There are disappearances that make sense, and then there is the vanishing of Jimbo Rannitz—the sort of exit that suggests the universe itself filed a complaint and demanded immediate remediation. Twelve years this March. That’s how long it’s been since I last heard from the man, though the silence he left behind speaks volumes in a language I’m still trying to decode.
You’ve felt that tug, haven’t you? The sudden, inexplicable urge to abandon whatever stable misery you’ve cultivated and leap headfirst into something new, something daring, something that smells faintly of desperation and peanut butter?
That’s where this begins.
The Peanut Butter Revelation
It started with peanut butter. Not the artisanal, small-batch nonsense that costs seventeen dollars a jar and comes wrapped in the tears of endangered monks. No—this was the supermarket variety, the kind that arrives in a plastic jar with a lid that requires the grip strength of a hydraulic press to open. I had discovered it. I was devouring it. Quantities that would make a nutritionist weep into their clipboard.
Something about the texture. The way it clung. The stickiness of it all.
And so I called Jimbo.
Mr. Rannitz was, at the time, working as a part-time hog farming consultant—a profession that sounds invented but wasn’t, or at least wasn’t entirely. He possessed a mind that operated on frequencies normal humans couldn’t detect, producing ideas that emerged fully formed like Athena from Zeus’s skull, except Zeus had been drinking since dawn and Athena carried a switchblade.
I told him about my longing. My peculiar ache to alter my employment situation. To seek something more… sticky. If you catch my meaning.
Jimbo didn’t hesitate. He barked out his response in that rust-laden, gravelly, whiskey-drenched voice he wore like a second skin:
“You will start a discount photography business! You shall call this discount photography business ‘Staph-Infection Photographic Wonder-Journies!’ And you shall promote this business by offering each new customer one free bag of toothpicks, and a half a stick of pre-melted butter!”
My word. How does one respond to genius of this caliber?
The Mechanism of Genius (Or: Why Explanation Is for Cowards)
When I asked—naively, foolishly—how he had arrived at such a magnificent conception, Jimbo shut me down with the precision of a surgeon amputating the wrong limb.
“That’s really none of your concern,” he muttered wryly. “I’ve better things to do with my time than to explain the mechanistic functionings of my genius to the likes of you! Now, kindly hang up the phone, Sir. I’ve got to go and tend to my new electric toothbrush. It seems to not be at all pleased with its new accommodations, and I’m worried that it may begin to cause trouble in my bathroom.”
And that was that.
The phone went dead. I sat there holding the receiver like it might resurrect itself. Somewhere, an electric toothbrush was plotting insurrection. Jimbo Rannitz was tending to appliances with the devotion most people reserve for their children.
I drafted the business plan. I ordered the toothpicks. I acquired the butter—pre-melted, as specified, which turned out to be considerably more difficult than one might assume. You try finding a supplier willing to ship half-sticks of butter in a state of advanced liquefaction. The logistics alone were enough to make a grown person reconsider their relationship with capitalism.
The Great Failure (Or: How the Machine Consumes the Faithful)
Here is where the story should pivot toward triumph. This is the moment in lesser narratives where the protagonist’s daring pays off, where the toothpicks flow like wine at Cana, where the pre-melted butter becomes the stuff of legend.
But this is not a lesser narrative. And Jimbo Rannitz did not traffic in conventional outcomes.
Despite an enormous marketing effort—flyers, newspaper ads, a radio spot that aired at 3:17 AM on a station that may or may not have existed—Staph-Infection Photographic Wonder-Journies, Inc. never attracted a steady supply of customers. Not one. Not a single soul walked through the door seeking discounted photography and dental hygiene products.
I spent a fortune. Toothpicks by the thousands. Butter by the half-stick. Marketing materials that now serve as kindling for fires that warm no one.
Why? I cannot say. The question haunts me in the quiet hours, the ones between midnight and dawn when the mind turns inward and begins cataloguing its failures like a miser counting coins.
Was it the name? Too aggressive, perhaps. Too honest. Staph-Infection does carry certain connotations that might deter the average consumer seeking family portraits. Or was it the butter? Did customers sense, on some primal level, that pre-melted butter is a violation of the natural order—that butter, like dignity, is best served solid?
Or—and this is the question that keeps me awake—was the entire enterprise doomed from the start because it made sense in the Jimbo Rannitz worldview, which operates according to laws physics hasn’t yet discovered?
The Disappearance (Or: Diamonds You Cannot See)
The last I heard, Jimbo had fled the country.
This information came from a mutual acquaintance—the sort of person who collects rumors the way others collect stamps, who trades in secondhand catastrophes and delivers them with the gravitas of breaking news. According to this source, Jimbo was being pursued on foot by extremely tiny diamonds which he could not see, yet which gave forth a pleasing odor when sung to.
Let that sentence settle. Let it marinate in your consciousness.
Tiny diamonds. Invisible. Pursuing a man on foot. Emitting fragrance when subjected to vocalization.
This is either the most elaborate metaphor ever devised for the crushing weight of invisible capital, or Jimbo Rannitz finally encountered a problem that even his particular genius couldn’t talk his way out of. I suspect both.
The Machine always collects its due. It doesn’t matter whether you’re running a legitimate enterprise or a photography business armed with liquefied dairy products—the gears turn the same way, the hunger is identical, and eventually everyone becomes fuel. Jimbo understood this better than most. Perhaps the diamonds were simply the Machine’s way of sending an invoice.
The Unresolved Question (Or: Why I Would Slap Him)
I hope to hear from Jimbo again. I do. There’s a void where his particular frequency used to broadcast, and the silence is louder than any voice.
But if our paths should cross—if somehow the tiny diamonds release their pursuit, if Jimbo surfaces from wherever he’s hidden, if the universe decides to grant us one more collision—I think I should very much enjoy slapping him across his face.
Not out of malice. Not even out of anger, precisely. But because some debts can only be collected through physical contact, and Jimbo owes me twelve years of unanswered questions about toothbrush insurrections and the aerodynamic properties of invisible gemstones.
You’ve met someone like Jimbo Rannitz. Everyone has. The person whose ideas are too large for their skull, whose genius burns so bright it singes the eyebrows off anyone standing too close. They enter your life like a lightning strike and leave the same way—suddenly, violently, leaving behind only the smell of ozone and a lingering sense that you should have paid closer attention.
The Jimbo Rannitz disappearance is not unique. It’s just more honest than most. Most vanishings are preceded by years of gradual withdrawal—the slow fade, the unanswered texts, the birthdays forgotten with increasing frequency. Jimbo went out with diamonds on his heels and a song in the air. That’s not a failure. That’s a finale.
What Remains (Or: The Butter Never Lies)
I still have the toothpicks. Thousands of them, in boxes stacked in a corner of my basement, gathering dust like accumulated regrets. The butter, obviously, did not survive the intervening years—organic matter has limitations, even when pre-melted.
Sometimes I walk down there in the middle of the night. I run my hands over the cardboard boxes. I think about calling Jimbo, though I know the number hasn’t worked in years. I think about the photograph business that never was, the customers who never came, the marketing budget that evaporated like morning fog.
And I wonder: was the failure the point all along?
Maybe Jimbo knew. Maybe he understood that success would have been the real catastrophe—that a thriving Staph-Infection Photographic Wonder-Journies would have meant entering the Machine’s ledger, becoming part of the system that grinds genius into compliance. Failure kept me free. Failure kept me mine.
The tiny diamonds still pursue him, wherever he is. I like to imagine him running, singing softly to the air, testing whether melody really does make the invisible fragrant. I like to imagine him laughing. I like to imagine him, somewhere, tending to an electric toothbrush that has finally, peacefully, accepted its accommodations.
If you see something of Jimbo Rannitz in yourself—if you’ve ever received advice involving pre-melted butter, if you’ve ever fled pursuing gemstones, if you’ve ever built a business on toothpicks and hope—take it as the compliment it is.
Pour something amber in hue. Lower the lights. Raise a glass to the vanished.
The Machine keeps spinning. The diamonds will keep hunting. And somewhere, a toothbrush waits—or doesn’t.
Author’s Note: Some of the above may be exaggerated. Some may be invented wholesale. Some may be true in ways that transcend factual accuracy. The toothpicks, however, are real. I can show you the basement.
— D.
Post Script:
I first wrote about the strange case of Jimbo Rannitz in 2013. Below is the original piece that was published to the now defunct ReallyWeirdThings.Com:
The Strange Case of Jimbo Rannitz
About twelve years ago now—this coming March—I suddenly found myself with an incredible urge to seek out a new business venture. I’m not exactly sure why it happened when it did; it may have had something to do with the remarkably superb peanut butter I had recently discovered at a local supermarket and begun regularly devouring in enormous quantities. Whatever the reason, I immediately put a call through to my good friend Jimbo Rannitz. Mr. Rannitz had been working as a part‑time hog‑farming consultant, and I was therefore absolutely certain he would be full of stupendous ideas that might set me on my way toward this new venture.
I was, to put it mildly, not at all disappointed by Jimbo’s suggestion—which, I now believe it safe to say, is very likely much more than you will soon be able to say for yourself, dear reader. I had told Jimbo about my peculiar longing to alter my current state of employment and seek out something a little more daring… a little more “sticky,” if you catch my meaning. Upon hearing this, Jimbo immediately barked out, in that sort of rust‑laden, gravelly, whiskey‑drenched voice he was so fond of speaking in: “You will start a discount photography business! You shall call this discount photography business ‘Staph‑Infection Photographic Wonder‑Journeys!’ And you shall promote this business by offering each new customer one free bag of toothpicks and half a stick of pre‑melted butter!”
“My word!” I exclaimed. “How on Earth did you come up with such an absolutely marvelous idea?”
“That’s really none of your concern,” Jimbo muttered wryly. “I’ve better things to do with my time than explain the mechanistic functionings of my genius to the likes of you. Now kindly hang up the phone, sir. I’ve got to go and tend to my new electric toothbrush. It seems not at all pleased with its new accommodations, and I’m worried it may begin to cause trouble in my bathroom.”
With that, I hung up the phone and immediately set about drafting a suitable business plan for my new photographic venture. Unfortunately, however—as I mentioned at the beginning of this letter—it is now approximately twelve years since that telephone conversation took place between Mr. Rannitz and me. And, woefully, I am sorry to report that nothing ever really came of that photographic business of mine. Despite an enormous marketing effort, and for reasons that remain unclear to me, I was never able to attract a steady supply of customers to Staph‑Infection Photographic Wonder‑Journeys, Inc. It really is quite a puzzle. I spent an absolute fortune on toothpicks and butter, but alas, success eluded me.
Where exactly Jimbo Rannitz is now, I could not say. It has been years since we last spoke. A mutual acquaintance recently informed me that Jimbo had fled the country while being pursued on foot by extremely tiny diamonds which he could not see, yet which gave forth a pleasing odor when sung to. I do hope to hear from Jimbo again at some point in the future, however. If, perchance, our paths should once again cross, I think I should very much enjoy slapping him across his face.
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