Dancing with the Fishes

You’re a business tycoon, you know how it goes. Deals here, offers there, and that constant, nagging question of where to put all this money? It’s always about stowing the cash, isn’t it? What do ya do, buy another bank? Invest in Squishmellows, or whatever those things they sell at Costco are…

Costco – don’t get me started. I read somewhere that straight white men buy their pants at Costco. I think I have a pair of Levi’s that I didn’t buy there, but my pants, my shirts, my jackets, my hats, my socks, my underwear, and most of the stuff I eat… jeez, it’s creepy when you look at it like that!

Creepy, isn’t it?

So, that’s not the point of this post, is it? No, no it’s not.

The point of this post – oh, yesterday I was working on a new post for my NEW website – that’s what we’re talking about today – but we bought this absolutely epic-sized wardrobe for my grad-student daughter’s room. Like she’s going to use it, because she’s only here, like, three weeks out of the year, between school and archaeological digs and her west-coast boyfriend’s family that owns cabins in the woods… what? Anyway, I needed some direction from the Ikea directions – I swear, sorting them out was like trying to sort out cooked spaghetti without the sauce, knowwhattamean?

Not the point except that, to find help for the instructions online and not be forced to watch a half-hour video that may or may not apply, I had to turn to AI.

So, AI is answering the questions that used to go to Google, because the Google answers have all gone to AI. AI now stands for Ain’t It Interesting…

THE POINT OF THIS POST

There’s a new website in the world, and it’s mine. It’s called TumbleBump, and it’s got a huge collection of one post. One.

From the mighty oak springs the walnut, or something like that.

I’ve been wrestling with the 3D-making program Blender for three days now, and my wee little walnut is fried beyond smoked. True story!

You see, my friendly sister-site, Skippity Whistles, features really nifty illustrations. It’s a friendly site all about the why of DIYing stuff – not why you would fix it yourself, but the why behind you’d use linesman pliers instead of slip-joints – you know, that kind of thing.

The illustrations are popular enough that I’ve been encouraged to start a podcast, called The Three Point Line, that details how I make the details in the drawings.

That encouraged me to release this dopey video called Who Ate the Fish that I made before I left California, the success of which prompted me to put it in a playlist called John D Reinhart Unsupervised. Don’t ask me, because I don’t know.

And now TumbleBump, a screwy name for a site dedicated to explaining the why behind cooking, aimed at Gen-Zers who are facing their kitchens and thinking “I could use this room for something…”

My wise idea was to create distinctive illustrations in Blender – it’s all kitchen stuff, right? How hard could it be to make that stuff in 3D? Honestly? It turns out there are folks who do it for a living.

Let’s just say the graphic artist seems to be the bottleneck in production over at TumbleBump. And at Skippity Whistles. And at The Three Point Line. Hmmm. Seems to be a pattern.

Why all these sites? They all LEAD to something, you see. Passive income, my friend. Skippity and Tumble sell Amazon products, while The Three Point and Unsupervised sell me. Clever, you say. You don’t know the half. Sadly, neither do I!

All this because the contract I’ve been waiting for since December just hasn’t arrived, and Central Casting New York hasn’t finished my paperwork, and the remote jobs on Indeed are about training AI and I’m not the droid they’re looking for. Move along.

It’s all a vast, vast puzzle – you know how it is when you open the jigsaw box and spread the pieces out on the table. Nothing relates to anything and you wonder why you opened the box in the first place.

Because it all results in something terrific.