The reimagination of a cracked rib

I have thus far resisted the decade old (at least) impulse to occasionally post repeats here. I seriously doubt that if while feeling too sick or injured to make something new I posted up a particularly winsome piece of writing from a post here from early 2016 there would be many among you who would cry out "Wait a second! This is super familiar!"

But as fond as I am of all you readers out there, that wouldn't be my reason anyway.

Keeping up with clerkmanifesto is a calling, and it's a practice. Making some kind of finished creative work every day (on average) is sustaining to my soul. So I do it. And I leave the rereading of clerkmanifesto to whoever wants it. It's all out there in the back floodwaters of the Internet.

So it's a little odd that I am here reintroducing a post I wrote a mere three days ago!

I woke one morning with a lot of discomfort and wrote "Cracked Rib". It was okay. It seemed a little like a poem. 

And you know what we do to poems around here?

Set them to music.

In the end my text was radically altered to work as lyrics. But I and my robot friends made a song out of it through many trials and errors. Then I pounded it into a music video with footage from a sixties Zen movie, a thirties flood movie, and some AI flotsam.

And so I brought my blogpost to life.

What's old (three days) is new again.

I am satisfied.

And my rib is cracked.

 

Venice, Ve-Nice, Very nice

 

Maybe I should test it out?

Maybe every city is improved by canals.

At the least we have here a new set of pictures of Nice as a foray into the theory. Once I realized that I am already removing every car I see in order to make the city more lovely, my momentum inevitably leads me down the slippery slope to inserting canals on all the streets. First you get rid of the cars, then you make it so they are impossible anyway.

Does this mean I think that Venice is the most beautiful city in the world?

No, but its canals sure don't hurt it in that regard.

Anyway then, here is more of Nice, with a bit of VE frontloaded on, and you may find a fox or skunk here or there as well...

More comfort food

 

Sitting around with a broken rib isn't the most fun I've ever had. So I am trying to comfort myself by putting fox and skunk into pictures of Nice, France. I would comfort myself by eating lots of ice cream mochis, which I have become inordinately fond of. These are the size of fat little cookies and are a wee dollop of ice cream wrapped in flavored mochi. But if I comforted myself with these delights too much it would not be good for me. So I prudently limit myself to one ice cream mochi a day.

But I can make as many fox and skunk pictures as I want. Sometimes in the night, with my rib hurting and my head full of anxious thoughts, it comforts me to think of the day when I can get up and put fox and skunk into pictures of Nice.

You may notice alterations of the streetscapes of Nice in these pictures, and you may not. I guess the most obvious parts are the various fox and skunk related street art and graffiti. You probably already know this, but in case you don't, "Renard" means "Fox". "Moufette" means "Skunk". How complex these pictures might become I can't predict, though they drift in that direction. I'd rather they not lose their natural appearance though, so my adornments may be self limiting.

And with that, here are today's pictures:

The only use for magic

 

As a reader of clerkmanifesto you will be well aware of my interest in AI. Although if this is your first time visiting clerkmanifesto, Oh my God!! 

Welcome! Come in. Come in! Can I get you something to drink? Gosh I hope you like it here! 

And to make your first experience here as smooth as possible, there is one thing you should know:

I have an interest in AI.

Oh, my interest is not so much in its technical capacity, or its implications to society, or in relation to its effect on the workplace, to its ethical dangers, or concerning its qualities as a tech bubble. My interest in it is strictly as an artistic tool. I can spend endless hours putting together dodgy music videos made out of old poems. I have painstakingly crafted pictures of my co-workers with their spirit animals. I make library theme songs. I am chasing after AI's magical wonders. And if endless experiments with the dozens of new tools popping up nearly every day end in disaster, or in the common stone walls of false promise, there is still always one thing there for me, one thing that always works out, one thing that will invariably make me happy about AI:

The ability to put a fox and a skunk in any picture I want.

I keep thinking "Surely I will get tired of this."

But no.

So here are a handful of new pictures of fox and skunk in one of my favorite cities, Nice, France.

Cracked rib

 

I have diagnosed that my rib is cracked. It's a little dented there too, but we won't worry about that.

Just kidding. We're going to worry about everything we can think of, but that's just the engine room of clerkmanifesto. You see an elegant schooner scudding beautifully along the surface of the ocean. It can't only be driven by wind, you think. You are right. Restlessness powers a 400,000 watt engine churning the sea beneath the surface, and that drives this ship through the waves on a voyage of discovery.

And what have we discovered today?

That the street outside is still surprisingly busy at three in the morning.

Comedy of excruciating errors

 

Towards the end of a lovely at home vacation, I went to sleep in the evening. I awoke to a violent foot cramp. I get these occasionally and they are horrible. I sprang out of bed and put my weight on my foot which helps straighten the contorting muscles. I put on slippers which can also help. Walking about the apartment the extreme pain subsided but was so strong it left me nauseous. I went into the bathroom and the nauseousness blossomed into a dizziness and, almost like passing out, I collapsed to the floor against the side of the bathtub, catching the corner of it with my ribs.

Stunned, but weirdly exhausted, I kind of wanted to go to sleep again right there against the tub.

But eventually I got up, bruised, and went to bed. Then my ribs started hurting more and more until I couldn't really move from a barely tolerable position lying on my back. Around seven in the morning everything was too uncomfortable and I hoisted myself up. I thought about all the simple things I wish I had done now that I know everything is going to be hard and deeply painful to do for several days.

I sat down amid a bevy of screaming twinges in the whole area of my left ribs. My back is tight everywhere. It is hard to take a breath. I opened my computer. I typed this.

I can still blog!

Though I'm not sure it's as funny as usual.

Ancient wisdom with Bob Dylan at the VFW

 

I was out having drinks with Bob Dylan at the VFW. Another guy was with us, but he spent the whole time quietly reading a blog on his phone. At one point later in the evening I said to Bob "I'm reading a book made up entirely of the accounts of people talking about what it's like to work with you."

Bob's head was over his whiskey and ginger and he didn't lift it up. He just eyed me sideways. He looked old and fey. Very old and very fey. "Why?" He croaked.

I took a sip of my whiskey and ginger, only to find it empty. "It's like that old Zen story where a bunch of blind men describe an elephant."

He gave me a slightly fuller look, no less fey, regarding me for a moment.

"Are you distant and aloof?" I explained. "Are you spontaneous and inspirational? Are you cold and selfish? Are you considerate and thoughtful? Are you wearied and cloistered? Are you whimsical and collaborative? Are you a tyrant? Are you a master?"

Bob said nothing.

"Maybe the secret of the story is that even if all the blind men could see perfectly, how could anyone ever describe an elephant?"

We were quiet for awhile. Then from out of nowhere Bob convincingly imitated the trumpeting of an elephant. 

The guy reading the blog, Neil, looked up a little crossly at us for a second. Then looked back down at his phone.

Bob and I burst into a fit of giggles.

Then we stopped ordering drinks and ordered some food instead.

The bookworm

Today we are featuring a poem called "The Bookworm". The AI version of the Internet told us emphatically that it was by the English poet Edith Sitwell. Edith Sitwell was a character! Lord what a character!

But "The Bookworm" is not by Edith Sitwell!

Whoa. 

In fact, the AI version of the Internet told me later that it actually sounds nothing like the work of Edith Sitwell.

Though it could have been lying.

Like it was when it said it was by Edith Sitwell.

The AI version of the Internet just... made up "The Bookworm"! But because one of the redeeming features of the AI version of the Internet is that it is not vain, it didn't want to take credit for it. So it attributed it to someone plausible.

One of the fatal flaws of the AI version of the Internet is that it is obsessed with plausibility.

It turns out that when the AI version of the Internet boiler plates that one should double check what it says, it's not kidding. It will make up anything! It will lie, misrepresent, and randomly imagine anything and present it authoritatively.

But it's very polite.

Basically it is like a large corporation's customer service agent. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much just what it is!

Anyway, I made a music video out of this poem, "The Bookworm". It is 100 percent AI. The words are AI. The music is a different AI. And all the footage is AI. Theoretically there could be a program and I could type in "Make a music video about a cute library bookworm" and this could come out a minute or two later.

But instead I spent hours and hours and hours piecing this all together.

What is art?

I learned a lot. Though I'm not sure what it is yet.

Bob Dylan and Neil Young at the VFW

 

Bob Dylan was extremely interested in my account of my library job's social hour/farewell at the local VFW. Bob and I go out for drinks whenever he's in town, but more at cool cocktail bars and good smelling distilleries that serve, you know, good food and drinks. No shade on the local VFW, but... it doesn't.

Nevertheless, Bob loved the idea of the VFW, so he flew in from... somewhere. I think the South, where he'd been touring.

He's always touring.

I met him at the VFW. He brought a friend, or an acquaintance. Bob knows a lot of people. I knew this person too, but only by virtue of his fame. It was Neil Young.

Bob didn't introduce us. And Neil had the slightly stunned look of a person who left a rare day off on his own tour in order to fly to Minnesota and go to a VFW because of god knows what Dylan told him.

We signed in, which I learned one does at a VFW, and we grabbed a table. No one recognized us. We fit the average age demographic, with me being the youngster. We ordered Bulleit Ryes and ginger ale. Bob looked super happy for some reason I could not fathom. Neil fidgeted, but settled down drinking. He finally noticed me. "Are you a musician?" He asked.

"No. I write a blog." I replied. "Clerkmanifesto."

"It's sort of good and read by no one." Bob commented drily, insulting at least six of you out there on the Internet who do actually read it. Look at you now! But I've never noticed any of you to take offense at this sort of thing. Also, Bob reads clerkmanifesto or we wouldn't have been sitting in a raw VFW in a Saint Minneapolis suburb.

Neil took out his phone and started fiddling with it, I assumed to conduct some personal or professional business, but no. He showed me the screen. It was clerkmanifesto. "Is this it?" He asked.

"Yes."

Neil started reading.

Bob and I drank and talked about what we always talk about, which is pretty much anything, and I won't go into these discussions in this particular post. Maybe in a future account. Every once in awhile I'd sneak a peak at Neil's phone. It was always clerkmanifesto. He was quietly reading slowly through, though the sheer volume of clerkmanifesto was bound to defeat him sometime in the evening.

After too many drinks and a wind down with barely tolerable burgers and fries, the VFW closed and spit us into the night. Neil put away his phone and politely said goodbye. He had to get going.

Bob and I went to a nearby swamp to go for a walk in the warmish night.

We didn't say much. We just walked along with the strange sounds in the water. Then I asked "Do you think he liked it?"

"Who?" Bob asked.

"Neil Young. He said nothing and read clerkmanifesto for five straight hours." I exclaimed. "Do you think he liked it?"

"Why would that matter?" Bob asked with genuine interest.

I thought about the question for awhile, but didn't answer.

We walked quietly for awhile more.

Then I started singing softly:

"Oh, the hours we'd spent inside the Coliseum

Dodging lions and a wasting time

Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle, I hardly stand to see em"

Usually when I start singing Bob Dylan to Bob Dylan he gets quietly and amusingly irritated. But for some strange reason he started singing along with me!

"It sure has been a long, hard climb

Train wheels running through the back of my memory

When I ran on the hilltop following a pack of wild geese

Someday everything is gonna sound like a rhapsody

When I paint my masterpiece"

The chickens come home...

 

I don't know why I am so inclined this week to look back on the history of clerkmanifesto. Perhaps it was finding all those ancient pictures of fox and skunk from the days of yore.

Picture (for example) of fox and skunk from days of yore:

 

Trying to think of a post for you this evening I remembered how in the early days of clerkmanifesto I used to talk about how amazingly good clerkmanifesto was. It was a humorous motif in which I passionately praised my own writing to distract readers from how good it was.

It worked really well!

Oh, my lord, it worked like you wouldn't believe!

But just now, there is one reader out there, rubbing their eyes 6,000 fiendishly clever blogposts later, saying "Hey. Wait a minute!"

Memorial day at the mall

 

My darling wife and I went to the mall on Memorial Day.

Which mall?

THE MALL!

I have been refurbishing my wardrobe as it was badly in need of it. This presented me an opportunity to alter my tenue.

Tenue?

Oh, that's French for outfit, or "bearing".

I have for some years been expressing my relationship to the culture in my clothes through obscure references to underappreciated art, like with a baseball shirt advertising a TV show that only exists in a series of novels about a murderbot who self hacked its way to autonomy. And I have also been putting a lot of my own creations on shirts, particularly bughearts and pictures of cats.

But I am moving on now to fashion- less semiology, more sense of personal style!

Or I am trying. It's hard to find much fashion out in the stores. Or maybe I don't mean fashion. Indeed, it suddenly occurs to me that fashion has two wildly contradictory meanings:

1. Cutting edge, creative and innovative displays of aesthetic style.

and...

2. What pretty much everyone is wearing, selling, or making at any given time.

The mall is fashion in the second sense. 

I am looking for clothes in the first sense.

This is not impossible, but it does bog down quickly.

For instance, I did find some railroad pants. These are denim carpenter style pants in vertical stripes of off-white and denim blue.

I love these pants so very very much. 

I even bought two identical pairs, that's how much I love them.

If you saw me you would definitely notice the pants. They are striking and unique to the clothes one usually can find for, or see on men.

But it's not like I could only find these pants in one place.

And, conversely, it's not like I can find them in all kinds of interesting variations. 

These striking pants are available in some very similar version in at least half a dozen stores that I've seen. Which is great. But also, they are extremely close to being the same pants, in design, color, and styling, no matter what store they are in. There are no green and blue striped ones, or purple and yellow, or velvet ones, for example.

There is just this one kind of blue and white striped carpenter pants like for railroad engineer cosplaying.

It could be better, but it's better than nothing.

By a lot, actually.

After all, in hundreds of stores, there may be only one, single, tiny variety of pants for me, but...

Oh I like these pants!

Fox and Skunk walk down memory lane

 

I suppose I should never have wandered down into the clerkmanifesto sub-basement archives. There is a ton of stuff down there!

I have been writing clerkmanifesto since the 1800's! I thought about bringing up some of the old posts to show you, but boy did I go on about William McKinley! That stuff has not aged well.

Every time I come across an old, water-damaged fox and skunk picture though I bring it right up! To me they never stop being interesting.

Central park

No, not the Central Park. Near where I work is also a Central Park, although what it is at the center of is a little more ambiguous than the New York one. It's a pretty nice park though, and I ran out on work for a few hours a week or two ago to meet a dear friend who was about to undergo some terrifying surgery. 

Before and after seeing him, I took some pictures of geese there.

There are some lovely Northern style swamps in the area, and they were full of geese!

Friendly geese!

Approachable geese!

Even...

Baby geese!

During the Springtime in these areas we simply have tons of these wonderful geese, but, sadly, as the season progresses, their numbers mysteriously and dramatically dwindle. By mid June it can be hard to find any geese!

Anyway, now that I have some time off from work, and am not consumed with tales of the irregularities of library policies and the peculiarities of patrons, I am able to gather together some of these geese pictures for you to enjoy. 

You are going to love them!

Like, a lot.

So get ready to have an unusually good time looking at geese!