Squid follows The Malin Chronicles as Seaside's new city manager settles in, making friends and furniture.

CRAIG'S LISTS…As Squid curled up in the lair this weekend, taking shelter from the driving rain, Squid’s top priority was finding activities to take Squid’s mind off of Donald Trump, whose squirrel-like mane has been haunting Squid’s dreams.

First, Squid watched Mad Max: Fury Road for the third time—masterpiece!—but after that, Squid figured it was time to catch up on some reading. Squid wasn’t so much ready to commit to a novel, and after going through a couple back issues of The New Yorker, Squid’s reading took an unexpectedly delightful turn.

Since early February, new Seaside City Manager Craig Malin has been sporadically publishing a “Manifest” on the city’s website, described as “a weekly summary that cares more about brevity than grammar, and what is about to or could happen in Seaside than what did or didn’t.”

In Malin’s Feb. 1 manifest, his first, Malin’s leadership style immediately shines through.

“Team Work Talk The Talk – Regularly scheduled individual meetings with department heads are stopped in favor of weekly meetings with the entire team. Football teams don’t have 11 separate huddles before they run a play.

“Team Work Walk The Walk – HR and City Manager’s Office agree to share staff, saving about $20K a year. More importantly, the four corners of the building stop acting like corners.”

Later in the manifest, Malin riffs on the open door policy to his office.

“An observation—my predecessor went with an open door to the closet/restroom and a closed door to employees and visitors. I just switched it around.”

Who is this guy?

In his Feb, 8 manifest, Malin excerpts some passages from books on his shelf, then sums up their meanings.

In summing up a passage from The Lonely Crowd, a treatise on over-conformity, Malin writes: “Conformity is death for the soul (and can infect entire organizations, communities and nations). If you’re practical and hard-headed, you run the risk of being mistaken for a traffic engineer.”

In the Feb. 15 manifest, Malin has some fun with former city manager John Dunn.

“Former City Manager Dunn was honored at Friday’s FORA Board meeting for, among other things, ‘avoiding the temptation to access trendy technical applications.’ This did not stop me from tweeting that the Board made him wait through one last closed session before voting on the resolution acknowledging his long record of service.”

Malin also writes about an invite to the Pebble Beach Pro-Am: “Developer sends complimentary tickets. I send them back. You could have in-dugout tickets to the Cubs World Series, but I’d rather watch the game on television—or even have it described to me by a Cardinals or White Sox fan—than owe a developer a favor.”

In most recent manifest, dated Feb. 29, Malin leads with his thoughts about development plans, and channels Gen. George Patton: “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”

Whoa!

Later in that manifest, we learn Malin can also build furniture?

“A new evening/weekend task will be hand-crafting some high-quality, mid-century furniture for the Council Chambers so staff can be productive (and comfortable) at meetings.”

Malin also lets on that his open door policy has hit some bumps.

“Open Door Policy Under Review—Random woman wanders in, grabs handful of candy and leaves, can’t muster up a ‘thanks.’”

Squid was planning on visiting Malin later this week to test the open-door policy, but instead of stealing candy and running away, Squid wants to drop treats off, a welcome to Seaside gift or something. But if Malin won’t take AT&T tickets from a developer, would he take shrimp-flavored popcorn from a cepholopod?