corruption of the experience of living, it's brutal disregard for decency, logic, humanity, sympathy, spirituality, practicality, love, and simple respect, but also its spelling is quite difficult.

I'm not saying I don't know how to spell bureaucracy. 

I do. 

I didn't have to look it up.

But I find it laborious. Typing it is a misery. It seems to demand a great deal of consideration. Its very sounds are weird. It's full of vowels.

So there's a lot there against bureaucracy.

Nevertheless there is one thing I like about bureaucracy.

I work for a library, in a County. And the longer I work there the more they pay me. It's part of their obtuse, inflexible systems. Finally I worked there so long their system said "Give him one last big raise and then never give him a raise again!"

So I got a pretty big raise, a couple weeks ago, all just because I waited in line for it.

For 27 years.

Letters to a young artist: Your choice

 

Dear Young Artist:

In my last letter to you I outlined the three types of artists:

1. One who conceives of wonders and executes them faithfully.

2. One who just acts and yet produces wonders.

3. And one who conceives wonders but is unable to fully manifest what was in the fullness of their imagination.

The good news is that you can choose which of the three types of artists to be!

But the bad news is that if you're the third type (and even the greatest artists are sometimes the third type!), your choice will not go according to plan.

Letters to a young artist: The three types of artists

Dear Young Artist:

There are three kinds of artists:

The first kind of artist imagines fantastic things and somehow executes them faithfully to their vision.

The second kind of artist just does stuff, but somehow it works out magnificently, full of sheen and glory.

The third type of artist conceives of brilliant, majestic pieces of work, like the first kind of artist does, but somehow their work never seems to come out like planned, or with quite the power and wonder that was in the artist's head at the start.

I'm the third type of artist.

This letter was supposed to be way better and more helpful than it is. 

Letters to a young artist: Fame

 

Dear Young Artist:

Let us talk about fame.

Because of the nature of the market, some measure of fame is required for a person to be a successful, full time professional artist.

You might think "That's okay. I am ready to be famous. I am even eager to be famous."

Oh young artist, fame is not all it's cracked up to be.

Or so I have heard. Somewhere. Though who knows from who. It's not like I know anyone famous, aside from Bob Dylan, who never talks about it, like, ever.

Also, I'm not famous.

"Hey!" You cry out in disagreement. "What about those two times you were featured on the front page of the Metro Section of the second biggest daily newspaper in your midsized American midwestern city?"

That's very sweet of you.

But we're here for you, young artist, to help guide you.

So here is what I say:

Go ahead and be famous.

Not that anyone will likely offer it to you. Sorry, but as Davy Crockett said:

Fame is like a shaved pig with a greased tail, and it is only after it has slipped through the hands of some thousands, that some fellow, by mere chance, holds on to it!

And if you do become famous these probably aren't the letters you'll need.

But it's nice of you to read them anyway.

Letters to a young artist: Practical advice

 

Dear Young Artist:

I know you're not here.

But I write to you anyway. That is how much I care.

When I was a young artist the old artists did not really take me under their wings as I take you under my wing now. I could say they did not take to me at all. But every rare once in awhile one did, but as like to a cat they saw me as remote and strange and independent, but charming. I wanted a home. Who doesn't? They gave me an old fish and called me cute. And sent me on my way.

In one notable incident a Ceramics teach at Sonoma State University told me I should have a trade to fall back on: Carpentry.

Thank you. But if I were good at Carpentry, the kind of person for whom things lined up, I might have been a notable artist. I might be the sort of artist so good he would be writing, in his middle years, a series of helpful letters to young artists like you!

But that didn't pan out.

Other notable teachers liked me as well. I'm convinced Marc Lesueur did, but not enough to give me more than an A-. Ms Tunick was fond of me in 11th grade, in theory. She liked Grape and me. Everyone else she suffered as fools. She certainly wasn't all wrong, but it's tricky when one is only liked against a terrible backdrop. Michael McClure, who was close friends with Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan, found me to be the only promising writer he ever taught, or I just imagine it that way, even if it wasn't true. And if, by some miracle he did feel that way, he was too cool to admit it, which was astonishingly unsatisfying. 

But when any of these professors really took an interest, they offered practical advice. Practical advice is the most terrible and important thing any young artist (like you!) can learn.

Practical advice is everything for a young artist like yourself! It lights the way!

Alas for you I got F's in practical advice.

But don't worry, I got A minuses in everything else.

Letters to a young artist: Outsider

 

Dear Young Artist:

I was up late last night editing strange, close-up pictures of a burbling stream above my local waterfall called Shadow Falls. And as I edited these pictures, of which I will include one below, because that's how it is for... us, and for people like us, if there are any, ourselves included, I listened to "Outsider" music; Daniel Johnston and The Shaggs mostly. You might want to consider that you yourself might be an Outsider artist. Although deciding you are one is probably disqualifying. As Daniel Johnston wrote:

Everyone and friends and family

Saying, "Hey, get a job

Why do you only do that only?

Why are you so odd?"

But because you are a young artist, you may not have heard of Outsider Art, so allow me to try and explain it off the top of my head without consulting any sources:

Outsider art is Art that is not very good or skillful or knowledgeable or professional or normal, but nevertheless is so earnest, obsessive, innocent, and/or passionate that it ends up being kind of good anyway, all in its very strangeness and by some magical virtue of its unique commitment. But it's usually pretty difficult art, and you have to open yourself to it to like it at all.

You might be wondering:

"Hey, approaching 3,000 daily blogposts to an audience of eleven, with grandiose stories of the gods and of fixing the world, details of working a low level job at a library, inscrutable jokes, weird pictures of creeks, are you an outsider artist?"

You, young artist, will want to pay close attention to this answer:

No. We are here right now at the center of everything. 

It is the World itself that wanders lost in the desert.

Letters to a young artist: The nature of praise

 

Dear Young Artist:

One of my co-workers is a birder. And so if I am trying to identify a particular bird I took a picture of, or if I have a particularly good picture of, for instance, a hawk, I might show him the picture. Other animal pictures come up as well. For instance I showed him a picture of a coyote I took as well. He was so impressed with that one that he said this to me:

You could sell these pictures!

In more than forty years of making art I have heard this comment countless times. It seems very flattering. And I suppose it is flattering, in its tiny, tiny way. It is a comment you may hear many times in your pursuit of a life in the arts.

But it's a paltry comment. It is a paltry comment because it splits the difference between the two comments you will actually want to hear:

That's beautiful.

and

I would like to buy that.

 

And it admits, nor rises to neither.

Letters to a young artist: Prelude

 

Dear Young Artist;

Do I wish, when I was a young artist, that an older artist with more than four decades of experience in the arts, set down for me, in a series of  letters, the wisdom of their experience?

No.

But even though this is just my prelude letter to future letters providing the wisdom of a life in the arts, I am already providing you with your first lesson: 

Don't pay attention to what anyone wants.

I mean, unless you want money and worldly success.

Or let me put it another way for you, young artist: I didn't want an old, experienced artist to send me letters full of the wisdom of their experience, and look what happened to me.

What happened to me you ask?

I accumulated wisdom.

And I'm going to share it all with you.

Resist it if you can.

Seditious bastards!

 

 

 

 

 

Everything has been running backwards for me lately. For instance today I thought of the title of my small essay here first, then left it to myself to write the text. 

The King of Clerkmanifesto says:

The title is "Seditious Bastards!", it is your job to give life to that title.

How about we overthrow the King then? What say we talk about the weather instead?

 

HOLD IT!

 

The President of Clerkmanifesto has unilaterally decreed, in defiance of the King's Edict, that despite our title, "Seditious Bastards!", we will discuss the weather instead. But I, Emperor of the Themes of Clerkmanifesto, never voted for this President. And I have something to say about this!

 

Excuse me?

May I just interject here? As the CEO of Clerkmanifesto, I must assert my fiduciary responsibility immediately to state that this confusing, divisive, and disjointed post has so far made us no money whatsoever!

 

HEY!

 

Hey hey hey. Can't everyone just calm down!

Can't we all just get along?

 

Okay.

Fine with me.

Yeah, I guess. 

Sure, let's give it a try.

 

Good.

You're all fired.

 

Who are you?

 

I am the Lord God of Clerkmanifesto. Tremble before my magnificence!!!!!!

Oh, and try to get along a little better.