Immutable law of co-workers

 

I was replacing one of my co-workers this evening at the front desk of the library. I asked them where they were going.

"I'm going to the phones, unless you want to answer them for me." They responded.

I called their bluff. "I'd be delighted to answer the phones for you!"

They didn't really want me to answer the phones. They were just kidding.

They would never want me to answer the phones for them, and so I would be genuinely happy to answer the phones for them.

The weird, sad rule is:

The co-workers who almost never want your special help are the very ones you would be happy to give it to. And the co-workers who always call on your help don't deserve it.

My evil policy

 

I make no secret that issuing library cards is probably my least favorite desk task. It has some nice, social elements if one wants to make a production of it, and it has a beauty in its partaking of ancient library traditions, but it is too rote and data entry heavy to really be satisfying. And anything with data entry feels increasingly dated to me these days anyway. There has got to be another way! Also, I would maybe feel more tolerant of library card registrations if people treated them with more gravity. Why would someone drive 40 miles across the metro area to try and get their first library card here? And I suspect that many people also get library cards just to get a library card, and not because they want check out a book or use a service that requires a library card.

Honestly, if library cards weren't so tedious to issue, these little peculiarities wouldn't get to me at all. Library cards for everyone! Open the floodgates! Let flow a river of library cards!

But after explaining all the library card... stuff, and typing in:

Location

Patron type

Name

Birthday

Scanning a barcode

Address line 1

City, State

Zip code

Check email

Check preoverdue

Email address

Phone

Type

Stat class

Pin

A few dozen times, my mind wanders down darker paths. And here is the horrible policy I've come up with:

If a person gets a library card and in the next week does not check anything out or access any of our services, their account will be locked and they will be denied all future library service forever!

Not that they'll care. Let's face it, we're never seeing any of these people ever again.

I apologize in advance

 

A bisexual man went to the annual Gay Pride Parade in his town. He was an avid off-road biker and was going to ride with his group of like-minded enthusiasts in the parade. Unfortunately, he was late, and his group had already departed along the parade path. Not wanting to miss out, and very proud of his mountain bike that was all decorated up for the festivities, he looked for a group he could possibly attach himself to. After much milling about he found a friendly-looking bunch of unicyclists gathered together and getting ready to depart into the parade.

"Hey." He asked politely. "I missed my group, and I was wondering, if it's okay with you, could I ride with you guys on the parade?"

"I'm sorry." The group leader answered. "We're The Gay Unicyclists. You're a bicyclist."

Neighborhood pride

Since we sold our house and returned to apartment living, our neighbors have become less distinct to me. Not having land to take care of, sidewalks to shovel, and buildings to maintain creates a more anonymous sense of who my neighbors are.

But this morning one of my neighbors had, sometime in the morning before we ventured outside, become the Vice Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. So that was kind of a big deal, and hard not to notice. News crews were all over the place and we were very proud. I mean, how many of your neighbors have ever become Vice Presidents?

Yes, zero. But don't worry. I'm sure your neighborhood is very nice anyway.

Dan and the weather

 

On a rainy Monday, I am out at the front desk of the library with Dan. It is busy! And Dan is not happy about it.

"I don't understand why anyone would go out on a day like this!" He exclaimed.

He doesn't like the rain.

If he were home, he would be on the couch, he said.

And so, outraged, he went off to shelve requested books. 

And left me at the front desk to help everyone by myself.

But I don't mind. I like everyone. And I feel sorry for them. 

They're all wet.

Your daily infusion of WISDOM

 

Sure, you can read the complete works of Emerson in order to become more wise, but who has time for that?

I don't have time for that.

That's why for all my wisdom needs I read CLERKMANIFESTO.

I write it too, but that's not really the point today.

Clerkmanifesto comes in convenient daily bite-sized portions. And unlike poems, for instance, it uses the "micro-dose" method of wisdom purveyance. When you read a clerkmanifesto column, which often contains just a few short paragraphs, you will usually not even be able to spot the wisdom. That's because the wisdom in clerkmanifesto is often untraceable to the human eye. But each post is packed with a tiny microscopic bit of wisdom that stimulates your natural wisdom impulse. You may say "What is this nonsense he's going on about today?"

But your soul is saying:

"Ahhhhhhhhhh."

I will buy all your AI's

 

Though my impulse is simply to show you all my short AI films of animals in my library, this space no longer supports video and never did very well at it when it actually did sort of support video anyway. 

Also, I know that many of you aren't all that wild about AI. 

Fair enough. I'm agnostic on it myself.

Nevertheless this use of AI is my current creative obsession, and I am burning through paid credits as fast as I can buy them. I am absolutely enthralled with creating partially fake pictures of my library and trying to bring them to life. It is complete magic to me.

When it works.

The delicious AI video maker I am using, which is the best one there is currently available, is a Chinese one called Kling. And like all good AI at this point, it is one part more than I ever dreamed of, one part deranged lunatic, and one part deer in the headlights simpleton.

It is a weird combination.

It is very capricious.

It may not understand English, but sometimes it might read my mind.

After struggling with two different AI photography programs I was able to put a decent Mastodon into the physical space of my library. When I put that picture into Kling to try to make it a movie, it produced very plausible video of the space, except it insisted on treating the Mastodon as a kind of 3D statue. Usually I give up on this sort of thing. Obstinately this time I burned through credits trying to get the AI to bring my Mastodon to life. After hours of tries the Mastodon walked.

"It's alive!" I cried with joy.

I post things like this to YouTube.

Every rare once in awhile I get a comment. It's usually something like:

"That is some great AI. I hate AI."

Fair enough.

https://youtube.com/shorts/zMzZB415YJk

Moment of fortune

 

You go through a lot in life.

I mean you, personally.

But it has happened to me too.

So I know it's rough out there. And the way the odds work, I know that you had to have deserved more.

And I am keeping count.

But even though you didn't get the best deal maybe.

And it came from a crooked deck.

Playing at a table of cheaters.

Remember that time you still got lucky past your wildest dreams?

This happened to me too.

Books that tell the tale

 

A young person came to the front desk with a friend to check out their books. I don't know why they didn't want to use the self check out machines. I'm a lot of fun, but they couldn't know that.

I scanned their card. A book on the account was listed as overdue. It was called "Would I Lie to You".

""Would I Lie to You" is overdue." I said. "Would you like me to renew it?"

"I already returned it." The person said.

"You already returned it?" I asked.

"What does it look like?" They asked. "Can you show me the screen?"

"I don't have a picture of it on here."

The person turned to their friend. "You have that book." They accused.

The friend didn't react.

I renewed the book "Would I Lie to You."

Yes, yes they would.

  

We're number two

 

Forgive me, I am not usually one for the more nationalistic elements of the Olympics. But the current medal count has nevertheless captured my attention. It feels... metaphoric.

As I write, which is all I can work with, the U.S. has the most medals of any country. They have (fine, we have) four golds, and twelve each of bronze and silver- so we curiously have three times as much of each the silver and bronze than we do of first place gold. In medal count France is second (hometown advantage!) with 23. China is third with 18 medals. With our 28 medals, we're positively killing it with our top three finishes!

But all that is just about finishing in the top three. When it comes to actually winning Olympic events, the U.S. is way back, floundering in 7th place! South Korea, Britain, Australia, China, France, and Japan have all won more events than my country.

Which would be fine if we were a more chill kind of a nation. It would be fine if we were just happy to be there. It would be fine if we weren't trying to rule over everything in the world that we can possibly get away with. But that's not the way we roll. We're more of a "We're number one!" kind of a country.

Well, I mean, we used to be.

Every four years

 

I try not to repeat myself around here... much, but the Olympics tend to evoke a similar reaction in me, and they come around every two or four years. So I sort of forget and am yet again inclined to come here and say:

I really like the Olympics.

I get a little obsessed by the Olympics.

In the pre-cursor version of Clerkmanifesto, from the mid nineties, there was my cartoon: I. E. Skin's Guide to All There Is to Know. And even back in 1996 this was all true, and I was compelled to go on about the Olympics in precisely the same way I am now.

For your reference:

Not much has changed in my feelings from this from 28 years ago. In fact, I even have the heat rash of concentric circles on my forehead again! The wonders of human achievement are as enthralling to me as they ever were. Indeed, the biggest difference is that the technology has changed and made everything even better. On my computer right now I can pull up any event. I can watch them in replay at any time I want. I can watch them with subtitles if I need to. I can watch them on my phone in the library stacks. I (mostly) have no commercials. I can watch four events all at once, shifting my focus wildly to take in the peak moments of each competition. It is all amazing! 

But it is also far, far worse. There is vastly more to see now of the Olympics, and my little cartoon joke about barely having time to go to the bathroom is all the more true! With the deciding set of a live archery challenge in play, it would be better to just... hold it.

The obsessive coverage of U.S. athletes has not gone away completely, but it is so avoidable that I hardly notice it. I'm even willing to cheer for some American athletes. Although in rooting for the U.S. women's gymnastics team as they won their gold medal, I could not help but note in all the jubilation that I never even saw who won the bronze and silver. I was kind of hoping Italy did well. I might have to check out some of the replay.

Finally, as to cartooning not being an Olympic sport, well, blogging isn't either. But all these years later I'm far more comfortable with that. All my Nobel Prizes keep me company. One can't win everything.

Proving there are animals in the library

 

Having seventy pictures of mine on display at my library, showing all manner of animals, cartoon characters, and biblical calamities taking place in the library I have worked in for decades has telegraphed to the public that these might not be real events. No one has asked me when Charlie Brown visited our library. And seeing a picture of a Peanuts character tends to tip people off that a picture of, say, a lion lying around in front of our front desk, no matter how realistic it looks, might not be entirely authentic.

And yet despite all of this my colleagues and I are still regularly called upon to explain that, no, we have never had a tiger in the library freely adventuring through our stacks. And though the fact of this reflects well on the verisimilitude of my photos, it's not that fun to explain. I used to end up resorting to invoking the partially true word "Photoshop", which people grab onto like it's the holy grail. The illusion is dispelled. No one has learned anything. And magic is dead. 

People don't like the more enigmatic answers about these pictures any better, and I have probably tried all together too many different solutions to the problem of: 

How does your magic trick work?

And so, in a sense, this is just another solution attempt. 

But I really like this one!

And the solution is:

Try to make the magic trick even bigger!

(I am sorry I could not embed these here. Unfortunately, that feature seems to have broken, but the link clicking should be brief, simple, and mildly rewarding)

https://youtube.com/shorts/JzWOa4H7EjY?si=FygIvnD3L0RTXqtB

https://youtube.com/shorts/eK6PJk8MyAw?si=VVk3RkYrw1Y0aAWA

https://youtube.com/shorts/5pJZYPtCKYs?si=5jyd2Y6sFsYF9CXg

https://youtube.com/shorts/Lf5TG4-oLkY?si=fOcGcJdehdw2MH6i

I am Gen X

 

Growing up there wasn't much talk of generations. There were just The Baby Boomers, gigantic in every way, blotting out everything else beyond them, like a massive planet passing before the sun. And while on the one hand I grew up feeling I missed many of the greatest things, the explosion in music and art, The Beatles! Dylan! Melanie! The Godfather! that had all happened 10 or 15 years before my coming of age, it also felt like I was getting all the scraps left behind by some kind of a once-in-a-century locust swarm. My many schools at every stage were all marked by interesting experimental programs that were ending and becoming more conservative and institutional. Reagan was elected. The dream was over.

But as I got older, and the wicked Baby Boomers started growing old and getting vilified by subsequent disenchanted generations, I found that I, having reaped none of the benefits, was somehow mistakenly placed as a baby boomer by a mere 64 days! I don't know what cloistered statistician cast these generational lines so poorly, but as "Boomer" became a resounding epitaph to some qualities and benefits that I never partook of, I was helpless. The dates were somehow set in stone.

Until Kamala Harris came along.

Kamala is seven days older than me! She is, technically, seven days more a boomer than I am! And as the biggest figure to loom up out of this year, suddenly those generational lines are back in play. Kamala Harris cannot be a breath of fresh air and the hope of Democracy and yet also a Boomer! It doesn't make any sense.

And so it was that I read today: 

Kamala Harris identifies as Gen X.

So do I, Kamala. So do I.

Passion fruit

 

Passionately watching cozy British competition shows with my lovely wife is such an engaging pastime that we have been forced to circle round and start watching them all over again. We are currently on our second go-round with the OG of the genre: The Great British Baking Show. I usually can't remember for sure who wins any given season, but I do seem to remember enough on the second watch that it takes out some of the worse tension of the viewing.

Oh yes, there is plenty of tension in British competition shows, sometimes a little too much. So... they are even cozier the second time around! I like everybody better now that I don't need to worry so much about any particular person winning or losing. Everyone is getting a second chance here.

But boy, this show sure does make me hungry. Or not hungry, exactly, it makes me want to make and eat elaborate baked sweets all day long. Unfortunately, eating rich, sweet baked confections all day long is likely not terribly good for me. In fact, it is probably healthiest for me to eat them... never. And though I'd like to say that this is the kind of thing I could perhaps compromise on, it doesn't really work like that.

And nothing, no ingredient gets me going quite like (as happens surprisingly often) when someone uses passionfruit.

Oh passionfruit!

I don't think I even encountered a real live passionfruit more than about 15 years ago. And it was also about that time I encountered some passionfruit pastry of the most extraordinary kind at a French bakery in Edina.

Do you know what the main street of Edina is?

France Avenue.

So of course they had a fabulous passionfruit patisserie.

But does this all mean I hadn't encountered the flavor of passionfruit until I was in my forties?

No. Let us return to my childhood and one of my all-time favorite sickening indulgences of my preteens: Hawaiian Punch Red.

This was a hideously sweet commercial fruit punch drink. Its main flavor was passionfruit. And I only liked it one way: When it came in a mix-with-water sugar flavor mix in a tin, and a person could use far more than the appropriate amount when making a drink. The best part was when one drank the increasingly strong liquid and got to a kind of syrupy passionfruit flavored sugar slurry at the bottom. It was passionfruit heaven, though I didn't know it was passionfruit at the time...

Nor how close I must have been to instant diabetes. 

Manufacture of my own demise

 

A package was delivered to me at the front desk of the library. Alas, it wasn't for me, it was for a children's librarian who has lately also become a branch manager. I brought it into the kid's room because they are nice and fun to talk to. But they said the librarian in question was not around and the package should probably just go upstairs. I told them that I only do special deliveries to the kid's room and that the upstairs librarians don't deserve it, so I would put the package in its normal place by the mailboxes.

They understood.

Then I hurried back to find a small group of people needing help at the front desk. They had been able to log onto the computers with their card, but once logged on to the computer it wouldn't let them do anything.

Curious!

I started to head out to the computers and asked them to show me where they were logged in. They said they were upstairs!

"Oh." I said. "There should be librarians up there who could help you."

They all got a real sad look on their faces.

"No. They wouldn't help us." One of them said grimly.

So I helped the little group get going on some computers downstairs.

But I understood about the librarians upstairs.

They probably needed that package.

Jewish joke

 

Sometimes a good joke simply comes one's way. And maybe it's a little too perfect to be terribly funny. But it's right there! And with this one, as a Jew, I could especially appreciate its tailor made quality. 

I was technically the author of this joke, but fundamentally it wrote itself.

Or...

Perhaps there was an even greater author!

Anyway, it's all pretty brief, so pay close attention.

The following DVD (pictured below) was left to the more unused side of our front desk, across from The Friends of the Library Used Bookstore. It is not an item from our collection, and presumably it was left for us where I found it for reasons that will soon become clear.

This is the DVD as I found it:

I picked up the DVD wondering why it was there. It felt light. I opened it. This is what I found:

Empty.

Excitedly I held it aloft and proclaimed, Jewishly:

"There is no Son of God!"

I did this six or seven times to not much laughter, either because my audience didn't even know it was a joke, or, as Christians, didn't appreciate it, or people simply found it wasn't funny. Six of one...

And then, as eventually happens with all that delights or interests me at my library, I, like a neighborhood cat, grabbed it in my teeth and brought it to lay at your door.

Playing in the water

 

In what is surely the last of my modifications of pictures taken on an exploratory neighborhood walk recently, I have once again returned to my local creek.

I have taken a lot of pictures of this creek!

I have taken thousand of pictures of this creek!

And, as you know, most of these are just close-up pictures of all the water churning around and creating magical abstract effects, and vivid clusters of bubbles.

It's a living.

Oh, it's not? I'm not a professional creek photographer?

Hmmmm....

Good point. I have never actually been compensated, oddly, in any way for taking detailed pictures of the waters of my local creek.

Which makes my behavior even more peculiar!

But whatever is going on here (your guess is as good as mine), I took even more pictures of the creek on my walk! And I had to do something with them, so I've been fiddling around all morning. Oddly the whole thing was more difficult than I thought it would be, and I feel there is more promise here than result.

We have what we have right now, and here they are:

Bunny cosplay

 

In a recent column I showed you some pictures of a neighborhood walk. Because I did not see any bunnies on this walk, there were no bunny pictures. I was really keen on getting some bunny pictures on this walk because this has been an all time record Summer for bunnies. Nevertheless it was a disappointment I had learned to live with. 

But then I realized I did have a couple of pictures of squirrels.

And squirrels are almost bunnies!

Why, to a mad scientist of photography, like myself, and to a small squirrel with a big dream, they can be bunnies!

So here are three bunny pictures for you.

Is it madness?

Is it unholy?

Or is it...

Genius!

Positivity as a sink

 

"Hey," A reader writes in. "You're always writing about how great your library is, and how funny and charming all the library patrons are, and how thoughtful the management is, and how lovely and gracious your co-workers all are. Doesn't anything ever bother you?"

Well...

There is this one, tiny, wee little thing. 

I don't like when one offers to do something nice for someone and they ascribe selfish motives to it.

My example is from earlier today:

A patron approached the front desk of my library. They had a dollar. "I needed to pay for a printout they helped me with at the Reference Desk." The patron said. "But they didn't have change and said you could help."

This is true!

I gave them change for the dollar and, since they were clearly pocketing all the change without looking at it, told them that I couldn't take the payment for printing, but they could put it in any of the lockboxes next to any of the copiers or printers.

This person got super confused super fast! So I explained it all again and pointed out the nearest convenient lockbox, across the library.

The patron gazed out into the distance and remained resolutely confused. So I took pity.

"If you want to give me the twenty cents I could walk over and drop the money in the box when I get the chance."

The patron slid me over their two thin dimes and, now understanding everything, said "Need to get your steps in, eh?"

Other than that everything is basically perfect here.

The soul of discretion

 

While I am shockingly frank with the library visitors I help at the front desk and on the phones, and though I might say all manner of daring things that occur to my fervid mind, I don't say everything. I read my audience. I don't want to offend anyone. I don't want to confuse people more than necessary. And I certainly don't want to make anyone feel bad, unless they really, really deserve it.

For instance, in the recent kerfuffle with computers worldwide, we had no public Internet for two whole days. We have over a hundred Internet computers and a large chunk of our library population is passionately devoted to them. Some of these people simply left upon finding we had no computers. Some asked endless questions about it hoping for a loophole that would allow them onto the Internet after all. And several cried out to me:

"But what am I supposed to do here then?!!!??"

At a library, no less.

I did not say: "You could read a book."

Though I will admit that I tried to convey it with my body language .

Another recent example involved a man for whom I was registering a library card. During one of the short periods where I was putting in information, but didn't need anything actively from him, he wanted to know if he could look for something briefly and come back. Because I would have an occasional essential question for him, and, crucially, because other library patrons would think that I was thus available to help them as there was no one standing there, I said "No."

I did not add:

"You are my human meat shield."

You might be surprised to find that there actually is an audience for a comment like that. Unfortunately, there is no Venn diagram overlap between them and the people who would want to wander off while getting a library card.