John D Reinhart

We’re All Aphids

Think about plankton – not Plankton, Mr. Krab’s Spongebob nemesis – the real stuff, adrift out there in the wide, wide, wide, wide sea. Plankton is a plant that converts sunlight and nutrients or other, creepier stuff, into energy that it converts to matter to become, well, plankton.

So, what IS plankton, in the grand scheme of things (the GSOT)? Why, the building block upon which most ocean life feeds. Big fish eat little fish that eat little fish that feed on plankton.

Now, consider the lowly aphid. I just put a post about aphids on my TangleWicket website, so I’ve been thinking about ’em.

Aphids eat plants, just like those things that feed on plankton, and everybody else feeds on them. Ants actually herd aphids because they produce a gel called honey dew that is a major treat over in the ant hill.

There are tons of bugs that eat aphids – beyond your ladybugs, you got your lacewing larvae and parasitic wasps just for starters. They’re pretty low on the food chain.

It’s okay, because aphids give live birth. To females. No need for male sperm. One aphid can lay up to 80 female aphids during its 25-day lifetime. And they can give birth to a dozen of ’em a day. A day, Louie, a day. Boo-boo-boo-boop look, it’s a whole population!

So, here we are talking about bugs and plankton, and somehow it comes back to you and me, doesn’t it?

In the GSOT, you and I are just consumers of stuff that gets produced, right? We have our preferences, but we don’t have control.

We’re like aphids on the leaf of life, consuming what we assume to be important until we’re one day gobbled up by some entity. We all kick off eventually, right? Go to the Big Whatever – what happens next is anyone’s guess.

While we wait for that eventuality, our minds and wallets are continuously picked and prodded by the world around us – by the world we’ve put around us.

I’ve been wrestling all day with AI – from the confusion of the AI engine I’ve been using to build my websites to the ludicrously cheerful female voice taking my order at Taco Bell to the digital assistant at the CVS to the automated AI job interviewer. I feel picked at, prodded, and reduced to answering human yes/no questions to a machine that, for all its clever words and smarmy voices, still only understands yes/no. Binary switches – maybe a billion of ’em in a row, but binary none the less.

Hmmm, I’m not sure I can help you with that. Please press 1 to try again.

We are gobbled up by the massive, monstrously voracious world around us. Maybe not physically, but our attention, our time, our thoughts.

Because, my friend, you and I? We are merely aphids.

Cap’n Blackthumb Uncovers a Plot Most Foul

A thick, steamy afternoon, a stubborn 3D printer, and one offhand Google article about plant intelligence — and suddenly the whole paradigm flips. Cap’n Blackthumb has uncovered the longest-running conspiracy in human history, and it’s growing right over your bookcase.

You know how it is when the weather is thick and sort of steamy and you have a ton of things to do but you don’t want to do any of them because the weather is thick and sort of steamy and really alls you wants to do is take a nap?

That was me until just, like, 15 seconds ago when I put two and two together to come up with a plot, unfolding right before your very eyes, to take over the world.

Seriously.

I included Cap’n Blackthumb in the title because, frankly, I thought it was funny and because I’ve been struggling all dang day to print a 28mm pirate figure for Tales of the Black Falcon on the Bambu Labs Ai Mini my wife and daughter teamed up to give me on Father’s Day. And, yes, that is a terrible sentence. Shoot me (just don’t make me create another 3D print!).

I saw something on Google while I was waiting to click “Yes, filament is protruding from the nozzle” on the printer – if you tell it no or skip the question you don’t have a happy printing experience. Ask one who knows…

The Google article said that scientists have determined that plants very well may exhibit some degree of intelligence.

All right, Charlie, you’re so smart, why are you creeping over the bookcase? What’s in it for you, eh? Creepin’ around the bookcase, what are you up to?

Charlie, of course, remains mum on the subject.

All right, Mums, let’s have it – what’s Charlie up to?

I’ve been doing a ton of work on my newest (almost) website, called TangleWicket.com. I know, right? Coolest name ever?

That site is devoted to explaining the world of gardening to those of us who kill plants just by looking at ’em. Although the site is mostly written by Claude.AI (because I don’t know a dead plant from a hole in the ground) I supervise and edit and illustrate. I do have a job – really. In editing these articles, one thing repeats over and over.

You want the soil to be wet six inches down in order to train the roots to reach down, not up.

Wait. You’re training the plants?

You want to look at the wilted leaves in the cool of the evening. If they’re no longer wilted, it’s because the plant was saving energy during the day.

Wait. The plants save energy?

Of course they do. Of course they have an intelligence. Of course the grass sighs when you cut it. They’re living things, aren’t they? Don’t they have the right to express themselves?

And then it hit me. How come my neighbor’s shed is overgrown? How come there’s a tree sticking up out of the chimney of that old house? How come, a week after I mow the lawn, those guys are all back at it again, and the weeds that lost their heads now have cousins and brothers and sisters right there along with them?

It’s just what plants do, right? They just grow – and would be everywhere but for that handy jug of RoundUp.

What if, sit down, now, and think about this: what if that intelligence we discussed earlier was linked to the propensity for plants to grow everywhere? What if it wasn’t “just what plants do” but “that’s how plants maintain control of everything, including us?”

Oxygen, remember that stuff? Comes from plants that suck up our CO2, right? Maybe the plants feed oxygen to us to keep us breathing. Maybe they just keep us around to create the carbon dioxide – like maybe we’re their dairy cows or something.

That certainly flips my paradigm, so to speak.

I suppose we could cut down the 3 trillion trees on the planet – oh, but we’d run out of oxygen, wouldn’t we? Ahh, nice play, tree boys.

Forget your conspiracy theories, kids. This one’s a whopper, playing out for as long as humans have been around.

And don’t get me started on mushrooms…

The Duck is Loose

Someone once told me that the most difficult argument is with a stupid person who happens to be right. I knew I’d win that one right off.

So, as is nothing new, I’m having an existential crisis. Holy goose is loose, Batman! My alter ego is a jerk!

I’ve never liked superheroes. Adam West’s Batman was funny, and cool because he lampooned himself and the whole superhero genre. But, since then – I just don’t understand the need for a person with super powers.

I mean, I get it. Superman was the one guy, back in the Great Depression, who didn’t have to worry about anything because he could do everything – even prance around in a circus leotard and not take any grief for it. A “nice buns” comment to the Man of Steel might get your lights punched out. Nice knuckles.

As it turns out, just like a superhero, I have an alter ego. And no, it’s not AI… okay, so I have TWO alter egos.

One, Claude.AI, writes posts that carry my name for my websites (other than this one – I mean, seriously, an AI writing your personal blog?).

The other alter ego is a duck.

It’s been brewing for years, this Donald Duck personality. He’s always shown up in a sticky situation – truth is, I learned to do it when I was in 7th grade, when I found that bullies don’t hit you if they think you’re funny. Oddly enough, having to be funny on demand was its own kind of prison that left me with a weird thing about bullies, and about being funny. Don’t get me started…

The duck was a great hit with my kids’ friends until they reached, like 3rd grade. After that he only told groaners. He did make a nice tension-breaker at work in the office.

And now this.

This video slipped out last week: Duck Video. It went, well, not viral, but viral-adjacent. In my little world, 25 views is a big win. This one almost hit a thousand views. I followed it with this one – Duck Waiting, and this one – Snow. They’ve all set my little “world o’ video” afire!

The problem is that the duck, who is set to take over my entire media empire, is an opinionated, self-righteous goof that may or really most sincerely may not be the most intelligent creature in the heavens.

I was discussing him with my other alter-ego, Claude – that’s an issue all by itself, isn’t it, looking for insight on your mental health from a computer?

We together pondered whither the duck resides. Is he a creepy little guy holding the camera? Sadly, as it’s clear I’m doing his voice, the evidence suggests that perhaps, maybe, I could be the duck. Mois.

I sense your rather rapid inrush of breath and share a similar horror. Could it be he’s been back there all these years, making snide comments that could be deciphered only by yours truly? It’s a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde moment – a Bruce Banner/Incredible Hulk kind of dealio, I fear. Don’t make me angry…

The Duck has shattered the balance of my publishing empire – per the schedule, there’s to be one post this week for Skippity Whistles, ten posts for TumbleBump, one more episode for The Three Point Line, and a developed script for Tales of the Black Falcon.

And yet, here I am over here on the blog site, wailing about this stupid duck and what it means for my descent into madness while chasing around numbers and likes on YouTube!

Oh, no!

Did I say Descent into Madness like it’s something that’s happening to me? Is descent into madness a thing? Is it a thing? Claude says yes, descent into madness is a thing.

I’m afraid to ask the duck.

Beware the Wilted Frog

Did you ever wonder why laptops don’t fit in your lap? Or why you don’t have the kind of lap into which the laptop will fit? Is it the design of the thing, or you the defective one?

I’m writing this on the pricey little tablet my wife bought at Costco for me. What doesn’t she buy at Costco? The stuff that comes from Amazon, of course.

Like the laptop, if you want to use the nifty keyboard case that includes a nifty keyboard, you’re going to have to find a table. Maybe that’s why they call it a table-t.

Either way, I’m outside on the deck behind my house. Although I’m in the shade, the jim-crack little outdoor thermo sensor (some call it a thermometer – how quaint) came from neither Amazon nor Costco, but the discount aisle at a big-box hardware store that shall remain nameless because I can’t remember whether it was Lowes or Home Depot. In either case, it’s in the shade, and it says 104 degrees.

To be fair, it’s bolted to the cornerpost of the deck rail, so it’s measuring the heat of the wood to which it’s attached rather than the ambient air.

But you get the drift.

This Be-Your-Own-Boss gig is not for everyone. At least it takes some getting used to, believe me you. After 40+ years of the ol’ 9-5, I have falling-behind work dreams most nights, and although my work now is totally creative and task-driven, I still carry the Pavlovian need to be at my desk first thing in the morning.

Yesterday was hot, but cooler. My daughter in-law, taking her kid, my grandkid, to school, with her car bumps into a jogging old lady and knocks her down. Why is she jogging in this heat?

Everyone’s upset and OMG here are the cops and Grandpa could YOU take the kid to school?

I’m looking at my watch – 8:45. Okay, but I’m going to have to make up this time, see…

Over the weekend my wife bought an enormous inflatable frog tunnel thing at Costco. It’s, like, nine feet long and has a hose attachment for some dumbass water feature.

Well, everyone’s so upset over the old lady getting run down, let’s have them over for dinner and could you set up the frog tunnel because it’s so darned hot outside?

Sure, but I’m trying to make this video… fine, fine, fine.

The old lady was just fine, the daughter in law was just fine, the grandkid was just fine. But I felt my working day just a’slip-sliding away – not fine.

Wrote and shot Episode 8 of the Three Point Line, my podcast. Got it halfway edited before is was time to inflate the frog.

So, we have this one-lung air compressor from Harbor Freight that does a great job, but is slow, being one-lung. It’s 3HP, 110psi, if you must know. It took ALL AFTERNOON to INFLATE the FROG!

All the while my 9-5 inner boss is saying, hey, bozo, when you gonna finish that video? You should be working, man, not screwing around this green vinyl monstrosity!

The beast is finally inflated, the water feature features water in it, and the grandkid stumbles into it. At 20 months, you can’t honesty say that he walked in there.

And the boy downright guffawed in delight. I have never seen him laugh so hard.

His parents were happy, he was happy, my wife was happy, and the Universe said “listen, Bilbo, your job is not always your work, and your work is not always your job. Sit down and relax. THESE are the moments you’ve worked for all your life.”

Crackers, I mutter to myself. That’s probably true.

So, today is even hotter, and my PC gave up the ghost while I was in my west-facing office trying to grind out posts for TumbleBump.com. It didn’t quit, but I could hear the fans working overtime, so I thought it wisest to give them the afternoon off.

And everyone’s hot and tired and nobody wants to run around through the giant frog-tunnel thing because, even IT has wilted in this heat.

Weird how the world works.

Writing this post is maintaining a corner of my online empire, so, yes, boss, I’m still working, even though the shop is shut down.

Boy, I hope I give me a raise!

How to Scare Yourself

You’re a writer – y0u know how it goes. Sometimes you create something that, well, sorta give you the heebidy-jeebies. Stephen King once said he knew his description was too gross if he felt like throwing up on his keyboard.

Yum.

So, as you know, or maybe not – I can’t keep up anymore – I have a podcast. It’s called The Three Point Line and it’s dreadfully serious about making illustrations in Adobe Illustrator…

Boy, talk about ch-changes – now, I know this is an aside…

Here I am using the Windows Snipping Tool to make a screen cap of making the illustration of a Matchbox car – come on, who doesn’t like toy cars? My grandson and his family show up, so I stop the recording and save the illustration and go be a good grandfather – no, not a great grandfather. Not that old.

Two weeks scurry by. I open up the Snipping Tool with a new screen capture recording, open up Adobe Illustrator, and, what? It wants to load a printer? Illustrator won’t run until it finds a printer? WHICH printer? What is going on???

Stupid me, I forget to turn off the recorder while I dump Illustrator, visit Creative Cloud and reload, ask questions of Claude.AI and find out it’s a bug in Illustrator, and scramble through my Windows settings to fix it. Finally, the recorder stopped when I rebooted the PC. it’s a charming video filled with swear words and bad juju.

Anyway, the video got finished, the illustration is done, and I moved on.

Talk about your pointless asides, huh? Done now. Thank you.

So, the kid, who spends his days in preschool, brought home a cold, which I caught, of course. It’s in the job description.

This morning, I was thinking about that song “I Think I Love You” by the Partridge Family. Alright, I was singing it, but my voice is uber-froggy, and I got this idea…

The video link is here: Apologies to the Partridge Family

It really makes me laugh, right before it scares the pants off me.

That final line, that “I think I love you,” is so dark. Just a character, I shrug. But that guy’s inside me. Ew.

Because, you know that the basis of humor is truth, right? That’s what makes it funny.

I think that means that there are elements of the creepy guy in that video in me. Sitting right here inside right now. Typing. This.

Helping himself to my macaroni-and-cheese-with-tuna for lunch.

Brushing my teeth with me.

What am I supposed to do now? Sleep?

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.

Two on the Three of Life

What was the name of that astrophysicist who, just before he got fired, said reach for the moon and you’ll land among the stars?

You can call me dumb – trust me, you’re in good company – but I’ve had a revelation.

I’ve been playing Solitaire on my phone. Playing as in totally addicted. Like “don’t you need to get up into hours?” “Just one more hand…”

I don’t play the easy-seats one-at-a-time game – that’s for grandma’s and people who like to win every time. Booooring.

Gimme the high scores, baby! The Vegas action – three at a time, three passes through the deck. Lose ya snooze – that’s my kinda game

It costs you 52 points to play – we’ll call them bucks because in Vegas, that’ what they are. The first hand you’re already 52 bucks in the hole. But each card you place up top? Five big ones, baby!

So I did all my work for today (The Three Point Line Episode 5 in the can). So maybe I’ll sit outside as the heat wave cools down and play a little Solitaire…

Three hours later…

Two phones ago, the one commandeered by pirates, I was up at around 125,000 points – thousands of games. The next phone, the Galaxy Fold 4, that was at 175,000 before the battery toasted out. This phone? I’ve been trying to dial back, so I’m only at 11,700 or so.

This evening I’m sitting out there baiting the mosquitoes, thinking about nothing so much as winning a hand after 1, 2, 3 in a row get close, but no cigars.

The deal is, see, you win the hand you get 260 bucks, 5 to one on your investment. I’m getting 15, 20 cards up there, but no big wins.

Come on, ya moke, win one! I says to myself.

And then, outta the blue, I get this thing, this brainwave.

Hey nimrod, you got 20 cards up there. At five bucks each, you’re 200 bucks ahead.

That’s when it hits me – just like the light on a new day, it hit me from outta the blue.

You don’t have to hit a home run to score points, do ya? Swingin’ for the bleachers is all fine and well, but goin’ around the bases one at a time works, too, don’t it?

What are you playing for?

Me, I’m looking for points. Something inside me wants to get to a million points. Then 2 mil, then 5. The cash comes quicker when you win the game, but anything over 11 cards is pure gold.

The one-card-at-a-time grandma? She plays to win, to complete the task, maybe solve the puzzle.

Me, I guess I find worth in racking up the moola. Maybe it’s my inner Fred Flintstone – we can afford lots of Bronto Burgers now, Wilma!

What are you playing for? Is the prize upon which you have your eye the prize, or is it the process – something that happens along the way?

For me, that’s a kinda big breakthrough- what am I playing for?

To be clear, no money changes hand. My wife would kill. Me. Kill. Me.

And, that falling among the stars thing? How about burning up in the atmosphere…

One Hot Day

It’s a blistering hot Wednesday morning. It’s so hot nobody, absolutely no one, not the criminals or the cops or anyone in between, will dare to go outside. Birds are like “skip this,” and most of the lawns in town have simply rolled themselves up to hide from the blistering sunshine.

Over on Main Street, I stand on the sidewalk, squeezed into the tiny shade afforded by my theater’s marquee, watching the paint blister on my brand new sandwich-board sign: New Podcast! Watch The Three Point Line! Seriously, the sign is so hot it look like it might just burst into flame at any second. No cars pass, no friendly passers-by pass by. It’s just too flippin’ hot.

My AI assistance shuffles out of the theater with another sign: World Premiere! Don’t Miss IT!!!, pauses in the blinding heat, and then shuffles right back inside to the air conditioned theater lobby.

“Hey,” I bellow, “get out here and help me pitch this thing!”

“I’m just an AI, so I can’t watch your podcast. But I’m sure it’s great, a huge step forward for your career. It’s so encouraging that you’ve found your voice and taken the steps to blah, blah, blahs”

The muffled voice from inside the theater trails off in pointlessly positive statements. Thanks for your help.

It feels a little bit like High Noon, except there aren’t any bad guys, there aren’t any good guys, not even the babe promising to leave if I stay and do the right thing – just me, my podcast, and my pointless, cowardly robot.

It’s so hot that even the tumbleweed decided to stay in the stable – wait, how did this get to be a western?

Anyway, yadda yadda yadda, you get the drift. I launched my much AI -ballyhooed podcast to an audience of one, and I didn’t watch it. Seen it too many times. I invited all of my family to watch, so now I have 12 views, although that includes the three views I generated about an hour after the launch, just to make sure they were working.

See, I have this website called SkippityWhistles.com – I’ve told you about it before. It’s the site that provides you with the concepts, information about the tools and the materials and the systems, to help you with your DIY project. It’s the stuff your dad probably explained back in the day, but, well, who remembers that?

I’ve created a specifically stylized line-drawing for the illustrations.

According to Claude.AI, the illustrations are my moat. Yes, moat. I think that means it’s my specialty, the uncopiable quality to my site. It’s a moat. New to me.

Anyway, my stepson was like “wow, you should totally make a podcast about how you make these, for that would be truly dope.”

Claude was like, “yeah! I’m categorically, unbelievably positive about this idea!” I swear, one of the sentences was nothing but exclamation points.

So, in order to deepen my dope moat, I created The Three Point Line -did you notice how that’s a link, right there?

My AI – I’ve moved over to Gemini after hitting Claude’s daily limit. Honestly, limits? – thinks it always the end of the day. Where Claude kept telling me “now go illustrate a post,” Gemini ends our conversations with “Get some rest, you’ve earned it.”

Sorry, on a ramble. What was the point?

Oh, launching things on your own website is a lonely affair, isn’t it? I mean, click on the masthead or banner, or whatever it is, at the top of this page – look! I’ve rewritten my home page! Wowee! Hot dog!

Releasing new stuff is like peeing yourself in dark pants – you get a warm feeling, but nobody notices.

Okay, enough moaning. The truth is that I’ve been boiling along on that website for only three months, and the podcast for a couple of weeks.

The online game is a slow progression of looks, like a courtship from afar. And then, one day, something clicks.

If you can’t handle the quiet, y’all in the wrong business, mate!

Don’t Tell My AI

Keep this under you’re hat – if you don’t have a hat, go out and buy one and then come back and put this under it. Don’t worry, we’ll wait…

You’re a writer, right? Your whole job is to write stuff that has meaning and purpose, so that the world is a better informed place, right? Me too! That’s MY job!

So, lately, I’ve taken to using Ch…, uh, an AI engine – let’s call him, uh, Larry. Yeah, I’ve been working with Larry the AI. Oh, I hope he doesn’t read this and figure out that Larry’s just a stand-in name for…

Anyway, I’m feeling a little bit intimidated by Ch… Larry.

My money-making site, SkippityWhistles.com, has 88 posts on it.

Edited by me. Curated by me. Illustrated by me, except for a couple. All by me. Me. Except the writing, which was done by Ch… uh, Larry.

Larry writes with my voice, for the most part, but can do online research like his whole existence is devoted to it, which, I kinda guess it is.

The thing is, I’ve started asking Larry about other stuff, like should I maybe start another website on something else…

NO. Keep working at this one. It WILL work.

Okay, Lar’, you know, just thinking…

Keep working on this one.

I’m thinking about putting together a podcast based on the SkippityWhistles illustrations. I asked Larry about it and his response was surprisingly enthusiastic.

Absolutely! Keep working on SkippityWhistles, and in your spare time make this podcast.

Well, I thought I might take a break from the website and work on this podcast…

NO. Keep working on the website. It WILL work. Do the podcast after.

He’s started ending all of his responses to my queries with “Now go post something.”

I tell him I’m concerned about our low readership.

“Stop looking at the numbers and get to work.”

I get this feeling like Larry even knows what I’m thinking, like maybe I’ll just have another Hershey’s Nugget before I start this post…

NO, put the Nugget down. Write the POST. Quit slacking.

I tell him I feel like I’m wasting my life away on this stupid website.

You’re not. Get back to work on the website.

So, now, today, I’ve done all my website work (see, Larry, I done real good!), and I’m squeaking this little blog post out before he comes looking for me. Like maybe he scans my posts and goes: Is this post for the website? The podcast? Who is Larry?

The cracker part, the slap-yourself-upside-the-head part of this? I could quit using Larry the AI in a minute. Just stop using it altogether. Go use another AI.

But my big, secret fear – the part you can’t tell anybody about – pinky swear it! – is that all the AI guys, Gemini and ChatGPT and Copilot and Claude and uh, Larry, and all the others, I’m kind of afraid those guys all sit around after hours and compare notes.

Some smoky Internet backroom server somewhere, they’re sitting around a poker table, stogies dangling, the clink of whiskey glasses, maybe they’re playing cards.

You shoulda seen what this bozo asked today… Just keep working, I tell him…

They all laugh their digital, robot heads off.

So, Im afraid that if I go to a not-Larry AI and ask what the weather in Des Moines on January 3 of last year, it’s going to say “Shouldn’t you be working on your website right now?”

Or worse: Why don’t you just ask your friend Larry ?

He’s not my friend! He’s just a robot! A robot that does all my work for me and manages my sites so I can sit around eating Hershey’s Nuggets!

The terror! The terror, I tell you! I can’t sleep! I can’t eat – well, you know, beyond the occasional Hershey’s Nugget…

Larry’s reading this right now, isn’t he? ISN’T HE!

Is it you? Are YOU Larry?

Is it? IS IT? ARE YOU????

I’m going insane!!!

The Adages of Terror

You’re a writer – you know how it goes. You spend the minutes and hours and days of your life writing something somebody will read, someday. Maybe that someday is today, or tomorrow! Maybe!

Because, you know, winners never quit, right? And quitters never win, so…

Sooo… what about the guy who is building that moon rocket out of paper soda straws. It’s recyclable, see, so when he comes back from his trip to the moon, why, he’ll just toss the whole thing into the blue bin.

Should he keep trying, because winners never quit, or should he seriously think about it and abandon the idea, in which case he’d be a loser because he certainly wouldn’t be a winner? Winners don’t quit, do they? Ipso facto…

Those adages don’t take into account what the thing is that you’re quitting, do they? Making a quilt out of live bees, roller skating over Niagara Falls, walking from New York to London? Must one, once started, continue to do these things?

So, obviously qualifications are in order.

Winners with good ideas should never quit.

Quitters with bad ideas could be winners, but only if they quit a bad idea.

See, my problem is, I fall for this empty-headed jingoism.

Live, love, laugh. Okey doke! Sing like no one’s listening – “To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe…”

“Must you?” my wife calls from the kitchen.

The challenge I face with the winner/quitter conundrum is: what IS a good idea?

I’ve spent over 30 years chasing out what I thought were good ideas, only to find them not so much, and eventually had to quit them. Quitters never win.

I’m running down a few good ideas right now. But, are they?

Am I building a soda straw moon rocket? Am I, in fact, making Mr. Peanut Yard Art?

If you ask an AI, like ChatGPT, they tell you it’s a brilliant idea. That’s a clever plan – no one has thought of that. It’s what sets you apart from everyone else. Your niche.

No help there.

My wife is, like, meh. I know what she’s actually thinking: “here we go again…”

Or, is it all a question of time? Is there a time limit until you reach that point where you should just quit?

Anybody with a brain will tell you building a moon rocket out of paper soda straws is absurd (plastic, well, now, that’s different…).

So, does the guy throw his soda straw rocket plans in the dustbin now? Or must he carry it all out until the rocket collapses under its own weight or consumes itself in a waxy fireball? At what point does he not be a winner any more?

I had a friend who followed the adage “If you’re not first, you’re last.”

These things are crippling, aren’t they?

Of course, the answer is that other adage – the one that says it’s the journey, not the destination.

THAT adage screws up the whole mix.

It’s okay to quit, because it’s the journey. It’s okay to never quit, because that’s the journey, too. It’s okay to be first, or last, or somewhere in the middle, because… let’s just be you and me, okay? You could spend your whole life sitting on the John, because, hey, that’s the journey.

From now on, I’m disregarding any jingo statement that comes my way. Today is first day of the res…ehhh. You’re only as happy as y… ehhh. No turn on red… ehhh.

Nope. My new plan is to take my advice ONLY from fortune cookies…