Love this site

Check this out. Guy was working for Dell and became a Mac zealot after Big Mike told a group of his employees that Apple makes the coolest computers on the planet. Now this mystery man has dedicated his life to helping people become superior human beings who can lord their superiority over everyone they meet -- in other words, he shows you how to convert from PCs to Macs. We love you, Going Mac Man. Free iPod is in the mail.

A game we all can play

For some reason El Jobso is getting all sorts of Nigerian bank scam emails lately. No doubt a lame prank engineered by Gates & Co., but whatever. Here's my idea. One of these douchebags is in the UK. If any of you dudes are in the UK, contact this frigtard and set up a meeting. If you can get him to show up someplace, take his photo and send it to me, and I'll post it here. Best if he looks shocked, scared, freaked out, etc. No limit on number of people who can play. The more the better in fact. Simple as that. Let the games begin.

Contact name is Owen Green.
Phone:+44 702 407 2709
Email: claims_unit70004@yahoo.com

Here's the full email I received:

THE NATIONAL LOTTERY
P O BOX 1010
LIVERPOOL, L70 1NL
UNITED KINGDOM
(Customer Services)

Ref: UK/9420X4/67
Batch:073/05/ZY366

WINNING NOTIFICATION:

We are happily announce to you the draw (1032) of the UK NATIONAL LOTTERY, online Sweepstakes International program held on 8th August 2006. It is yet to be unclaimed and you are getting the final NOTIFICATION as regards this.Your e-mail address attached to ticket number: 56475612545 187, Serial Number: 5368/03 drew the lucky numbers: 21,32,41,42,43,46 [Bonus # .17],

which subsequently won you the lottery in the 2nd category i.e match 6 plus bonus.

You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of £691,252 .00( Six Hundred And Ninety One Thousand, Two Hundred And Fifty Two Great Britain Pounds) in cash credited to fileKTU/9023118308/07. You can ask for our ONLINE RESULT SITE to comfirm the value of your winnings.

This is from a total cash prize of £2,893,361{Two million,Eight hundred and nintythree thousand ,Three hundred and Sixtyone Great Britain Pounds Sterling} was approved for the four( 4)lucky winners in this category i.e Match 6 .All participants for the online version were selected randomly from World Wide Web sites through computer draw system and extracted from over 100,000 unions, associations, and corporate bodies that are listed online. This promotion takes place weekly.


Participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from a pool of over 25,000 names of distinguished professionals drawn from Europe, America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Middle-East, parts of Africa, and North & South America as part of our international promotions programme conducted annually to encourage prospective overseas entries.

The internet emailing diea was used, since most people do are not able to purchase tickets and play outside the UK. We hope with part of your prize awards, you will take part in our subsequent lottery jackpots.

For security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning information confidential till your claim is processed and your money remitted to you in whatever manner you deem fit to claim your prize.
This is part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program.

To file for your claim, please contact our Fudiciary Agent:
**************************************************************************************************
Mr. Owen Green
Phone number: +44 702 407 2709
Official Email: claims_unit70004@yahoo.com
Foreign Services Manager,
Payment and Release order Department,
TRANS-ATLANTIC S.A LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM.
**************************************************************************************************
1. FULL NAMES:_______________________________________________________
2.NATIONALITY:_______________________________________________________
3. AGE________________________________________
4. SEX:_________________________
5. MARITAL STATUS:_____________________________________
6.CONTACT ADDRESS:_____________________________________________
7.TELEPHONE NUMBER:___________________
8.OCCUPATION:_________________________________
9.BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF COMPANY/INDIVIDUAL:_______________________________________
10.WINNING E-MAIL ADDRESS:________________________________
11.WINNING NUMBER:_________________________________________
12TOTAL AMOUNT WON:_________________________________________

Endeavour to email him your full names,winning numbers,email/billing address,telephone and fax numbers immediately.


IMPORTANT NOTE: Please send your reply via email: claims_unit70004@yahoo.com
Congratulations from me and members of staff of THE UK NATIONAL LOTTERY.

Yours faithfully,

Mrs. Mercy Moore


Online coordinator for THE NATIONAL LOTTERY Sweepstakes International Program.

Copyright © 1994-2006 The UK National Lottery Inc.
All rights reserved. Terms of Service - Guideline

77635 476378 255667460

The trolls in Redmond have a sense of humor. Who knew?

One of our spies delivered this from inside the walls at Microsoft. Click to enlarge.

Howard Stern on Line 1. Holy crap.

So Steve Dowling, our PR guy, comes in to see me in a panic. He says he's got Howard Stern and Daniel Carver from the Ku Klux Klan on the phone and they're insisting on talking to me, and Dowling says, Steve, I'm sorry, but I think you should take this call. So we put them on the speaker phone and Howard says they want me and Eric Schmidt to go on the Stern show and accept some kind of "Whitey" award from the Klan for having the least number of black people involved in running our companies. They say they went to Google's management page and figured out that out of 32 top managers and 11 board members, there's only one black dude. Then they went to the Apple management page and found that out of 9 top managers and 8 board members we have zero black people.

"Thang is," Carver says, "we wanna thank y'all for showin the world that the two greatest high-tech companies in the world don't need to cave in to this political correctness. It's jest a fact that the best companies, like Apple and Google, are still run by good old white people. Y'all are a shining example for other companies around the world. Now we ain't too pleased about all y'all advertisements showing black people dancing but we understand y'all gotta keep up the image or whatever, so we gonna let it slide."

Meanwhile Howard and his producer are laughing their asses off, talking about how they're gonna make a stage like the Oscars and call their show the Whiteys and who can they get for presenters, maybe Bill Maher can host, and everyone can wear white tuxedoes and they can get Justin Timberlake and K-Fed to do some white rapping, they'll give Bill O'Reilly a "Top News Racist" award and Pink can get an award for Best White Impersonation of a Black, and Bryant Gumbel for Best Black Impersonation of a White (but Howard goes, I dunno, is Bryant actually black, we better check) and they'll give Brigitte Nielsen a "Hall of Shame" award for her fling with Flavor Flav, they've got a call in to Dreamworks, ha ha ha.

Dowling is standing there with this look of horror on his face -- apparently this is about as bad as it gets if you're a PR flack. Oddly enough he has the same look as the Sony dude who was gonna commit seppuku in my office the other day.

I'm not sure where to go with this so I tell Howard that while we don't in fact have any black people we do have a guy named Sina Tamaddon who's from somewhere foreign or something. I think. Howard goes, Nope. Doesn't count. Dowling starts ripping through the Google page on his laptop and he points out that Google seems to have a few Indians but Howard just laughs and says, Nope, nope, nope. You guys are winning a Whitey, and you can either come accept it or not, I don't care, we'll get look-alikes or impersonators to play you anyway.

He says they've also got awards for Cracker Barrel and Clear Channel and a special lifetime achievement award for Sumner Redstone and CBS because they have the balls to put this big thing about "Diversity" on their website but when you click through to their management page it looks like this. Howard goes, Man, now that's what I call diversity, right? They've got every shade of white there is. Man oh man. So Steve, just imagine it, you and Eric Schmidt, the two most progressive leftie liberal tech guys in the world, striding up to get your award and tell the world, Don't be evil -- be white! Wow!

Dowling just loses it and does, Okay this call is over, and he hangs up. We both just stand there. I go, Steve, I'm not a racist. Honest. I'm just not comfortable around them. You know what I mean? Like, do they hate me because I'm white? I never know what to say or whatever. I mean, where I grew up there just weren't a lot of black people, you know? So I didn't really know any black people when I was a kid or whatever, and um, it's really hard to find black engineers. We've tried, really. We work really hard on this.

Dowling just shuffles out with this empty look in his eyes, like a guy who's going to be executed at midnight.

Um, about that "Squirrel Boy" thing

I was kidding. Really. This was a joke. Ditto for this. And, uh, this. Not to mention this.
Well. Ahem. Yes. Not sure what to say, really.

Awkward.

Blow it out your ass, Greenpeace

Honestly, I am so friggin sick of trying to play nice with the freaks at Greenpeace. God knows how much money I've dished to these extortionists over the years. They're worse than Jesse Jackson. Now they've put out this report saying we don't do enough for the environment. Better yet, they're saying Dell is the greenest tech company. Dell? Have you ever seen Dell's campus? It's a bunch of Quonset huts and tar-paper shacks. Dell's the only employer in America whose workers ask to be transferred back to Mexico so they can improve their standard of living. Seriously, Greenpeace, you gotta be kidding.

Now I'm hearing that the Greenpeace tree-Nazis are planning to show up and picket outside our campus again, like they did last year. All right, a-holes, I get the message. I know the drill. You want another check, and it better be bigger than the one Dell wrote. But you know what? I'm sick of this bullshit. I'm Steve Jobs, dipshits. I invented the friggin iPod. Have you heard of it? Apple Computer is the coolest, most progressive, liberal, hippie-dippie company in the world. We've got friggin John Lennon and Gandhi in our ads. Now you dickwads at Greenpeace are gonna lump us in with Lenovo and Acer? You know what? Screw you, Greenpeace. I'm gonna go out this weekend and club some baby seals.

This Valleywag website is a laff riot

My God you have to see this side-splitting Valleywag spoof about what it would be like if, like, Sergey Brin was like talking on a solar-powered mobile phone in -- wait for it -- in England! Ha! Because it's not very sunny there! Geddit? So the phone would go out a lot! Ha! And they've got a picture of some guy naked on the first page today too! Naked! A guy! And he's in Alaska. Where it's cold!

Meanwhile, Gawker today has this even funnier article about Matthew Broderick breaking his collarbone in a riding accident. I mean, my God! Wow! Funny stuff, right? If only he'd pulled a full Christopher Reeve and become a quadraplegic, oh my God, then it would be just be the funniest thing ever, right? But here's the thing. Sure, Matthew Broderick breaking his collarbone in a riding accident is hilarious by itself. But it's even more hilarious because his wife looks like a horse! Geddit? She's horsey! And her husband almost died falling off a horse! Wow! Gawker is so hip that they call her SJP instead of Sarah Jessica Parker because everyone who's hip (like me, or should I say moi) knows who Matthew Broderick is married to, so you don't have to say her name, just her initials. Oh my God! What did we do for fun before Gawker was invented? Wow. Classy. Hats off to you, guys.

YouTube: Finally a reason for the elderly to use the Internet

WTF with this trend of old geezers putting clips of themselves on YouTube? I have to tell you, I was totally not down with this. In fact I was actually thinking about signing that new EFF petition to put an age limit on Internet usage. But then I saw this video where two members of a Linux users group in France are fighting over the GPLv3 drafting process. Hilarious!

The Sony visit

So it's Howard Stringer and about 15 Japanese dudes all wearing identical black suits, looking super solemn and contrite, not saying a word and just staring down at their identical black Japanese business shoes. We go up to the conference room and Howard says he is here with his top management team to apologize profusely for the flaming batteries. Then he looks at his guys, and nods, and two of them stand up and leave the room. Howard goes on for a while more about how Sony will make this right and accept the blame, will pay all the costs, does not want to lose us as a customer, and so on. Suddenly the guys who left come back dressed in kimonos. They stand there, rigid as boards, staring straight ahead. Stringer goes, The man on the right is Yamamoto-san. He runs the division that designed the faulty batteries. He is going to commit seppuku. The other man is his second. He will assist him.

Stringer nods, and I swear this is true, the guy on the right pulls out a knife. Larry's eyes just bug out of his friggin head. He's practically got drool coming out of the corners of his mouth. I start to speak but Larry grabs my arm and says, Don't interrupt, You must let him do it, or you'll dishonor him. I'm like, Dishonor him? The guy's about to cut his stomach open in my friggin conference room!

Larry says, Steve, trust me, just go with this. I had a guy from NEC do this once in my office. It's incredible. After he cuts out his intestines, his second will slice his head off. Then the others will carry him out on their shoulders. Oh God! I love the Japanese.

But I said, Look, Howard, I'm sorry, but I can't let your guy do this. Howard says, Well, if you dishonor him like this, he'll have to do it back at the hotel or something, and the shame will hang over his entire family. And I'm like, Whatever, Howard, we can't just have guys killing themselves in our conference rooms, it's bad for the vibe, I'm sorry. Please. Everyone. Just go.

So they all file out and Larry says, You know what, buddy? Sometimes you really disappoint me. And he stomps out after them, asking Stringer whether they really are going to do this back at the hotel, and if so where are they staying, and can he attend?

So, that's how I spent my day. Same old same old. How about you?

Larry just shows up without calling

And he bursts into my office and says, Buddy, I know what you need, we're gonna do something radical, like in that movie where Stella gets her groove back. I'm like, Larry, if you're saying I need to fly to Jamaica and get boned by a black dude who's half my age, forget it. Been there, done that, and it doesn't work. Remember the cube iMac? Larry goes, Huh? I tell him just forget it, I'm not doing it. Larry goes, Um, Steve, well, I, uh -- wait. What did you just say? I'm like, Look, I'm not going there again, so forget it. He goes, Um, yeah. Okay. Well, look, I, um, that's not what I meant. I was talking about you getting some punani, my brother. Some strange.

He goes, Because we've got this girl working in sales, I hired her myself, met her in a bar in L.A. and hired her on the spot, I think she's like seventeen years old or something, dropped out of high school to work at Hooters. No lie. So I put her in sales. She's been working for us for eight months and I'm pretty sure she still doesn't even know what we make. I love it!

So I've been grooming her for myself, but you know what, I'm gonna give her to you instead. Seriously. I want you to have her. She's perfect. Wears those low-rider pants with the thong sticking out. She's dumb as a bag of hammers, with giant gozungas and an ass you can bounce quarters off of. I've actually done that. The quarter thing. I've been saving her up. Put her on a special diet and exercise routine, with daily yoga lessons so she can put her legs behind her head and a full Brazilian wax at all times -- you know, the usual routine. I've got her down to about 8% body fat and I've just been keeping her in a holding pattern, letting her wait. You know like when you have this perfect bottle of wine but you want to save it for a special occasion? I was planning to bring her over after my next eye-lift. Feel like a kid again, all that. But anyway, I want you to have her. No, seriously. I want you to. I've had her totally checked out, full physical. No STDs, not even genital warts. Fresh as a daisy.

I was about to explain that I wasn't interested when the phone rang and my assistant tells me there's a delegation of Sony guys in the lobby. And Larry goes, You are shitting me! Oh, bud, you have to let me stay for this.

Fortune puts MySpace on the cover

Look at these two douchebags -- Starsky and Hutch got themselves a Web 2.0 company. I especially love the gold shirt on David Soul on the linked photo. Canyoufrigginbelieveit? Just FYI, yes, this was the cover that was supposed to feature El Jobso. Hey Schlender? In case you're wondering? You're dead to me.

Businessweek kicks me in the nuts

Hey why not? Looks like it's my turn to be monkey in the middle. So their rap is that HP is sexier than Apple. Please. Everyone knows HP is the Subaru Forester of computer companies. Top choice of Martina Navratilova. Real sexy, in that not-afraid-to-wear-comfortable-shoes kinda way. Great call, Businessweak.

Everyone's taking shots at El Jobso

Even the usually reverent dweebs at CNET are taking shots at me now. First this hot chick Veronica Belmont calls me "old mad dog Steve Jobs" and does a bake-off video and chooses a Toshiba Gigabeat over our iPod. Um, right. But I gotta say, Veronica, you are a very attractive young woman. Really. Put it this way. There's a couple of things I noticed about you right away. Not saying that's why CNET put you on their "TV show." I'm sure it had more to do with your years of journalism experience and your deep engineering background. Not to mention that cute little accent where you can't pronounce the letter T in the middle of words like "button" and "important." Check it out. Sort of an American cockney or something. If you weren't ripping on my product, I might actually call you up and invite you over for an interview. Guess you blew it.

But that's not all from CNET. They're also breaking my stones for not putting out new iPods fast enough. Year or so ago people were bitching that we were cranking out new models too quickly. Now too slow. People, get your story straight.

Jesus friggin Christ

Well it's been a hell of a four days since the Sony hibachi battery fiasco. First thing I did was spend three hours shouting at the top of my lungs at the people in our supply chain group, who by the way are almost entirely useless and moronic, which is why they came to be in this division in the first place. I'm like, Bozos, do I have to do everything around here? Can I not trust you to do anything? Do I need to start overseeing every parts order and making sure we don't put a check mark next to the "Flaming Battery" item on the Sony parts list? What the frig, people?

Well, there's only one way to handle something like this, and it ain't pretty but it is necessary. I gathered up all of their Apple ID badges and made them strip down to their underwear. Then I put all of them in prison stripes (see photo) and marched them through every building on campus, shouting, "Folks, I want you to see the idiots who have brought shame on our beloved company and made it impossible for anyone in Apple to get a Christmas bonus this year. Take a good look at them. This is what happens when you screw up. Let this image sear itself into your brain."

Last stop was the HR department, where I handed over the badges to some personnel bimbo and said, Fire them all, no severance, and cancel whatever pay they're owed. Some show-off lady who appeared to be some sort of leader of the trolls said something about a lawsuit. I was like, Please, please, please sue me, I'm begging you, I will enjoy destroying you so much, no seriously, I will take everything you own, your house, your car, everything. I'll have your kids placed in foster homes. So please, please, let's do this, really, I can't friggin wait. Then some Mexican guy way down in back puts up his hand and I'm like, WHAT????? and he's kind of cowering and stuttering and can't talk, and I'm like Spit it out, Senor Speech Defect, and finally he manages to say that he doesn't actually work at Apple, he works for the company that delivered the prison costumes. And I go, I don't care, you're fired too, your whole company is fired, we're not paying for those costumes and we're gonna tell your boss it's your fault because you got here late. He says, B-b-b-b-b-b... and then started blubbering and crying. I almost felt better. Almost.

Larry's worst idea yet

So he calls back and says, Okay, this one I know you're gonna go for. I know you will. You ready? Are you? Okay. Two words: Rat Patrol. He starts laughing uncontrollably, but I just sigh and go, Larry, come on. He says, Come on what? I mean, seriously, it'll be awesome.

Rat Patrol, for the record, is what Larry calls it when we drive his Hummer up to the city and cruise the Tenderloin in the middle of the night, wearing balaclavas and commando outfits and firing Super Soakers at transvestite hookers. You get points for how many you hit, with bonuses for letting them get as close as possible to the Hummer before you leap through the roof and open fire. We've done it a few times and I'll admit, it's pretty funny, especially when the trannies get all pissed off and start shouting and stuff. Larry aims for the face and tries to blow their wigs off.

We learned this game from Arnold. He and Charlie Sheen invented it in L.A. with a couple other guys. They call it "Commando." But we started calling it Rat Patrol because we were hanging out the back of Larry's Hummer like the machine gunner in the old Rat Patrol TV show. How we heard about it is that one time Arnold was up in the Valley visiting T.J. Rodgers and the two of them called Larry, saying they were in T.J.'s Hummer driving up to the city and wanted to come get us and take us along. Arnold uses paint guns instead of water cannons, which frankly I think is a little bit cruel, because those paint balls kinda sting when they hit you. The water seems a little kinder.

Anyway, Arnold says we got carte blanche on this stuff, like even if we get arrested, he's guaranteed us a get-out-of-jail free card. Which I must say is exactly the kind of classy move you'd expect from Arnold. I mean, he's Republican and all, but he's not a real Republican. You know what I mean?

Larry says, Okay, so are you in or are you in? But I just sigh and go, Dude, I dunno. I'm just not up for it. Larry says, Steve, babe, I'm really starting to worry. Seriously. You're scaring me, okay?

And once again that weird crying urge came over me. No, I said, I'm fine. I am. Really. I'll be okay. But I gotta go. I do. Gotta go. I'll call you back.

So Larry calls again

And he goes, I got it! Seriously. We'll do a prank on someone. Like that guy we told we were going to make CEO of Apple, the IT guy from Pixar. Remember that? Few years ago? Guy went to all the papers and told them he was gonna be CEO of Apple, remember? Friggin hilarious! What an idiot! So maybe we call him up now and see if he'll fall for it again. Can you imagine? Oh my God. I'm choking on my salad here. So where is that guy anyway? You still got his phone number or whatever? I go, You know, I think that guy committed suicide after that. Larry goes, No shit, really? Dammit, that frigs the whole thing up doesn't it? Well I guess we gotta find someone else then. Hey, I got it! McNealy. Seriously. Call him up, bring him in for a fake interview, then we'll just yell at him and badger him. Whattaya think? We can videotape it and release it on YouTube. Yeah! Right? Am I right?

This time I didn't even say goodbye before I hung up.

So Larry calls back

And he's like, I got it. Okay? We have one of those fake Pixar movie premier parties. We do it up in San Francisco again, invite all the chiptards from the Valley and put out a red carpet and the klieg lights and the whole deal, right? We all put on tuxedos, and we hire a bunch of fake news photographers and fake paparazzi and maybe a couple hundred fake autograph hounds. The whole deal. Like we did last time, remember? Remember that blockhead McNealy walking in thinking the whole thing was for real, like there really were Unix groupies or something who were just dying for his autograph? Brother, that was rich. Honestly. So let's do it, right? Next weekend or something. Send out invites tomorrow.

I point out to him that Pixar doesn't have any new movies coming out right now. He says who cares about that, we'll make it a DVD release premier, whatever, just say we're doing a new director's cut of Nemo with bonus crap on the disk or whatever, and you're invited to this super exclusive premier party. I'm like, But Larry, Pixar is not making any DVD like that. We don't have any new products right now. He goes, Steve, who gives a shit? Who cares if you actually have a product to sell? Doesn't mean you can't have a release party. Hell, we do this all the time at Oracle. It's called marketing, buddy. Have you heard of it? Can't believe I have to explain this to you of all people. Look, Steve, you know what? I'll even pay for it. Just to get out of the friggin house and have some fun. Whatever.

But I just sigh and go, Larry, I appreciate your intentions. I do. But a fake premier party, I dunno. Can't get it into right now. Sorry.

So about that `monk'

The guy has been calling me, bugging the hell out of me, wanting me to make a decision about whether to give everything away, transcending to the next level. I mean I've had car salesmen who weren't as obnoxious as this guy. So I kinda had some weird vibes about it and all. But at the same time the guy is very persuasive. Tells me he thinks I can develop the ability to levitate, which is something I've always totally wanted to do. I once spent a year working on this and almost got it, I swear. (Trivia hunters: Check out the photo at the bottom of this page. You'll see two guys levitating at a meditation demonstration in Palo Alto in the 1980s. Behind them, seated on a couch, you'll see a denim-clad leg. Yeah. El Jobso. No shizzle.)

Anyway, I was on the verge of writing this guy a pretty big check for his foundation (like low seven digits) in exchange for some levitation exercises. But then I got a call from Larry Ellison. Says he's been reading the blog and just saw the photo of that monk and called right away. He's like, Dude, that scammer clipped me for like eight million bucks a few years ago. Told me I had this special Qi power and was destined for great things. Even told me I could friggin levitate. I actually went up to Chinatown a bunch of times and sat there in some dumpy dance studio in the lotus position, jumping up and down like a friggin frigtard. Dude, trust me, run away from this guy fast. I had my goons investigate him. He's an ex con, buddy. Did five years in federal prison someplace. I hope you didn't give him any money. You didn't, did you?

So I told him no, I didn't give him any money yet. And Larry says, Buddy, what's wrong? I can hear it in your voice. What's the matter, bud? I go, Well, this options shit has got me down I guess. Or just getting older or something. The new smartphone thing is a piece of shit. I dunno. He says, Steve, Steve, Steve! Dude, we gotta cheer you up. Seriously. We gotta go to Hawaii or something. Or Thailand. You remember Thailand, Steve? Patpong Road, right? Those were the days, right? Am I right?

But suddenly I felt myself choking up. It was like I was gonna friggin cry, sitting there. I said, Larry, hey, I gotta go. I'll call you back. No, I'm fine. But I gotta call you back.

Bill Gates poisons a kitten

And then laughs as the poison kicks in. See the video here. Gates, you need help.

Ask a televangelist

Dear Dr. Jack Van Impe,
Have you noticed any recent events in Silicon Valley that indicate to you that the end times are upon us? --Hopeful in Mountain View

Dear Hopeful in Mountain View,
Oh I am so glad you asked that question because yes, in fact there have been several very exciting developments lately that have made me even more convinced that the prophesies contained in the Book of Revelation will soon be made real. What first caught my attention was the emergence of the so-called Web 2.0 companies. Now we see the incredible rise to power of the dead-souled Michael Arrington, the so-called "false prophet" whose coming signals the apocalypse. More recently we've seen lesser prophets like Om Malik raising money. "Yea, the dark beast shall grow large and rule over the valley." Revelation 16, verse 2. Hopeful, you must ask yourself, how is it that these obscure, inconsequential men have risen so suddenly and now command millions of acolytes who hang on their every word? How is it that venture capitalists blindly rush to give these men millions of dollars without regard for achieving a return? What hidden forces are at work here? Oh, Hopeful, these are exciting times. The Rapture is upon us. The Lord is astride His white horse and ready to return in glory, wielding His gleaming sword of truth! Keep praying.

Whoops

Turns out Metcalfe's Law is, um, wrong. Look. Bob's a friend. So I want to go easy on this. But the thing is, Bob really wants to be remembered for something other than Ethernet. And he was always fascinated by Moore's Law (which by the way is also not true, but anyhoo.) So we used to get baked up on Bob's farm in Woodside and Bob would sit around trying all sorts of crazy shit for a "Metcalfe's Law" and finally he found this one about networks growing in value in relation to the number of blah blah blah. Whatever. I don't think he ever expected it would catch on. Certainly he never expected anyone to take it seriously, like some kind of actual mathematical proof or something. I mean, it's a pretty obvious back-of-the-napkin job, isn't it? Problem is, nobody in the Valley can tell the difference. You've got all these McKinsey types who are really good at latching on to some pseudo-scientific horseshit and tossing it around like it's some bit of quantum physics they picked up while they were working at Brookhaven. You know, the kind of people who think adding new features to Linux qualifies as "science," or that tossing together a photo sharing site is akin to designing a space station. Poor old Bob, though. He must be bumming.

Reality check: Bob Seger

Poor old dinosaur Bob Seger thinks he's doing us a big favor by finally agreeing to sign on with iTunes and join the rest of the world in the 21st century, it says here. Ditto for the apetards in Metallica and the highly derivative yet completely unlistenable Red Hot Chili Peppers. Talk about egos on these bozos. What really cracks me up is that Seger wants to protect his "artistic integrity" by forcing people to download his whole album instead of just the one or two good songs. Dude, get a grip. You're Bob Seger, remember? Not Pete Seeger. Nobody has bought one of your albums in like ten years. I don't know for sure what finally got Seger to cave in. Word is he needs money for hip replacement surgery. But we still had to bring him in and kiss his ass and pretend he's some bigshot. We even hired a few fake news photographers to shoot pictures as if this were some kind of big publicity event. Hilarious.

I'll tell you something. The ones I really want, I'll be honest, are the Beatles and Zeppelin. But the Beatles are still pissed about the lawsuit, and McCartney's got his hands full getting rid of his pegleg pirate wife. Friggin Jimmy Page won't even return my calls. Goddamn devil worshipper.

They call it `venture chemo'

Friendster lands a fresh $10 million from DAG, Kleiner Perkins and Benchmark. This radical procedure has been known to prolong life for up to 12 months in some cases. The move at least buys John Doerr time to dream up some cover story for why it makes sense for KP to pump fresh money into one of its other failing investments, then have that company acquire Friendster with a big bump in valuation, enabling KP to notch a profit and declare victory. Let the shell games begin! Hey, here's an idea. Maybe those "MyAsshole" guys could buy Friendster. Like, it's a solar energy company with a social networking site? So, like, people who are into green tech can meet and trade ideas and, um, stuff like that? Sure to be a hot IPO in mid to late 2007.

Jesus wept

Paris Hilton says she cries when she listens to her new album. So do we, Paris. Except when we're laughing so hard we choke. I really didn't want to carry this on iTunes. Got outvoted. Well, the almighty dollar and all that. Peace out.

Cut the choirboy act, Bill

People are shocked -- shocked! -- to discover that Mr. Bill is using his "charity" to make business loans to buyout groups instead of buying vaccine for Third World kiddies or whatever. Frankly I'm surprised he's not using the money to drown kittens. Kids, keep an eye on those weird Third World countries that get a big chunk of Gates Foundation bucks and see if they don't also, coincidentally, become big customers for Windows and Office. You want clean water, Paco? Then get rid of the friggin Linux. Immediamente, if not sooner. You get it? Trust me, Mr. Bill always has extra cards up his sleeve.

I've got a sense of humor, but you know what?

This is not cool. Some a-hole on Ebay is selling a mold of Larry Page's teeth. Just not funny, man. Really. Sure, I know the Googletards bring a lot of this on themselves. But at some point there has to be a line you draw where you say, enough is enough. It's like the stalkerazzi going after Britney Spears every time she drives off with her kid strapped to the roof of her SUV. Leave the poor fat hillbilly alone, for Pete's sake. She can't help the way she is. Same for Larry. We don't need to know every little bit of news about him, like what he ate for dinner or pictures of him knocking boots with some slapper at a club. We certainly don't need his dental molds. I mean, here's a guy who believes so strongly in freedom of expression that he runs this Blogger service at a loss, just gives it away free, like a kind of philanthropy, in order to make the world a better place. He's also deeply committed to protecting the privacy of his users, even when those anonymous a-holes use his own service to make fun of him. Come on. Talk about "Don't be evil." This guy is a saint. And he's just as God made him. With a few extra billions. Seriously, I can't stand stuff like this.

Scott Spotting

Yipes. This just came in from ace photographer Mitchell Aidelbaum who says he studies karate at a dojo in Atherton where McNealy started going recently. According to Mitchell Aidelbaum this was Scott's third lesson and he started going on about how no karate dude could survive in a hockey fight, and he started taunting the mustache dude, saying, Come on, I'm a friggin hockey player, so don't be a pussy, go ahead and hit me, no I mean really try to hit me, okay? What are you, a chick or something? You know you look gay with that mustache, right? Are you gay? No problem if you are but don't try any funny holds on me, okay sweetheart? You must be gay, seriously. You look just like Tom Selleck. Oh, did that piss you off? Did it? Well come on then. You know I'm from Detroit, right? Come on, Nancy boy. Let's see what you've got. I mean it. No, seriously, really come at me, just give me -- ooomph.

According to Mitchell Aidelbaum:

McNealy was only unconscious for about fifteen to twenty minutes. But one of us had to drive him home. He hasn't come back since.

Everybody's got advice

But this genius has a great idea. He thinks I should pony up a billion dollars and buy YouTube. Well, I do get all of my best business advice from blogs, and especially from GigaOM (WTF with that name?). So as soon as I read this article I began calling my investment bankers. My orders were clear: put the Yelp due diligence on hold (but fear not, Bike Helmet Girl, I'm still coming for you) and instead get to work analyzing YouTube. Let's snap this baby up before Murdoch gets his Aussie paws on it.

Because look. This one's a no-brainer. I mean, who doesn't get off watching home-made videos of kids dropping Mentos into bottles of Diet Coke, or frigtard wankers playing Joe Satriani licks in their bedrooms, right? I could watch this stuff for hours. Or check out this Man Child here playing scales on his bitchin axe. My God. I used to think the soundtrack music in hell would involve banjos and bagpipes. Wrong. It'll be this guy playing solo electric guitar. Profile says he's 32 years old and employed as a lift operator in Vancouver. Now he's home alone on a Saturday night with a webcam and an electric guitar, making movies of himself rocking out. I suppose, deep down, in his heart of hearts, he hopes that by doing this he will meet a girl.

Excuse me, I must go weep.

Anyhoo, ya know, I'd love to buy YouTube, but I think I've already done my part to make the world a sadder place than it used to be. Also, you may not realize this, but I already run a real movie studio. Like, the kind that makes movies that get shown in actual movie theaters and sells them on copy-protected DVDs. You might have heard of it. It's called Disney. But thank you, Mr. Serial Entrepreneur on GigaOM, for your excellent advice. If anyone else has business plans or strategies for Apple, please send them along. Ditto for any Pixar movie ideas, unsolicited scripts. Send them my way. Peace out.

Shame about Tower Records

I always loved their stores. Great selection, knowledgeable sales clerks, easy checkout. Oh wait. No. That's Trader Joe's. Anyway, Tower is going bankrupt, and everyone is blaming us. Sheesh. Is it our fault that we make a fantastic product that people love to use? Good riddance, I say. By the way, doesn't Richard Branson own some kind of music store chain? Word up, blondie. You're next.

So my spiritual guide returned

With this Buddhist monk in tow. Guy sat with me holding my wrists the way Jennie did. Then he looks at Jennie. She says, You see? He is, right? The monk nods. He closes his eyes and thinks for a minute. Then he says to me, You have a very strong gift. Perhaps you feel it. It has served you well. But there is something even greater that may come to you. I'm like, Yeah, you know what, this whole iPhone thing, I know everybody's psyched about it, but I don't think we can differentiate enough, and Nokia already has a jump on us, so at best we're looking at 5% market share and zippo margins, so I don't know, I'm thinking about just pulling the plug.

He goes, No, not the iPhone. I say, Well I'm not doing a PDA, either. Friggin Newton was a friggin disaster. He goes, I am talking about something beyond this. He sits there, staring at me. Finally he goes, The future is not a single thing. The future is many things. Many possibilities. Do you understand this? I hate when these guys get all friggin cryptic but whatever. I just go, Sure, many futures, okay. He says, There are many paths. One of them, for you, leads to a great achievement, beyond what you can imagine. And I'm thinking, Dude, achievement? Hello! I invented the friggin iPod, have you heard of it? But I don't say that. I'm just sitting there.

But I guess he can read my mind because he goes, Yes, the iPod is delightful. The Macintosh is a beautiful machine. Nemo is a wonderful creature. With these you have changed the world. But there is something much larger for you if you choose it. Today you walk a difficult line. You live in the world, and yet you try to remain apart from it. This struggle produces for you many possessions but it wastes a great deal of energy. The weight of your possessions keeps you from transcending. Every posession is an item in your rucksack. Your rucksack is very full. Men see this and call this success. But the rucksack is heavy. The burden prevents you from making your journey. The opportunity before you is given to very few. I pray you make a wise choice. Namaste.

He bowed his head, and fell silent.

I said, So you're telling me I have to give away everything I own? Everything? Quit my job? Become a monk or something?

He goes, I am not saying you have to do anything. I am saying what is possible for you. What you are capable of.

So I go, Well what is it you see? Because I already had the chance to run Microsoft and I turned it down.

He says he can't tell me. So I'm like, Yeah, you know, I don't know, I'll have to kinda think about this or something, I mean it's a lot to take in.

At the door he stopped and bowed one last time. You know, he said, I really liked that commencement speech you did. Seriously. It was a great speech. I wish you good luck.

Some people can't get enough

You'd think having billions in the bank and making a big salary and having all sorts of options would satisfy anyone. Not Eric Schmidt of Google, who has signed an endorsement deal with Nikon. Apparently the ads are only gonna run in Japan, so nobody here in the States is supposed to know about it. Not even Valleywag has got this one yet. But we got the pix. Sorry, Eric.

Aw, Chinese food again? Just kidding, it's great! And it's free! Thanks, Apple!

Finally here's just a random snapshot of a typical lunchtime in our executive cafeteria at Hon Hai's HQ in Taiwan. That's Pete Dawson of Apple Asia with HR director Patty Hon (no relation to Bill) and director of engineering Louise Soo. Hey guys, who wants seconds? Gotta keep the strength up so we can keep cranking out those tasty iPods! (Geddit?)

Together we can change the world

Here's a shot of Jenny Li, Hon Hai's director of marketing and communications, going over the 2007 advertising campaign and budget plans with Chuck Hurley, one of our Apple Asia marketing execs. Great work, guys!

Apple and Hon Hai, truly equal partners

Another point I want to make about this report on iPod manufacturing, and the blog is the perfect place to do this, is that our relationship with Hon Hai Precision Industry and its Foxconn division is truly a partnership, in the full sense of the word, with lots of give and take, sharing of ideas and so forth. I know it's been depicted as a kind of exploitation. But that is not what we're about. Believe me, these folks are tough negotiators. And I thought if you could see some pictures of our top Apple managers interacting with their counterparts at Hon Hai you'd get a better sense of how our partnership works. So here are just some ordinary shots we've grabbed from our Apple-Hon Hai company newsletter. First one, above, is a photo of Charles Whitman, Apple's PacRim director, at the signing of the extension of our agreement with the two founders of Hon Hai, Bill Hon (rear) and Luke Hai (front). Check out Mr. Hai and tell me if you think he looks unhappy to be doing business with Apple Computer. Right, I didn't think so.

Does this guy look overworked to you?

People are making a mountain out of a molehill on this iPod child labor report that we put out yesterday. But let me just tell you about one guy. This is Zhu Shi Tian, the CFO of Foxconn, our iPod manufacturing partner. He gets in around 5, puts in a quick 30 minutes on the StairMaster while ripping through his stack of morning papers. By 6:30 he's at his desk with coffee and a croissant, checking the overnight exchange rates and booting up iCal to see what's going for the day. Maybe a flight to Hong Kong to check on component suppliers. Maybe a boozy dinner entertaining clients. Now some flakes at the BBC are whinging because dudes like this want to work more than sixty hours a week. Well I hate to tell you, Nigel, but if you work in high tech, sixty hours a week is like bare minimum. Which is I suppose why those lazy bastard socialist Euros are getting blown away by the rest of the world. Now they want to drag the rest of us down with them. Hey, Euroweenies, take some advice and stick to what you're good at, like going on strike, and leave the hard work of changing the world to guys like me and Tian. By the way, my man Tian not only works hard, he also parties hard. Heli-skiing, parasurfing, all the totally crazy shit. And believe me, we've had some nights in Shanghai. But that's all I'm going to say on that subject. Otherwise his wife would friggin kill him.

Scott Spotting

This one just hit my inbox:

"So me and some of my friends from Google were at the Old Pro on El Camino Real in PA, having drinks and McNealy spots my bud's T-shirt and comes over and he's like, Hey, you're a Unix head, right? You know how I know that? Can you guess? He's all trying to be cool and impress us and we go yeah, yeah, we know who you are, blah, blah. So apparently he's there by himself and he asks if he can join us and "talk shop," and he starts asking us if we use Sun boxes and talking all this smack about IBM and HP and we're like, whatever, screwball, who gives a shit about IBM and HP, we all use Linux, have you heard of it?

"Anyway, he kept buying us drinks so we let him hang around, but by like the zillionth Bill Joy story we all started taking bets as to which one of us would blow our brains out first. We actually considered sneaking away, like pretending to go to the men's room and then climbing out the window. Turns out they've got bars over the window. Finally we managed to escape by inventing this story about having to go back to work. He got kinda sad when we said that. Almost felt bad for the guy. Almost. So we took this photo as a memento and promised him we'd email him a copy. Check out the look on my friend Jim's face here. Like, "Please, Scott, you have old man smell okay? Stop touching me. Really." Love your stuff, dude. Keep it up."

Razor wire is going up

Yep. No lie. Here's the new look of the Apple campus. By end of day Friday we're going to have the entire place lawyer-proofed. You think those bozos from the SEC can get over that fence? Yeah, me neither. Jerry York just called and said, Steve, Steve, calm down, it's just the peyote talking, okay? Like when you did that crazy Next machine, remember? You gotta cool off. This options thing is gonna blow over, kid. I'm sorry if I scared you the other day. It's no big deal, kid, I swear it's no big deal. You gotta drink some water, kid. A lot of water. And drink some coffee. Makes you pee. Flush that shit outta you, okay? And take a couple valiums. You got any valium there? I'll call your doctor. We'll get you a shot. But I'm like, Jerry, no way. The razor wire is going up. And the laywers are staying out. They're destroying the vibe, Jerry. And folks, just FYI, in case you're wondering, yeah, we've got snipers in those towers. Real snipers. Ex-Marines. I'm talking Lee Harvey friggin Oswald. Tag em and bag em, brothers. Those are my orders.

Don't even think about it

Here's a photo of Katie Cotton, our VP of Worldwide Communications, stationed in her new post looking out for reporters or bloggers. Because here's the thing. We've tried to be open and forthcoming. And you just abuse us. Well, that's over. We're not answering any more of your questions, not putting out any press statements. I'm warning you a-holes. Katie isn't hypnotized. This was her idea. And she's not gonna just wing you in the arm or the leg. Her orders are shoot to kill. But go ahead, if you don't believe me. Try it. Drive on up to the campus and get out of your crappy little reporter car. Go ahead, you weenie. I'm begging you. Make my day.

Well, I did it

Here's a photograph of one of Potter's lawyers being escorted out of the building by Apple security only a few minutes ago. They're all gone now and they're gonna stay gone. Ditto for the a-holes from the SEC. This just happened at the executive committee meeting. Potter was going on about more of these friggin "irregularities," and meanwhile I'm seeing color trails and hearing Potter's voice going mwah, mwah, mwah. So I stand up and say, Thank you, John. You're fired. Sure, I'm tripping my ass off on peyote, but you know what? I'm Steve Jobs. I invented the friggin iPod. Have you heard of it? And I'm still the friggin CEO around here, until Jerry York tells me otherwise. And I'm sick of this crap. So I bounced them, and they ain't coming back. We're going to the mattresses. No kidding. I'm not friggin around with these bozos. Peace out.

Scott Spotting

Just found this in my email. Hans-Olaf Gutmansdottir aka Hog is in town from Iceland for Linux World and sent this photo of Scott McNealy getting jumped by a bunch of Debian developers outside the Tosca Cafe in North Beach last night. Hog says McNealy was mouthing off about how the attendance was way down at the Linux show and how the Linux freaks can't even afford decent booth bimbos and how Open Solaris is gonna kill Linux in its crib. Hog writes: Please note Steve that just out of visible in the dark background that is unfortunately beyond powir of my flash you can almost recognize are Bruce Perens and Richard Stallman, that stayed back a few feet and did not kick McNealy but were urging on the attackirs.

Citizen journalism at its finest. Thanks, Hog. And Scott, as I've told you before, don't mess with the FOSS lunatics. They're nuts. Seriously.

What a long strange trip it's been

Wild stuff happening here. I've been up all night with my spiritual guide doing some intense soul journeying and past life regression work. Jennie does a kind of guided trip using a combination of peyote and amyl nitrite. First thing she did was ask me what's this horrible music playing, and I said it's Lothar and the Hand People, it's awesome with psychedelics and what's more amazing is that all this rich, full sound is coming from a $349 iPod HiFi which blows away high-end stereos costing ten times as much. She goes, Nope, no way, throw it out, and we sit there in silence in the lotus position, and I'm like, Cool, I love tripping in silence, you can hear the walls breathing, excellent.

Jennie does not use peyote herself. But she does her work in a trance state. She waited until I was getting off, like when colors started to get vivid, and then she went under. She goes into this character called Sethram, with this freako deep voice. For like nine hours straight, without a break, she held my wrists between her thumbs and forefingers and just read me. Weird voices coming out of her, my past selves speaking. I was awake the whole time and just watching her. She was just gone. Eyes closed. Like on a different plane.

Then just after dawn something happened. She was reading my present life, telling me all this stuff that nobody could know, and then suddenly she became very still. And very cold. I could feel the energy drop. She began to vibrate, almost imperceptibly at first, then stronger and stronger, until she was shaking so violently I thought maybe she was having a seizure. Her eyes popped open and she said, Oh God, oh God, and she was back in her normal voice, her Jennie voice. Her eyes were like bugging out wide as saucers, looking right at me.

She says, You don't know, do you. You don't, right? I'm like, Jennie, what the frig? She leaps up, shaking, I mean like she's friggin terrified, and starts backing away from me toward the door. She says, I have to leave. I'm sorry. I'll come back. Tomorrow, okay? I can't handle this right now. There's someone I need to see. I'm sorry. I have to go. I'm sorry. I can't stay here.

That was like two hours ago and I haven't heard from her. Meanwhile, we've got an executive committee meeting in half an hour, and I'm still tripping my ass off on the peyote. Got some Lothar playing in the background. Ow! Good times.

Jesus didn't go to college either

Maybe it's just because this karmic repatterning I'm doing with Jennie Falco is the kind of work that really leaves you raw. But that pimp-slap from the Harvard girl over the fact that I didn't know any of those French movie directors really is bumming me out. I mean it's not that I'm insecure. And yet ... I dunno. I just keep reminding myself, Jesus didn't go to college. Neither did Bono. Same for Picasso, and Gandhi and Stephen Hawking. Lot of people don't know that. And look what they've accomplished. Helps to keep it in mind.

Do any of these guys look like me?

Personally I think the one with the iPod HiFi is the closest, but it may just be because of the props. Anyway, I need some advice. For various reasons that aren't worth going into, the folks at Apple are looking around for a few people who could step into my shoes at various events. For example, if for some reason I want to be on vacation, but I also need to give a keynote speech or open a retail store or something, my stand-in could take my place. Provided we give him some decent training on the voice and so forth. Frankly I was not very happy with the skinny dude we hired for the WWDC. Too thin, too gray, and the vocal energy just wasn't there. Now we're battling off all these bloggers who are bombarding our PR department, thinking I'm frigin sick. Who can blame them? The guy looked like crap. Dudes, I'm not sick. I swear. I was in friggin Polynesia, okay? Obtain a clue.

Anyway, we think it might be cool to get a bunch of Steves so we could field me out to multiple appointments at the same time. Or have some stand-ins to take some dangerous duty, like Saddam used to do. Or to throw people off the trail if I ever need to get lost, as a certain member of my board of directors has suggested.

Having more than one also might help create a little bit of confusion, like at the end of V for Vendetta where there's like thousands of people all wearing that same freako goofball mask and the cops don't know which one to shoot. We'll set loose a handful of "Steves" in black mock turtlenecks and wireless round glasses in the hallways at Apple. Hell, we could get a hundred people and put them in Jobs masks.

The goal is to buy the real El Jobso a little extra time. Hours are everything in these situations. Trust me, I ain't gonna pull an OJ, heading for Mexico in a friggin white Bronco with a wig and fake mustache on the back seat and some moron steroid case behind the wheel. When I disappear, believe me, you won't even know I'm gone. Kozlowski did that, from what I've been told. Same with Martha Stewart. She was down in Brazil the whole time, having three-ways with her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend. Friggin moron Quattrone didn't bother, figured they'd never convict him. Ballsy move but look where it got him.

Trick is to start grooming the stand-in early so the transition isn't abrupt. Gotta think more about this tonight during my karmic repatterning. More on that in the morning. Namaste. Peace.

So the McNealy contest photos are rolling in

But dudes, come on. Some of the entries are just obvious fakes. Like this one, which AMDFanboi sent in with the caption, Sun ex-CEO Scott McNealy spotted at Stanford University Golf Course, going into the woods after a sliced shot. Dude, this hardly even looks like McNealy. But the real giveaway is, if you look closely, you'll notice that he's not carrying a friggin golf club. Sorry, we can't use this in the Scott Spotting contest. But thanks for playing. Peace out.

Not cool, Bill

Some a-hole just sent me this book in the mail. No card, no return address. Plain brown envelope. But the post office stamp says it was mailed from Medina, WA. Duh, Bill. Really. You suck. Really. I mean it.

Make Out Girl writes in too

And her email is a doozy.

Dear Steve Jobs,
My name is Catherine and I’m one of the “girls” you made fun of in your blog for “making out” with another “chick.” (I’m the more attractive one, wearing the gray skirt. And fair play to you on the frumpy dress my friend was wearing. I agree it's hideous. But on the subject of my "freaky" skirt, however, I'm afraid I must protest. It's Givenchy, darling, and not off the rack.) But moving on. Just wanted to let you know that my companion, Catriona, and I are not, in fact, "Yelptards." We are graduates of Harvard, which is a university on the East Coast. Have you heard of it? It's pretty well regarded in some circles. Catriona graduated with honors, and I graduated summa cum laude. (It’s Latin, you can look it up.) We’re now Ph.D. candidates at the UC-Santa Cruz, in the Department of Feminist Studies (formerly called Women’s Studies) studying under Bettina Aptheker. (Have you heard of her? No? Really? She's pretty famous. And you'd like her. She's a "lezbo" too.) We’ve been following your blog for some time, reading it as a clever parody-of-a-parody (or parity or parroty as the case may be). We admired its droll, puckish send-up of schoolboy humor; its deconstructed author-as-both-narrative-and-author; not to mention its self-aware yet juvenile humor which we read as intended to mock things like the ghastly Harvard Lampoon. Sort of a lampoon of lampoons, if you will. (Or even if you won't, for that matter.) In other words, Fake Steve, we dug your stuff.

But apparently we were giving you too much credit. Because we were shocked when you latched on to our "make-out" performance and thought it represented an image of “lezbos” (ugh, shiver, hate that word) and failed to recognize its actual intent, which was as a sly, ironic statement about subverting (by (in)verting and thus (per)verting) the male gaze. Honestly, we thought a smarty-pants Zen master like yourself would catch that right away. You have heard of the "male gaze," right? No? Come on. Laura Mulvey? Michel Foucault? Jacques Lacan? Jacques Derrida? Gilles Deleuze? Felix Guattari? These names ringing any bells? Seriously? Oh, wait. That’s right. You didn’t go to college. Aw. Well, trust me. They're right up there with Einstein, Picasso and Gandhi. Even with John Lennon. (I know, hard to believe.) As for what our performance was about, let me try to explain it in a way that you and your little pal Nemo could understand. We’re not “hot lezzzbos” from a Girls Gone Wild video. We were making a joke, and you ended up being the butt of it. Peace out. Catherine.

(Please note that the above photograph was taken by a fantastic photographer named Mitchell Aidelbaum. Here is the flickr account page of Mitchell Aidelbaum, where you can see the entire body of work by Mitchell Aidelbaum, including this one entitled “Bundle of Women,” and this one showing a three-girl makeout session. Is it porno? I don't know, but I'm beating off to it. Mitchell Aidelbaum, everyone at Apple loves your work and we want to see more. How do you get them to do this? I can never get chicks to agree to it. At least not good-looking ones. What draws them? Is it the venture money? Maybe we should start a Web 2.0 company. Which, by the way, let's give a big shout-out to venture capitalist and "king o' da pimps" Jeremy Levine, whose firm, Bessemer Venture Partners, put up the bucks for this. Thanks, Jeremy. And, as always, thanks again to the very talented Mitchell Aidelbaum.)

Bike Helmet Girl responds

Here’s her email. It’s awesome, I must admit.

Dear Obnoxious Guy Who Is Totally Older Than My Dad but Thinks He’s Still Cool, As If:
Thank you so much for the offer of a free MacBook Pro. I’d like to take you up on it, but right now I am between apartments and staying with friends (in their van) and therefore don’t have a mailing address you could use. Could you perhaps hold on to the MacBook Pro for a while until I’m able to take delivery, or until we save up enough gas money to drive down the Peninsula and pick it up? If you wouldn’t mind, please take it out of the box, turn it on, and let it run for a while until it gets good and hot. Then wedge it up between your butt cheeks and squeeze. See if you can hold it like that till I can get to Cupertino. Luv, Karen aka Tiffany.

Bike Helmet Girl, I think I'm starting to fall for you.

(Please note that the above photograph was taken by a fantastic and good-natured photographer named Mitchell Aidelbaum whose career we are trying to support. Here is Mitchell Aidelbaum's flickr account page, where you can see more photographs by Mitchell Aidelbaum. Thanks again for your great work, Mitchell Aidelbaum, especially the shots of hot chicks swapping germs which are posted on the flickr account page of Mitchell Aidelbaum and distributed under a Creative Commons license. We believe that great things are coming your way, Mitchell Aidelbaum.)

Shame about those flaming Dell laptops

I bet old Mike never imagined that this ad would come back to bite him on the ass. Kinda hilarious though.

Why didn't we think of this?

Says here AOL is gonna dig up some spamtard's backyard looking for money they think he buried there. Hey, Nick DePlume at ThinkSecret, what's that diesel engine sound out behind the dorm? Hey look! A bulldozer! Cool!

Seriously, punk, we're coming for you.

I’m fine, really. Honest. No problems.

Namaste. There's been a lot of speculation about my health cause people said I looked so crappy at the WWDC. Look, the question has been asked and answered. But I understand. People worry. It’s cool. I appreciate the concern. I do. And I’m fine. Yes, that really was me at the WWDC, not a stand-in who looks and sounds almost exactly like me. No, I have not fled the country and been replaced by a look-alike. Katie, our currently non-hypnotized PR woman, wanted to put out a statement to this effect but I told her we should stick to the "frig you" policy that has served us so well with the press in the past. Meanwhile, my spiritual advisor Jennie Falco has arrived and we’re sequestered in the Apple meditation chamber, which I've blocked out for the next two days. (Sorry to those of you who had to cancel sessions.) Jennie and I are doing some karmic repatterning, plus some soul clearing and journeywork. In other words, the full package, with brief breaks for bathroom and email. It’s hard work, and very taxing. But I know it is going to pay off. Thank you all for your concern. Namaste.

Jerry York can be so cryptic sometimes

So Jerry York comes to see me tonight, after everyone has gone home. I didn't even know he was on the campus. He comes in kind of quietly, shuts the door, says nothing for a long time. Just sits there. I figure he's going to tell me what went on in the board meeting after I left. But he doesn't. He kind of sighs and goes, Man this f-ing option bullshit, huh? F-ing Sarbanes Oxley. Utter bullshit. Then he goes all silent again and gazes out the window. He sighs again and says, God, it's nice here in California, isn't? Great weather. Really nice. I think it's maybe the nicest place there is to live. You got the ocean, the mountains, everything. Nowhere else could ever be the same.

I don't know what to say. I just shrug and go, Yeah, I guess.

He sits for a while more, saying nothing, tapping his foot on the table. Then he goes, Kid, you keep your passport up to date? You must, right? With all the traveling you do. Sure, I say, I keep it up to date. And you keep it with you? he says. I go, Yeah, most of the time. Or my assistant has it. Huh, he says, your assistant. Huh. See, me, I keep it right in my briefcase, always with me, never let it out of my sight. You know what else I do? I keep about a million in cash with me too. Right on my jet, in a safe. And I spread some money around the world, different places, like Switzerland, and South Africa. Places like that. Just cash money. Money I can get my hands on. A few million here and there. Rainy day money is what I call it. And nobody knows about it, not even my family. And I got friends in those places, lot of old friends that I stay in touch with. And some friends in D.C., too, guys I grew up with, the kind of guys who don't tell you where they work. Guys like that come in handy at some point. You see where I'm going with all this, kid?

I'm like, Jerry, dude, I have no idea where you're going. Are you going to South Africa? Or Switzerland or something? Why are you being all weird and mysterious?

Jerry gives me this really pained look. His eyes kind of well up with tears, like he's going to start crying. Which is definitely not like him. He starts to say something, then stops and sighs again. He slaps his knees and says, Well, kid, I gotta get going. You call me if you figure it out. And about ten minutes later I get this email from a Hotmail account with a link to this Reuters story, and it takes me a few minutes to put it all together but then I'm like, Oh, right, now I get it. Then I look out my window just in time to see Jerry's limo pulling out of the parking lot.

Scott Spotting

So this is a game we've been playing inside Apple for the past few months, and we're thinking maybe we should open it up to outsiders. Basically the idea is you go out and find Scott McNealy doing something in public, like telling tall tales at the bar of a TGI Friday's, and you take his picture with your camera phone, or better yet, a digital camera. That's it. You don't have to hit him with a pie or anything. Just take a snapshot. (And be careful not to get too close, he bites.) Anyhoo, what we do is score the pictures on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 represented by the rather benign shot up above, which was taken at the Red Hat booth at this week's Linux World show, where Scott was going, Oh, I see, so it really is kinda like Unix, huh? And a score of 10 is represented by this which was taken in the Pebble Beach locker room two weekends ago and still ranks #1 on our system. Honestly, it's gonna be pretty tough to beat. But be on the lookout, and send along your best efforts. Feel free to write your own captions too. We'll publish the best ones as they come in, and maybe put them to a vote and give out an iPod to the winner, something like that. Peace out.

Stuff like this tarnishes our brand

So all the little free-speech people are wringing their hands and tearing out their hair just because we're cracking down on people who stole the word "pod" from us, according to this story in CNET. But come on. The friggin TightPod? I mean WTF? We gotta protect our trademark or we could lose it. I can't believe I even have to explain this stuff. And as for the buttplugs, man, don't get me started. That's not even real wood. Sheesh.

Yelptards, look, I apologize. Seriously.

Man the hate mail is just rolling in after those three Yelp items I posted yesterday. Like this one:

Dear Grumpy Old Man,
My name is Karen, aka Tiffany, aka the girl in the bicycle helmet that you made fun of on your blog. [Note: see her here.] Just for you're information, I have to wear that helmet because I have a medical condition where I sometimes get dizzy and fall over without warning. However, I am not a frigtard, as you put it. In fact I am a graduate of Hampshire College and a very successful performance artist in San Francisco. Not that you would know about that since your too busy living down on the Peninsula and listening to classic rock in your mansion and making those ripoff iPods. And that woman you described as "Big Mama Gummy Bear," just for your information, came to the party right after having some really painful oral surgery, but still put on a brave face and did her best to have a good time. So, anyway, hope you enjoy having fun at other people's expense. Your not funny though. Your a mean person and a phony with your whole David Carradine Kung Fu act and everyone knows it.

Tiffany aka Karen:
Namaste. I bow to you. You are correct. I beg your forgiveness. I was wrong to insult you and to make fun of you and your friends. I deeply apologize. When we insult another, we insult all people. Including ourselves. My soul is deeply troubled for having caused this harm. This damage needs to be repaired. Could I send you and your friend some brand new MacBooks with superfast Intel Core 2 Duo processors? Please let me know. From the depths of my being, I am sorry.

Peace.

P.S. we've also received a complaint from Mitchell Aidelbaum, the very talented photographer who took the photos at the Yelp party. He writes:

Please either credit me on every photo with a link to my flickr account or pay me for the use of those photos (Which I'd rather have).

Unfortunately we are broke but we want to give credit to Mitchell Aidelbaum for his fine work. All of the Yelp photographs, including the one that we link to in the above item, were taken by the very talented Mitchell Aidelbaum and distributed under a Creative Commons license. Here is Mitchell Aidelbaum's flickr account page. FSJ thanks Mitchell Aidelbaum for his fine work. We regret that when first posted this item did not include credit for Mitchell Aidelbaum.

Help is on the way, hooray

So I've been desperately trying to track down my Zen master. I tried calling him, got the machine. Drove up to his house, he's not there. Drove down to Tassajara, up to Berkeley, no luck. Finally I went to the Zen Center in Mountain View and someone there who knows him tells me he's on a friggin retreat in Japan and can't be reached. But they know someone else, supposedly very excellent, this woman named Jennie Falco who was trained and received the blessing of my original Zen master, the late Kobin Chino. Jennie's website (please check it out) says she's a "heart-centered clairvoyant medium" and a "counselor, teacher and guide." She also does karmic repatterning and soul clearing/journeywork. In other words, she's perfect, but there's just one catch. She's in Colorado doing a Reiki Master Training workshop. So I track her down and she says of course she knows who I am because Roshi Kobin often spoke of me (!) and of course she'll cancel the workshop and come back ASAP to help me. She says she can feel the disturbance in my soul over the phone. So, great. I'm sending the Apple jet to get her.

Meanwhile, I'm just trying to stay quiet and find the still center. I've told everyone around me, no phone calls, no visitors. Especially not from Potter. I want that guy out. I'm not releasing any new products until he's gone. Because they'll just be infected by his bad energy. The guy and his goon squad are totally messing up the spirituality around here. It's a delicate place, Apple. You'll never get to visit, but if you did, you'd see. The hallways are very quiet. Lots of glass and wood. Very monastic. The whole idea is to sustain a feeling of harmony, like a string pulled taut. Now we've got these lawyers running around ripping the place up. It hurts my soul, honestly. I'm fasting again, and meditating. Liquids only until Jennie Falco gets here. Namaste. Peace.

So Tom Cruise calls

Says he's been reading the blog, and he can tell something's wrong. Says I'm acting all bipolar, that Good Steve and Bad Steve are fighting it out in public and that is sucking away my energy and robbing me of my power. He tells me about my spheres being out of synchronicity and about rehabilitating my thetan. Wants me to fly down to LA for some kind of auditing session at the Celebrity Centre. Or he says he can fly up and bring a couple auditors with him. Steve, he says, you're in pain, I can feel it. But we can fix this, honestly, I've seen it hundreds of times. This stuff saves lives, Steve.

Now, the thing is, I respect Scientology. (Okay, no, I don't, not really.) But I respect Tom's decision to choose his path. (And by the way Tom just loves our new quad core Mac Pro and says he doesn't see how we can sell it for only $2,499, and he swears he's going to make the next Mission Impossible entirely on a Mac cluster.) But I've got my path, and it's not Scientology, it's a different path, which is Zen, kinda has a little more of a track record than Scientology but whatever. Namaste. So I tell Tom, You know, I appreciate the offer, and I'll think about it, okay? I will. I promise.

Then I go, Hey, so how's the baby? And he goes, What? I go, The baby? He says, Huh? I go, You and Katie Holmes had a baby? Her name is like Surrey or something? Suddenly he does that weird hysterical laugh of his and he goes, Oh, hahaha! Wow, hello! Rain Man moment, right? Sheesh, Steve, wow! The baby, oh my God, yes! Yes! The baby! She's awesome, Steve! Seriously. Thing is, we're not getting a lot of sleep these days. And so the old brain stops working. You know how that is, Steve, the massive sleep deprivation. Man. I mean, there I am lying right in the same bed as my very young and attractive female wife, right? Trying to get some sleep. Or better yet, trying to have some Daddy time, if you know what I mean. Because Steve, she's soooo hot, you know? Even now, after the pregnancy and everything, she is soooo hot. I mean I can't keep my hands off her! But sometimes you just want to get some sleep, right? But no way, cause the baby is awake all the time, twenty four hours a day. I mean I had no idea. Did you, Steve? I mean were you aware that a baby doesn't sleep at all for the first three months of its life? Guess they just forgot to mention that in the childbirth classes, right? Steve, it's just intense what that lack of sleep can do to your thetan, isn't it? Course I'm sure you know all about that. Since you're a dad, aren't you, Steve? I mean, being a regular straight heterosexual man with a wife and kids, whew! It's a lot of work, isn't it? Hey but somebody's gotta do it, right? No, I'm kidding. It's great, it's great, it really is great. I love it, Steve. I do. Really, really something.

Then he goes, Oh, wait, can you hold on a sec? I gotta put the phone down. Someone at the door. I hear him say, Hey, come in, how's it going, what's your name? Xavier? Oh, Javier. You're not Mexican, are you? Okay, well, just go upstairs and I'll be up in a minute. That's right. Up the stairs, first door on the left. Great.

Then he gets back on the phone and goes, Hello? I'm sorry, who is this? Huh? Steve Jobs? Oh, right, oh man, Steve, I am totally spaced out! Whew! Well look, I've got this massage appointment. This new assistant of mine keeps moving stuff around on my calendar and not telling me. Anyway, gotta hop. But think about the audit, Steve. Seriously. I can fly up to you and bring the people. Think about it. Cause it's awesome. This stuff saves lives, Steve. Really. Gotta go. Okay. Adios.

Diversity is not just a slogan for us

Namaste. Here at Apple we like to think that we're, well, a little different from other companies. A little more progressive. And yes, a little better. Especially when it comes to things like vegetarianism, sustainable energy, and ethnic diversity. Especially diversity. You should see our cafeteria. There is sooo much ethnic food to choose from. Honestly, diversity really is an integral part of who we are. Always has been. I guess because of my own Middle Eastern roots, I've always been kind of really finely tuned to other parts of the world. I mean, this is just something that is really important to me. And it's something we really try to convey in our advertisements. Like the "think different" ads where we intentionally used foreigners like Gandhi, Einstein and Picasso. And then the silhouette ads, with the wildly gyrating ethnic type people with dreadlocks and such, like our latest, which I urge you to go view on our web site.

The message is that we're not really a U.S. company. We're citizens of the world. We're a global brand. We're not afraid of people who have skin that is darker than ours. In fact we celebrate them. We rejoice in their darkness. And for people who don't feel this way, well, we like to kind of take them out of their comfort zone a little bit. Maybe shake them up. Or, if they really don't like the ads, well, that's fine, because we don't want those people using our products. Seriously. If you're a racist, don't buy an iPod. Or an iMac. Because you won't enjoy it. And the thing is, at Apple we don't just talk the talk when it comes to diversity. We walk the walk. I urge you to look at the incredible diversity of the executive management team that runs this place. And our super ethnic board of directors. I'm so proud of what we have accomplished here. Really.

Peace out. Or just peace.

Wanted: RDF repairman

Something is deeply wrong with my karma. I'm cranky. Irritable. Pixelated. Not myself. It's like someone let Dark Steve out of his box and he won't go back in. Maybe it's this options stuff. Or a hangover effect from the 7 Day Miracle Cure. Can't tell. But my chi is messed up. And my famous Jobsian hypnotic gaze is totally on the fritz. First time I noticed it was during the meeting with the board on Sunday. But then last night I convened a meeting of all our PR and marketing people to brainstorm some ideas for this Apple Peace Summit that I've been thinking about, the one with all the world leaders and such. And nobody was buying it.

Katie Cotton, for example, just sat there scowling. She even dared to speak without being spoken to. She said, Steve, if you're figuring that this Peace Summit sideshow is gonna distract people's attention from the options scandal, you're wrong. So I looked at her. Right at her. Really deep, totally sincere. I pressed my hands together in the prayer position and gave her the full Jobs stare, trying to put her under. Didn't work. I cranked up the intensity. Still nothing. Zilch. She's just sitting there, tapping her pen on her knee. And I mean, Katie is about as easy to hypnotize as a person gets. It's a PR thing. They're all like that. Like sheep, only cuter, and slightly less intelligent. I've kept Katie under for months at a time, with nothing more than an occasional refresher session, five minutes max. But now, nothing. The tractor beam just wasn't working. For a second I thought I had her. I saw her eyelids kind of flutter. But then she snapped to again.

I tried using a trigger word. It's an old NLP trick. I kept saying, It's peace, Katie, do you understand? It's all about world peace. Apple is going to be the one to bring about world peace. Just like we brought together the Big Five record companies. Who ever thought those guys would all cooperate on anything, right? But we did it. I got them in a room and put them under and they all signed the contracts. If we can do that, why can't we get Arafat and King John Ill and Milosevic and whoever else to all come together at one table? It's peace, Katie. It's world peace, Katie. World peace. We're gonna do this. We're gonna save the world. The Apple Computer World Peace Summit brought to you by Steve Jobs. And Bill Clinton. And Nelson Mandela. And Bono.

Katie, I'm talking about peace. World peace. It'll be our new corporate slogan. Peace. We'll use the photos of John and Yoko again. Get someone going on some logos and banners and T-shirts right now. But I want to see every color swatch before anything goes out. We'll have the summit here in Cupertino. Or no, better yet, we'll do it in Africa. Africa is very hot right now. Madonna's all over it. So we'll go to Africa. Like, to Guyana. I've always wanted to go there. Have you guys ever read about Jim Jones? Amazing figure. Seriously. Kind of a personal hero of mine. It's peace, Katie. It's world peace. That's what I'm talking about. World peace.

But no, Katie just sat there, giving me this "who farted?" look. The rest of them too, same thing, except for a couple of the young ones, down in back, who I could see had gone under and were sitting there with their eyes rolled up into their skulls. For about two seconds I considered bringing them up to the Jobs Pod so I could play some games with them for Jonathan Ive, like make them pretend they were chickens or whatever, but you know what? My heart just wasn't in it. Something is seriously wrong. I blame Potter, the outside lawyer. Guy's got some bad magic, I can feel it. He and his little goon squad are going through everyone's email, digging through the servers, really messing with the vibe in this place. Not cool.

Yelp party, part 3

Okay now this cat I can relate to. Jeremy Stoppelman, the CEO of Yelp, appears to be just the kind of sociopathic nouveau riche lady killer that I've always admired. Check out the babe he's working on at this party. Not bad, right? Kind of a downmarket version of Meryl Streep. Even looks like she can probably string a sentence. And though she's posing with her lips closed, I'll bet you a signed hundred dollar bill she's got a full-size set of teeth. Just a wild guess. What makes this even better is that there's also a little betrayal angle here. Because not long before this, old Jeremy was making time with a certain little damsel named Sarah Lacy from BusinessWeek, who is shown getting cozy with our boy in a photograph here. Just happens that Miss Lacy was writing an article about old Jeremy at the time, though I'm sure that had nothing to do with Jeremy's decision to hit on her. And I'm sure that poor little Sarah is feeling all hurt now. Can't you just imagine her spotting Jeremy swapping germs with the blonde at the party and then stomping off and crying in the ladies room? But look, what does she expect? She's a cute girl and all, in that plain-jane reporter kinda way. But she ain't no fake Meryl Streep.

Jeremy, my man, I tell you this. Take it while you can get it. And clearly, my lad, you can get it. Seriously. From one master cocksman to another, I say: May the force be with you. And just in case you're feeling bad about screwing over that reporter -- which I seriously doubt, cause you've totally got that "Yeah, I'm an asshole" look -- but if you are feeling a little twinge of guilt, don't. Because just wait. In two years' time these a-holes in the press are gonna be screwing you worse than you ever screwed them. Trust me. Maybe not even two years. Six months is more like it, based on what I've read about Yelp. And $3 million in venture money doesn't last too long, especially when you're throwing P. Diddy parties. Anyway, good luck, you big pimp. And, uh, peace.

(N.B. both of these photographs were taken by the very talented Mitchell Aidelbaum and distributed under a Creative Commons license. Here is Mitchell Aidelbaum's flickr account page. FSJ thanks Mitchell Aidelbaum for his fine work. We regret that when first posted this item did not include credit for Mitchell Aidelbaum.)

That Yelp party again

Look at this dude. I guess he works at Yelp, and he really thinks he's the shit, doesn't he? What with two skanks hanging on him. Um, not to be rude, but ... like what the frig is wrong with that girl? And don't play dumb. You know exactly which one I'm talking about. Big Mama Gummy Bear. Dude, back in the day we didn't even let girls like this come through the door at our parties, let alone pose for friggin pictures with them. I mean, I was going out with women like Diane Keaton and Joan Baez. Even Woz had some standards. Meanwhile big hotshot Neil K. is trying to work a three-way with Rocky and Bullwinkle. Whew. This picture has been zipping around Apple and Pixar all day on email. People are doing terrible things with Photoshop. Just wrong, I know. But whatever. Neil K., have no fear, because soon this bad dream will be over and you will be back waiting tables in the Mission. I promise. Peace.

(The above photograph was taken by Mitchell Aidelbaum and distributed under a Creative Commons license. Here is Mitchell Aidelbaum's flickr account page. FSJ thanks Mitchell Aidelbaum for his fine work. When this item first was posted it did not include attribution for Mitchell Aidelbaum. FSJ regrets the error.)

Hey, Jeremy Levine at Bessemer Venture Partners, here's your money at work

Lately people keep asking me, Do you think we're having another tech bubble? Like an echo bubble or something? Tell you what. Look at these photos from a Yelp party at SFMOMA taken by Mitchell Aidelbaum (whose flicker page is here) and then you tell me. I mean, I'm not 100% sure, but when a) you've got companies with names like "Yelp"; and b) they're having parties at SFMOMA; and c) this man wearing a bra is one of the guests of honor; and d) your PR bimbos are acting like drunken LUGs at a Girls Gone Wild party, and e) it's all being paid for by venture capitalists who are just betting that a bigger fool (cough, Rupert Murdoch, cough) will come along ... well, yeah, you might start thinking that maybe you're in the middle of a bubble type period.

Kids, you seem like a nice bunch, and you're not bad looking, at least by San Francisco standards (in NY or LA people would just laugh), and I'm sure Oberlin was awesome and the year in Prague did you some good and opened your horizons to other cultures and you saw how the rest of the world views America and everything, and I know it's a bummer to be living in the U.S. right now with Bush as president and Rove as head of the Senate or whatever, but at the same time you're soooo into living in the Bay Area and soooo glad to be working with so many rilly rilly smart and cool people and everything ... and you're growing sideburns and a soul patch, or getting your clit pierced and experimenting with bisexuality and taking up snowboarding with a bunch of other faux dykes at Alpine Meadows ... but take some advice from an old guy. You're working a little too hard at showing the world how much fun you're having, okay? You're putting in just a little too much effort at seeming hip. You don't need to make out with other chicks in public to shock us. We've seen it before. And with hotter chicks. And it's not shocking. What is shocking is that drunk, dopey expression on your face and that fugly orange thrift-shop dress and that freaky high-waist gray stretch skirt. Ditto for the big fur coats and indoor bicyle helmets (which yes, do make you look frigtarded) and the conspicuously doofy hat and the beatnik beard which I guess is supposed to make people not notice you're fat.

Look. I know you're trying to come across as hip and bohemian so that people will forget that you're basically nice middle-class kids from the East Coast or the Midwest. I know you don't want anyone to think that you're just as desperately greedy and materialistic as your parents, and that you're secretly hoping to make huge amounts of money to get back at them, and that you're deeply, deeply insecure because your only previous work experience involved typing up the school lunch menus for that local weekly back in Connecticut. But just ease up a bit. Seriously.

So, is there a bubble? Well, I'm no economist. But kids, I wouldn't throw out those Burger King uniforms just yet.

And to all you institutional investors that are pumping your pension fund money into Bessemer Venture Partners, that 100-year-old, very blue blood, very prestigious venture firm that is a lead investor in Yelp, well, the kids out here in the Bay Area just want to say, Thanks, grandpa. Rilly. We're having an awesome time with your money.

(Please note: Both of the above photographs of drunken Yelptards and all of the other fine photographs that are linked in this item were taken by Mitchell Aidelbaum and distributed under a Creative Commons license. FSJ thanks Mitchell Aidelbaum for his fine work. When this item originally appeared it did not credit Mitchell Aidelbaum and also failed to include a link to Mitchell Aidelbaum's flickr page. FSJ regrets the error and apologizes to Mitchell Aidelbaum for this mistake.)

Apparently there are some laws about some of these things

So last May our general counsel, Nancy Heinen, left the company. I didn't even know she was gone but one day in June I noticed I hadn't seen her in a while and somebody told me, Oh yeah, she's been gone since May, and I was like, Okay, whatever, I gotta dash up to the Jobs Pod and finish baking up some tasty new iPods. But now Nancy has lawyered up, and everyone is freaking out and panicking. Apparently it's considered a big deal if your company's corporate counsel retains defense attorneys, especially if one of those attorneys also represented one of the Enron dudes. I don't see the big deal but whatever. Anyhoo, I was out doing some stretches this morning when Jerry York calls and tells me we're having an emergency board meeting. On a Sunday. I go, Jerry, you know that Sunday is my Ultimate Frisbee league, and it's sacred. You know that. I do not work on Sunday. He tells me there's no choice, so whatever, I go in, and everybody's there except Al Gore, who apparently really is gonna quit, or already has quit, I'm not sure. And at the front of the room is Potter, this outside lawyer guy that we hired. He's standing at the white board, which everyone knows is my huge pet peeve, but anyway, I'm still so smoked about missing the game that I can't even bother to complain. He goes on and on for like forever and he's talking about how he's found all these "irregularities," and I'm like rolling my eyes and saying to myself that I can't believe I missed friggin Ultimate for this. But Potter says that in fact "irregularities" is lawyer speak for "truly deeply bad shit," and he says the bottom line is that apparently you can't just give yourself all sorts of shares and options and not tell the shareholders. "Even if you're the founder of the company," he says, looking right at me with this big schoolteacher frown on his face. As if I'm totally to blame for all the problems.

I go, Are you sure on that, like you really can't do that? And he says yes, he's totally sure, he does this for a living, and by the way he's a former federal prosecutor and he once convicted a Congressman. So I'm totally fighting the urge to put some aikido moves on him just for disrespecting me like this in front of my hand-picked board, but instead, I don't. I do the opposite. I go all Zen on him. I do the thing where I press my hands together in front of me like I'm praying, and I act all serious like I'm totally concentrating on every word he says. When he's done I put on this really contrite look and I turn to all the board members and I totally make eye contact using my most hypnotic Jobsian gaze, and I go, Look, you know what? My bad. Totally. My bad. And I want to make it right. I don't want this hanging over the company and interfering with our creativity. Whatever I need to do to make it right, I want to do it, as soon as possible. Seriously. I'll pay a fine, or write a check to some charity, just tell me the amount. I'll give iPods to some inner city kids, or send some iMacs to the Third World or something. Whatever. Really. I don't care about money at all. I really don't. You all know that. I'm not about the money, never have been.

Potter goes, Well, it's not quite as easy as that, because, um, it may be that some laws are involved here, we might be dealing with some allegations along those lines. And I was like, Come on, you're telling me there are laws about this stuff? Damn. And for about two seconds I really thought I was gonna blow chunks. I mean, this Potter is really convincing, believe me. He's good.

But then it hit me. I looked at them all and saw how none of them could look me in the face and I go, Wait a minute! Hold up! I get it! You a-holes are punking me, right? Am I right? God, I hate you all! Seriously! Where's Ashton? Goddammit, where's friggin Ashton? You dick, get out here!

But they all just sit there looking embarrassed. Finally I go, Um, so you're not punking me? Jerry York is staring down, shaking his head. And I go, So um, what are we saying here? That this is not good, right? Is that what we're saying?

The lawyer looks at Jerry York. Jerry just keeps shaking his head. The rest of them can't even look at me. Finally after this huge pause Bill Campbell goes, in this really soft voice, Steve, would you mind if we continued the meeting witout you? I was like Guys, what's going on here? So what if Nervous Nancy hires a damn lawyer? You guys are freaking me out here. Look, it's me, remember? Steve Jobs. Guy who built this company. Guy who pulled this compay's butt out of the fire, remember? Then I held up my iPod and said, Hey, I invented this thing. It's called an iPod. Have you heard of it? Still, none of them would look at me. Finally Jerry York, still staring down at his hands, says, in this kind of ice-cold voice: Kid, get outta here. And I go, But Jerry, look, seriously, we gotta hash this out-- but Jerry cuts me off and goes, Seriously, kid. Go play f-ing Frisbee.

I have no idea what happened after I left. They were supposed to call me, but nobody has. I can't say for certain but this does not appear to be good.

On a brighter note, I did manage to catch the end of the Ultimate game.

Peace.

God it feels so good to fire people

Sometimes I do it just to cheer myself up after a bad day. Like if I've spent hours going through a thousand color swatches trying to find the exact right shade of black for one of our silhouette ads, and I still can't decide. Sometimes I play the "John Allen Muhammad" game and just choose someone at random. Sometimes Jonathan Ive comes with me as a wingman. We call him Lee Malvo. One way we do it is we'll go into one of the buildings on campus and say, Okay, first person who dares to look up and speak to me -- bam. In the neck. With no explanation. Just take your stuff and go. Now. This always, always makes me feel better. (Except for one time when it was Avie Tevanian. Whoops.) Anyway, today was different. I canned the "dream team." There was just no synergy. What do I have to say to some fat pig hacker from Iceland? Or to that skateboard kid from Digg. The worst was the Wired guy. He suffers from what I call the Curse of the Schwartz. Just waaaaay too fascinated by the sound of his own voice. And way too in love with his ideas. And by the way, I'm sorry, but this long tail thing? It's the kind of idea a high school kid would think up. Like, dude, on the Internet? Like even really obscure bands can become popular? Ya know? Gimme a break. I run iTunes, okay? I see what sells. It ain't the unknowns, trust me.

So anyway they're gone. Including Random, the money guy. How it happened was that Random was arguing with me about why it made sense to keep the other guys on for a few more weeks. Then he did something that I still can't believe. He picked up a marker and started drawing on my whiteboard. Which everyone knows is a huge pet peeve of mine. It's my whiteboard. Which I was standing at, holding a marker, writing things like, Wrong, Stupid, Clueless, Dumbass, No Friggin way, and so forth. So he started drawing on the whiteboard, things like Money, Mine, and Shut up, and I'm just standing there like, Oh. My. God. I can't believe I'm seeing this. What the frig? I could feel the veins in my eyes starting to swell up like they might explode. And I was like, Put. Down. The. Friggin. Marker. Now. Seriously, man, before I do some aikido moves and rip out your friggin heart and eat it in front of you, still beating. Or take your friggin head off. How dare you? How dare you? This is my whiteboard. That's it. Take your stupid money and don't let the door hit you on the butt on the way out. I'll do my own blog, on my own terms. Now, despite all this, I did say "Peace" as he left. He gave me the finger. Nice, right? I'm sooo glad we're not in business anymore. So, once again, El Jobso walks alone. Like Billie Joe from Green Day, who totally just signed a major deal with iTunes which I can't tell you about yet, but it's gonna be huge.

Little bit of management advice while I'm at it because I often get asked for tips. I like to fire people on Fridays. That way you frig up their weekend. Sort of equalizes out the karma, since they've been friggin up my company.

Well. I'm off to Calistoga to clear my head and cleanse my soul. Have a good weekend.

Peace.

Peace -- pay it forward

So it's Friday, and I'm slipping out early to hit the mud baths in Calistoga, then get a hot mineral soak and cucumber wrap. Anything to take my mind off this options crap and the restatements and the NASDAQ hassle today.

Anyhoo, I've also been thinking about war. Like the war in Iraq, and the war in Lebanon, and the one in Africa with the Hutus and the Tutsis. Just war in general. It's all the same. It's war. And I'm thinking, man, we gotta stop doing this. We gotta stop having wars. And I just feel that if enough of us felt this way, we could stop it, you know? Not sure how yet but I've got some people working on it. Like some of my most creative people at Apple and Pixar, some of my real rockstars, in a kind of cross-company initiative. One idea we're kicking around is that maybe I can do a kind of Jesse Jackson thing, like go on a world tour and call on some of the so-called bad guys, like the guy in Iran with the impossible name, and King John Ill in South Korea and maybe Osama Bin Laden and whoever is the king of the Hutus or whatever. And then get the guys like Bush and Blair and DeGaulle and whoever else is on the good side and we all sit down and just talk. Like we do a Dayton Accord but worldwide. Just get everything out on the table. Maybe bring Nelson Mandela with me. And Bill Clinton. Maybe Bono. I dunno. Just an idea.

Another idea the team cooked up is a very simple thing. It's one word. Just one word, one syllable. Peace. Say it out loud, right now, there at your desk. Peace. Nice, right? So start using it. Like as a greeting to your friends, instead of "hey" or "hi" or "what's up." Instead, say, "Peace." Same when you're saying goodbye. Instead of "later," or "see ya," just say, "Peace." You see? Starts to gather power through repetition. Like that movie, Pay It Forward. If we get this started on the blogs, maybe it can spread around the world.

I know you might feel awkward or embarrassed saying it. But just try. If we all start doing it, it won't feel so weird. Peace. You see? Just one word. Peace. I'm hoping other bloggers will pick up on this too. Even the doofballs like Scoble and Jonathan Schwartz. Try it, guys. I know we've had our differences, but this is bigger than us. We're talking about the world. The planet. Our lives. So let's get involved. Let's do something. Let's show the world that the Valley isn't just a bunch of self-absorbed money-grubbing narcissists who don't care about anything except ripping off shareholders and giving ourselves options and making ridiculous amounts of money. I grew up here. I know better. I know we're not just a bunch of glorified Circuit City salestards who spout a bunch of Eastern religion hooey and fly around in private jets feeling morally superior. We're the smartest, most creative, most innovative people in the world. And we're pretty spiritually enlightened, too, by the way, if that matters to you, which I hope it does. Look, we make computers. Computers. Machines that change the world. Now let's make another change. An even bigger one. Let's put an end to war. Let's start it right here, right in the Valley. Why not? Everything else starts here. After we wipe out war, we'll go for poverty. I say this in a spirit of complete humility.

Please, pay this message forward. It's just one word.

Peace.

Full archive

So I've moved all the old stuff into an archive here. It's more or less in the right order. Enjoy.

Then again

Bill may want to hang on to that wristband. Never know when it might come in handy.

Blind leading the ... oh wait

CNET piece on Mr. Bill getting fitted with a special vibrating wristband that helps blind people navigate. Er, okay. Do you think the kids from Brazil knew how funny this would be? Is this like some sick joke about Vista, or Office Live? My guess is, yes. And look at the expression on Bill's face. He gets it, too. But like 30 seconds too late, after the wristband is on and the photographer has snapped his pic. Bang! You been punked, sucka!

So Michael Dell calls

And he says, Ya know, I can't read so good what with having only one good eye, as you pointed out recently, and also we kinda get the papers a few days late down here in Buttfriggerville, but, ah, from what I can see, and again, granted I got only one good eye, looks to me mebbe thangs ain't looking so good for you these days, either, right? I mean, hell, we coulda put up good numbers too I guess if we left out some of our expenses. Oh well. You need any help restating those numbers, just call. We got some dumbass Texas accountants down here, can straighten your ass out.

So Bill Lerach calls

And goes, Hey, let's test your ESP abilities. I'm thinking of a number between seven hundred million and nine hundred million ... any guesses? Call me and let's do this the easy way.

So Michael Eisner calls

And he’s like, Steve, Steve, Steve, I need your help on something, I’m out in the Hamptons and I’m doing a crossword puzzle here and I’m trying to remember that word that you Eastern religion hippie freaks are always using … what is it? Five letters, begins with K. Kurma? Korma? No, that’s some kind of Indian food. Oh wait. Karma. That’s it, isn't it? Karma? I think that’s it. Great. Whew! But anyway, so what’s new? I’m a little out of touch these days, haven’t been reading the papers, just out here on vacation enjoying myself. Any news on the Disney front? Or at Apple? What’s going on? Heard those iPods are selling like crazy. Good for you, Steve, really. Good for you. Couldn’t be happier for you. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Really. I mean it. You get my drift? Peace out, as the kids say.

So Michael Moore calls

And he says, Look, Steve, I’m standing outside your building with a film crew and your dickhead security goons won’t let me in. Yeah, you, buddy, I just called you a dickhead, so deal with it. Not you, Steve. Sorry. I'm talking to your security goon. Steve, I’m doing this movie about corporations, about this options stuff, I mean people don’t realize how the top half a percent in this country just enrich themselves on the backs of the workers, and I’m standing right here, Steve, okay, I’m right here, and I’m ready to hear your side of it, and I just think you ought to consider what this is gonna look like if you refuse to come down and talk to us, okay? Does the name Dick Clark ring any bells? Or Roger Smith at GM? You’re gonna look like that, Steve, like a corporate bastard. These guys keep giving me this crap about how you’re not even in the building but I know you’re in there. Oh, wait, here comes the PR lady, isn’t this nice, oh this is fantastic, are the cameras rolling? Are we rolling? Good, I want every last drop of this, seriously, it’s pure spun gold. Seriously.

So Mel Gibson calls

And he’s like, Hey, man, I’m sitting here in rehab feeling sorry for myself and then I saw what they’re doing to you and I’m like, You know what? I’m a lucky man. Believe me, I know how it feels to have these bastards hunting you down. Now they’ve got me stuck here in this f-ing rehab place, sitting around playing Monopoly with Tom Sizemore who I guess basically lives here now whenever he’s not on a show. Anyway, just saying hi and don’t let the bastards get you down. Goddamn Jews.

So Lou Gerstner calls

And he goes, Wait a minute, who’s this? Steve? Wait. This is Steve Jobs? Shit. I was calling for Jerry York. Returning his call. Musta got the numbers mixed up. Awkward. Yes. Sorry for this. Sorry to bug you. Wrong number. Bye.

So Tom Mesereau calls

And he goes, I know, I know, I know what you’re thinking. You're thinking, I don’t need representation. Fair enough, everyone thinks that, and I’m just calling to plant a seed. Cause I’m sure you know who I am, and I’m sure you know that I’m pretty darn good at what I do. I mean, the words “Michael Jackson” and “acquitted” aren’t exactly supposed to show up in the same sentence, right? Well it’s nothing for Mesereau the Magnificent! Nothing up my sleeve – presto! You’re acquitted. I’m like David Copperfield. Just look at my hair! And yes, it's real. Do you want to touch it? You know you do. Anyway, just an idea for you to tuck away, I’m thinking in your case we do the Johnnie Cochran strategy, make you sympathetic to the jury, you know, like, If the dude can’t count, then it don’t count. Good stuff, right? Good stuff. So call me.

So Bill Gates calls

And he’s laughing and in that nasal voice of his he goes, Hey, Steve, bummer that this all happened right before the big Worldwide Developers Conference, huh? I mean it kind of takes a little shine off the Apple, right? Man oh man, I’m sorry. I crack myself up sometimes. But I sympathize, Steve. I do. Seriously. I mean, it’s all so random. Like, all this hassle over, what, like 5 million shares or something? Totally random. I mean, what are 5 million Apple shares worth today, like $350 million? Oh, hold on, wait. You know what I just did? I just cut a fart that was worth $350 million, Steve. I mean, really, I did. This is messed up. Anyway, if you need any help, like another bailout or something, Daddy’s right here, just pick up the phone. And hey, a little advice is you should definitely try out the “Yes, I’m the CEO, but I didn’t know what was going on, and I didn’t know it was wrong” defense. Worked pretty good for Ken Lay. Hey, by the way, while I’ve got you on the phone, is it true you had a party with an ice sculpture peeing vodka? That is so classy. What? Oh, right, that was Dennis Kozlowski. Sorry, I get you guys mixed up sometimes. Well, good luck, man. You know everyone in the industry is rooting for you, cause you’ve been so nice to everyone over the years. Really. We’ve all got your back, bro.

So Jerry York calls

And he goes, Kid, I’m in f-ing Macau taking care of something, and I just heard about this, and I know you know what I’m talking about, so kid, what the f- is going on over there? I mean, how many times I gotta tell you? What the f- is wrong with you, kid? And don’t tell me you didn’t know, cause f- that, kid, you think I’m stupid? You think I don’t got people who talk to me? Don’t insult me. I’m flying back tomorrow and I’m gonna come see you, kid, and we’re going to have a talk, okay? I mean a talk talk, capeesh?

So Al Gore calls

And he’s like, Uh, yeah, uh, hi Steve, uh, ya know, I been doing some more thinking and uh, ya know, uh, I know we talked about me staying on the board and all, but you know what, I been thinking about it some more, and I think maybe it probably is a good idea for me to step down after all, cause, I don’t know, I got so much on my plate these days, and, uh, like I’m maybe gonna make a run in 2008 which is pretty much gonna eat up even more of my time, so, uh, we okay on this? You understand? And I just want you to know, I’m not doing this cause I think being on your board is gonna hurt my reputation or something, I think Apple is a fantastic company, so that’s just not what this is about. I’m just way too busy. Really, really, really busy. Okay? I didn’t even know about this SEC thing, honest. Anyway, I’m soooo busy, in fact, hey, I gotta call here, gotta take this, okay, later, gotta run.

Look, I'm no good with numbers

Never have been. Everybody knows that. My last math class was like in the eleventh grade and I got a C. And maybe you don't know this but I didn't exactly study business or finance. I'm not some MBA, okay? So this options crap is such a pain in my butt and I don’t have time for it. But I know the Apple faithful want answers and it's times like these when the cult leader has to reassure the flock, not just lock everybody up in a house like David Koresh and wait for the government to show up with flamethrowers and burn us out, though honestly, if you ever met any of these dicks from the SEC, you'd almost want to do that. So look. Here's the deal. I didn’t even know I had these options or whatever. Then apparently I gave them back and got some restricted stock or something. Who knows? All I know is what our PR people tell me and what I read in the friggin Wall Street Journal, which by the way, we totally did NOT authorize that story this morning, and the a-holes just went ahead and just printed it anyway, just did whatever they wanted. Pisses me off sooo much, I'm serious. And this backdating stuff? I mean what the frig? I don't even know what that means. I have no idea and I don’t want to know. Ask anyone, I’m not into material stuff. I'm up here in the Jobs Pod, barefoot, lying on the floor with a leather-bound sketchbook and a glass of carrot juice listening to Lothar and the Hand People on my iPod Hi-Fi which totally replaced a really expensive stereo system and you can't even tell the difference, it's that good, and for only $349. The thing is, I don’t care about money. Ask anybody who’s ever done business with me. I'm always the guy who gets screwed. I've played poker like twice and got killed. It's just not who I am. I'm all about the creativity. I'm into making beautiful objects. I'm a pop artist. Like Andy Warhol. You think people ever hassled Andy Warhol about friggin stock options? Sheesh. Really. I told this new outside lawyer, Do whatever you want, but leave me out of it. Totally. I've got a friggin keynote in three days. I'm trying to create amazing machines that restore a sense of childlike wonder to people's lives. And now this crap. Whatever.

So Tony Blair's in town

And friggin Jonathan Schwartz won't shut his pie hole long enough for any of the rest of us get a word in. There's a story on it here that kinda gives you a hint of what it was like, but trust me, it was way worse. I'm sorry, but I gotta say this. Jonathan's got that really dangerous combination of being not very smart yet thinking he's like super, super, super smart, like the smartest person in any room he enters, ya know? I mean, have you read his blog? It's hilarious, but I don't think he means it that way. I mean this guy really, really likes himself. A lot. The ponytail is the giveaway. And God he loves to hear himself talk. Probably it's the McKinsey background. They're all like that. I always wonder what it must be like when a bunch of McKinsey consultants get together for like a barbecue or something, and they're all standing around in their conspicuous eyewear trying to act casual but at the same time trying to show how smart they are. When like, dude, if you're so smart, why don't you start a company instead of working at McKinsey and giving lectures?

Anyhoo here's the money quote from Mr. Ponytail:

"In the U.S. and especially in Silicon Valley, if you have taken a risk and you fail, you in fact become more interesting and potentially more valuable because now you know something," Sun Microsystems' Schwartz told reporters after the meeting.

Yeah so Jonathan that must make you like the most interesting and valuable person in the Valley right about now, huh dude?

Then he tells Blair he should write a friggin blog. Riiight. Like maybe he can post where the British troops are gonna be moving tomorrow or something, or he can make fun of Bush or whatever. I mean by then it was just embarrassing, and we're like wincing and wanting to apologize for the guy, but stupid Jonathan is still lecturing the Prime Minister of the U.K. like Mr. Peabody taking Sherman into the wayback machine, talking about ancient history and the Egyptians and the evolution of technology and the industrial revolution and the invention of the steam engine in England and whatever, and by then Blair is just like openly pulling faces and saying things like, Right, er, um, thanks so much Jon, er, does anyone else have anything?

I'll tell you what I said to Blair. I waited till Schwartz was finished pleasuring himself in public, and then I said, Uh, actually, Sir Tony, all that stuff he just said, that's all wrong, okay? Just pretend you didn't hear it. We only let this dude come today because he pestered the hell out of us and we felt bad for him cause his company is going out of business, and really we all kinda make fun of him behind his back. Schwartz looked sorta hurt so I said, I'm sorry, man, but it's the truth. (Meanwhile Chambers and Ruiz are like shrugging and nodding their heads, as if to say, Well, yeah, you are kind of a frigtard.) So Sir Tony, I say, I know you came here to ask us about risk-taking, but the only thing that matters is making beautiful products that blow people's minds, and you Brits know how to do this already. Look at the Jaguar, the Aston-Martin, the Range Rover. Sure, they're not reliable. But they're works of friggin art. You guys also make totally smokin movies. And music. Like, the friggin Beatles? Hello! Just cause I had a little hassle with them recently doesn't mean I don't love their music cause I do. You might notice the eyeglasses I wear, which are my way of paying tribute to a certain Mr. John Lennon. So you guys are loaded with talent. Look at Austin Powers. And Richard Branson. Talk about risk-takers. Guy called me last week from a friggin space balloon. And Wallace & Gromit? Nick Park, friggin genius, we're trying to get him to work for Pixar. So just apply your creativity to computers. That's all. I mean don't make an iPod clone, cause that's already been done. But like maybe a TiVo clone, or like a really bitchin new smartphone-slash-music-player, or, uh, wait, no, I wouldn't do that one, but anyway there's lots of cool ideas still out there to be explored. Seriously.

The big secret meeting, complete waste of time

So the big secret meeting. What crap. It was Bill and Hillary Clinton being huge a-holes and trying to shake us down for money. I got there late, cause to hell with getting anywhere early and sitting around waiting, and anyway I figured this was gonna be another one of John Doerr’s stupid meetings where he tries to foist off some stupid Kleiner startup that isn’t working out, like remember Excite At Home? Friggin Doerr actually shopped that to us telling us how great it was and I was like Dude if it’s so great why do you want to sell it, right? And like a week later they went bankrupt. Hey, thanks, dude, I owe you one. Doerr’s house looks like some drug lord’s palace, with a bunch of black armored SUVs and I swear to God a helicopter hovering overhead, and all these ape-looking dudes with the earbuds standing out front, and I’ve been to enough of these things to know what Secret Service guys look like, so I figure this isn’t an M&A thing unless maybe Larry Ellison is involved cause he gets dialogoff on the whole James Bond effect. So the chimps frisk me and find a lighter in my jeans and tell me I gotta leave it with them and pick it up on the way out and I’m like, Well, there goes my plan to torch the place, but whatever. I go inside and there’s little Doerr, all 97 pounds of him, with his too-big eyeglasses and his freako metabolism and his usual stick up his ass.

He takes me to this room where he's got like 30 dudes from the Valley around this big table, like Otellini and Ruiz and Rodgers and a bunch of other chip dudes, plus the Googletards who are playing with Legos, and Ellison, McNealy, Hurd, Barksdale, Andreesen, and a bunch of random VC a-holes who all look amazingly lifelike and absolutely identical, as if they're made in a machine, like cyborgs. In walk the Clintstones with George Soros. No smiles, no small talk. Hillary sits down and tells us in this pissed off Tony Soprano voice that there’s two years till this motherf-ing election but she ain’t gonna f- it up like Kerry and Gore, she’s gonna lock this motherf-er down now, she’s goddamn well gonna win and nobody is gonna get in her way, so we can all either get on the train or get run over by it, and she's here to tell us how much money she wants each of us to put in. She says everybody else pays their share, hell the oil guys pay 5% of net right off the top, meanwhile we're out here making our little chips and paying zilch, and that bullshit is gonna stop right here and right now, okay? And we can all check with George Soros on the way out and he'll tell us how to move the money so it can't be traced, using a bunch of these phony baloney environmental groups.

She goes right around the table and gives everyone their number and what they'll get if they do or don't play ball. Doerr gets oil prices bumped to a hundred bucks a gallon so his green tech fund can make him another billion or two. The Googlefags get net neutrality. McNealy gets a win in the SCO case so Linux gets made illegal. McNealy says he wants a DOJ case on Microsoft again but Hilary says no can do cause Gates is putting up half a billion to buy himself a free pass.

In my case the vig is twenty million bucks -- ya, right! -- and if I go along, the feds buy iMacs for every school system in America, but if I don't, we get the DOJ raping us over the iPod being a closed system. She says, Ya know, Steve, the Frenchies ain't the only ones who can bend you over and put your ass in the air. So I kinda laugh and go, Well, ma'am, thing is I'm planning to endorse Al Gore, if he runs, cause he’s like on my board and he's gonna save the planet from melting or whatever and he's gonna make my pal Bono the head of the Supreme Court or something. She stares at me with this flabbergasted look as if she can't believe that someone else actually dared to speak during the meeting, instead of just genuflecting and doing whatever she tells them, which is I guess what most people do around her, and then she says, in that stupid chipmunk accent of hers, You know, I didn't really come here for a dialogue, I just wanted to give you information and leave, but since you raised the issue, let me reassure you, the world isn't melting, Steve. Honestly. Al made that f-ing movie to scare people, but if you want to know what's really scary, it's the prospect of having that fat retarded hillbilly in the White House. If you only knew how much energy we wasted during eight years of stamping out all his stupid ideas! I mean Kyoto? F- me, seriously. You realize he's been in and out of psychiatric hospitals, right? They keep him medicated beyond belief. That's why he talks like that. But every so often he'd go off his meds and cook up some stupid idea and we'd all have to race around and find his shrink and get him shot up with something or other and put back in his straitjacket. Honestly, I swear to Christ, if I'm elected first thing I'm gonna do is have that guy shot in a park like f-ing Vince Foster, I swear to Christ!

So I go, well, like, if Al doesn’t run, then I’m probably going for Jerry Brown. Or Ralph Nader. She says, Stevie, honey, you can endorse Saddam Hussein for all I care, you can go stand out on a street corner wearing a f-ing sandwich board and dance around in your tightie-whities. I just want your f-ing money, pal. Otherwise, like I told your buddy Gates, I get that old bulldyke Janet Reno to hold one of her famous dance parties right on your face, okay? And by the way, what is up with those hippie eyeglasses? There's these things called contact lenses now, have you heard of them?

Now I'm the one who's stunned. I mean nobody makes fun of my John Lennon glasses. Nobody. I mean, seriously. So for a long time I just sit there, staring down at my hands, and I feel like my friggin head is gonna explode or something, and Doerr, who knows how I feel about my glasses, he says, Steve, whatever you're thinking, just let it go, okay? Just let it go. But I can't help myself. I go, Lady, let me tell you something. I grew up in this Valley, OK? And nobody comes into our Valley and talks to us like this, okay? You see the guys in this room? We built the friggin Internet with our bare hands, you understand? Me personally, I've been through hell and back. I got fired from my own company. I survived cancer. Then I invented the friggin iPod. Have you heard of it? You want our money, you want to be president, well you come and ask us, nice. You kiss the ring, like everybody else. You got that straight? And by the way, have you heard of Pilates? Cause you’ve got a really big fat lumpy ass. Seriously. It's like two big balloons full of oatmeal. Scary.

Hilary sits there with smoke coming out of her ears. Beside her, I swear, Bill is kinda laughing, or trying not to laugh or whatever. The whole room is silent. Then, way down at the far end of the table, T.J. Rodgers stands up and starts doing a slow clap, all by himself. Then the others join in. Pretty soon the whole room is clapping and shouting, Steve, Steve, Steve -- except for Doerr, of course, and the cyborg VCs who are programmed to do exactly what Doerr does at all times. The Clintstones and Soros make for the door, with Doerr scrambling after them apologizing and begging them not to leave, but Hilary just says, F- you, gerbil, don't call me ever again, and throws us all the finger, but we all just roar laughing and give her the finger right back. Ha! Thanks for coming to California, lady. Come back anytime!

Seriously, dudes, do not vote for her. That's all I'm gonna say. Peace out.

My MacBook battery swelled up

Dudes, sorry for the delay in filing. My MacBook Pro got the heebie-jeebies and crapped out on me. Called customer service on Saturday, yeah right, got put on hold for like forever so finally I got into the JobsMobile and schlepped out to the Apple store at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, where the “genius” behind the counter first of all is talking on his cell phone, which friggin drives me crazy, but he tells me it's an emergency cause like his kid got hit by a car or something and I'm like, Dude, are you on break? Then turn off the friggin phone. Finally I just grabbed it from him and shut it off. Worse than that the douchebag cops a tude and tells me to fill out a form describing the problem with the machine. So suddenly the MacBook leaps upward and bashes this frigtard on the head. And I go, Yeah, see, that’s the problem. The sudden leaping up and hitting of frigtards on the head. Can you fix that? Anyhoo. Someone there obtained a clue and got me a new machine. Paramedics came for Dopey the Genius and we sent an assistant manager to ride with him in the ambulance and process his termination paperwork.

So here I am, in a Starbucks, with a beautiful, bitchin brand-new MacBook Pro which I am really excited about, and so far nobody knows who I am. So far. Will try to post again soon if I can get the friggin Airport to stop dropping off the WiFi network, and if I don't get mobbed by screaming groupies, which tends to happen in places like this. Peace out.

Google cracks down on click fraud

Google says it will crack down on click fraud. Right. And tobacco companies want you to stop smoking. People, have you not figured this out yet? Google is doing the click fraud, okay? Think about this for like two seconds. Who makes money on click fraud? Have you not noticed that Google is building all these top-secret data centers with no windows on them? Why do you think they work so hard to keep reporters away from them? They've got thousands of people locked up inside those buildings, like gerbils on wheels, doing nothing but click on ads, twenty-four hours a day. (To be fair to Google, they do provide an awesome cafeteria, plus free health care for the inevitable cases of carpal tunnel syndrome.) Meanwhile, over in China, Kai-Fu Lee and a bunch of other ex-Microsofties are cranking out this totally complex Google algorithm that makes it look as if the clicks are coming from legit sources. Why do you think Gates was so pissed when Google hired Lee? Why do you think Ballmer was slamming chairs? Microsoft was cooking up the same click fraud scheme but couldn't pull it off. Now Squirrel Boy has beat Microsoft at its own game. Under the guidance of Lucifer of course. They put gormless Page and Brin out front to distract everyone with their "Don't be evil" choirboy shtick. You think those twits actually do anything other than give interviews and play with Legos? They're too busy shagging babes and fighting over their stupid plane. Page has to wear a helmet when he goes jogging, for Pete's sake. Yet nobody has figured this out. Amazing.

Wacky old Sir Richard Branson calls me

And says he's using a satellite phone from up in his friggin balloon at like 14,000 feet, where he is wearing a space suit and just had a massive brainstorm. He says, Mate, we're gonna create a new section on Virgin Atlantic, right behind Upper Class, and call it iPod Class. The whole section is redone in that glossy candy white color like an iPod. The walls, the seat backs, the seat cushions, the carpet, the bathrooms, everything in bloody shiny white, like you're sitting smack inside an iPod. We throw in some fake champagne and cheap sushi and bang up the fare price by 30 percent over coach, or Lower Class as we're now calling it. And you're separated from everyone else by tinted plexiglass walls, so the punters in back can see you, and you can just sit there looking cool and going, Yeah, how jealous are you lot, you'd love to be in here in iPod Class, wouldn't you, as if. Like the message is, Look at me, I'm young, I'm cool, I'm obnoxious and nouveau riche and arriviste, I'm tech savvy, I'm a dotcommer, I own lots of cell phones and PDAs and gadgets, I live in Silicon Valley and wear loafers without socks, I'm better than you, and when I fly ... I fly iPod Class. The chavs and the Irish'll go nuts for it. We'll get David Beckham and his skank wife to do the adverts, or Wayne Rooney.

So I'm like, Wayne Rooney? That senile, constipated old guy from 60 Minutes? He wouldn't recognize a friggin iPod if it came shooting out his butt. Branson's like, What? So I go, Richard, whatever, but like, what's the iPod connection here? Like, will there be a slot in the seatback or the arm rest where you can plug in an iPod? Or maybe some special headphones done up all in white to look like an iPod? And he goes, Well, it's marketing, innit? It's marketing. But I'm like, Yeah but how is some section of an airplane connected to an iPod, ya know? How are they related? Branson's like, Hrm, well, uh, yah, whatever, who knows, but it's marketing innit? Like there's an Upper Class and now there's an iPod Class. And it's all white, like an iPod.

So the truth is I kinda sorta hate this guy cause he made such a big deal out of his stupid Virgin online music store and he was all Mr. Smack Talk about how he was gonna kick the crap out of iTunes -- ya right -- but now he's pretending he's my big "mate" or whatever. Maybe the altitude is friggin up his head and he figures maybe I don't remember what a dickbreath he was on the music store thing. Anyhoo, I push back on him and say I just don't see the synergy and I don't want to dilute the brand and he gets a little PO'd cause as you might have noticed he's got a teensy little ego problem, and he says in this sort of plummy fake upper-class accent, I'm sorry, did you just say "dilute the brand"???? My God I think I'm going to choke on a piece of foie gras. Dilute the brand? Look, I've been in your stores and I've seen these stupid iPod gizmos you sell. You tell me what the hell do they have to do with anything? I mean, the bloody Tivoli iPal? It's a bloody FM radio! Only it's painted white and has a plug for an MP3 player. But I don't hear you bitching about that, Steve. So I'm like, Branson, my bro, cool out, do some yoga, smoke a doob, cut a fart in your space suit or whatever, but sure, go for it, set the controls for the center of the sun. Have the lawyers work it out and just give old Steve a slice of the action. And God bless you, you crazy goat-bearded bleached-hair balloon-flying freak. He says, Bloody right, mate, you won't regret this, and I promise you can break a bottle of fake champagne on the first plane and take the maiden voyage, right alongside the Beckhams, my word as a gentleman. And I'm like, Dude, I don't fly commercial, it gives me hives, I'm allergic to non-vegans, but thanks anyway and good luck. Then I called our lawyers and told them, I don't care if you have to put a bullet in this a-hole's head, but do NOT let this deal happen. Ha!

Ray Ozzie? Uh, right.

Don't get me wrong. I like the guy. But the moment I knew that Microsoft was truly doomed was when they announced they were putting Ozzie in charge. Hello, Microsoft? Have you looked at a calendar lately? You do realize that the year is 2006? Now you've got Mr. Lotus Notes who's gonna drag you kicking and screaming into the 1980s. I mean, Notes was a cool product -- in 1985. But do you not realize that your own marketing people have spent the past 10 years telling everyone what a bloated horrible piece of shizzle Notes is? And Groove. Man. Don't get me started. What is it? Who the frig knows? Oh, the CIA uses it to track bad guys. Great. There's a good reference customer for you. The guys who a) don't talk to the press; and b) have basically frigged up everything they've touched in the past 5 years. Microsoft, you need someone more evil in charge. Like Charles Wang of CA. I'm pretty sure he's not going to jail.

One more thing re: Microshizzle

I mentioned in my previous post that Gates has been trying to poach away our OS X programmers. This started a few years ago, I guess when they first realized that Vista was in trouble. Natch our guys just laughed when they got the calls. I mean, they're working in heaven. You think they're gonna go shovel pigshit in Redmond? Plus, uh, even with backdating, you might have noticed that Microsoft options aren't exactly the road to wealth anymore. But anyhoo. Gates kept trying. You gotta hand that to him, he's a persistent little frigger. So finally I said, What the hell, let's frig with these guys. So we let two of our guys go to Microsoft, just to find out what's going on. We made a big deal like we didn't want them to go, threatened to sue Microsoft, just to make it look real. But secretly we kept them on our payroll and told them, Just stay there for a year or whatever and find out what they're doing. So they report back and tell us that Gates sat them down on day one and told them he wanted them to steal our IP from OS X and put it into Vista cause they know Vista is never gonna work, it's too tangled up, too complicated, whatever. So they go, Sure, Bill, we'll gladly steal from Apple and give all of its code to you, sure, whatever. But instead they go in there and start planting friggin bombs everywhere. I mean these are really smart guys and the poor clueless Microsoft dudes can't figure out what's going wrong with their stupid OS and why it keeps crashing. And whenever they ask, Our guys go, Hey, that's Unix, that's how it's supposed to work, you gotta break some eggs to make an omelet or whatever. Ha! Brilliant!

Then, like two months ago, or whenever they announced that Vista is gonna slip into 2007 -- and believe me, we're talking waaaaay into 2007 -- I set up a meeting with Gates and I'm like, Dude, I've got OS X working on an Intel processor. Why don't you just drop this piece of crap Vista code base and just roll over to OS X? Forget the OS business and move up the stack into ERP apps or whatever. I mean, I've got it right here, Unix based, solid as a friggin rock, nice user interface, all wrapped up with a bow on it, I've even ported it to Intel for you, I mean what more do I have to do? It's like I'm teetering next to you at the bar in my miniskirt and high heels and opening one button after another on my blouse and telling you, Dude, I am soooooo wasted, let's go to your place and take some Roofies -- and you just don't friggin get it! I mean, you've got thousands of drones slaving away trying to make a knock-off of my operating system! Why? I'll friggin give it to you, okay? Or not quite give but you know. The dollars can work themselves out, as my friend Michael Ovitz (who totally loves our new MacBook Pro) likes to say. Gates just sat there rocking back and forth in his chair and then said in this really low voice that he was gonna stick to Windows. I thought maybe he was gonna cry. Because it was clear that he knew how frigged he is. I mean, he's seen the code. He knows it won't run. I swear, I felt almost sorry for him. Almost.

Gates just called me

So this is supposed to be confidential but whatever. Bill has screwed everyone who ever got close to him, and on top of that he's been secretly trying to poach away our OS X programmers for the past 2 years. So what do I owe him? Nothing. Anyway, turdface called me last night after Microsoft put out its lame financials which beat the Street but only because the Street already knows how badly Microsoft sucks ass these days. The whole Wintel ecosystem is getting blowed up. Dell had to warn the Street this morning. Intel is getting hammered. And everyone knows this is Microsoft's fault for screwing the pooch on Vista. Apparently Michael Smell himself called Billy Boy last night and chewed his ass but good. And you know what? You think this is bad? Q3 and Q4 are gonna look like downtown Beirut compared to this. These morons have nothing to sell.

So here's the gig. Gates says to me, How'd you like to come run Microsft? This Ozzie thing ain't working out. Ozzie can't stand Ballmer, and to be honest, who can? The guy sits in his office bellowing about how he doesn't need this shit, he can go retire tomorrow and sit on his ass counting his money for the rest of his life, blah blah. Basically, he's about to get canned, and he knows it. I thought Ozzie could step in but it's obvious now that he can't run this place. He's a nice guy and all. But he's a doofball. You need a Saddam Hussein type, someone who can rule through fear. So how about it, he says. I'm like, Dude, I'm flattered, but I've already got two jobs. And maybe you haven't noticed this, but I think your products suck. But hey, have you called John Sculley? I heard he's looking for a job.

Some ideas just don't click

So Steve Spielberg called me. Apparently there is this totally huge war like raging in Israel and Lebanon right now, but of course the American media isn't covering it at all, they'd rather report on Britney Spears putting her baby in the microwave or whatever. But it's totally serious and totally bad, and Steve tells me he's got this idea for a Dreamworks-Pixar animated movie about two boys, one Israeli and the other Palestinian. Sort of Schindler's List meets Aladdin using that funky humanoid Polterganimation in Polar Express. Elton John is gonna write the songs. So I'm like, Okay, so will there be any talking fish? Talking cars? Some superheroes? Spielberg gets kinda sniffy and says, Look, I'm talking about serious cinema verite type animation. And I'm like, Dude, don't start tossing out the Latin words just cause you know I didn't go to college. He says it's French, and I'm like, Wait, you're gonna make an animated movie in French? Are you kidding? Does Elton John even speak French? I mean, Hello! Is this really Steven Spielberg on the phone? Is this the guy who made E.T. and Poltergeist? Are you turning into Francis Ford Crapola or something? Because if that's the case, why not pull a Mel Gibson and do the whole movie in ancient Aramaic, or Maori, or that click-click language from Africa. Or Palestinian. Thing about Spielberg is, he's a cool guy and very brilliant and everything, but he tends to cop a huge tude with anyone who doesn't just agree with his vision 100 percent and do whatever he says. But I'm like, Dude, maybe I didn't go to film school but I know what sells, right? I invented the friggin iPod, okay? Have you heard of it? So here's my idea. Instead of two boys we make it a boy and a girl, and we bump the age up a bit, like make them teenagers, so we can get a love story going, and we draw the girl really inappropriately hot, like Pocahontas, and we put her in tight outfits or whatever, so we widen our audience and get some middle-aged dudes in the theater, not just kids. And we cross-promote by having the characters wear iPods and we get a tie-in with Burger King to make falafels with a movie theme wrapper. Spielberg just sits there not talking like he's all in a huff. Then he makes this big theatrical sigh and says, Okay, maybe we'll talk later or something, and I'm like, Whatever, dude, you're the one who called me, remember? So, like, good luck with your cartoon movie in Latin or whatever.

Dude, you make it too easy

So every once in a while, usually when I've smoked a little too much weed and I'm feeling kind of malicious, I like to crank call old Agent Sculley and just frig with his head. I'll call him at like 3 in the morning and ask him if he's got Prince Albert in a can, or I'll tell him I'm a telemarketer raising money for the Unemployed CEO Foundation, or I'll do the one where I pretend I work for the phone company and I'm down at the end of his street and please don't pick up the phone cause if you do I'll get shocked, then I call back and when he picks up I scream like I'm being shocked and I go, "Ow! Ow! Ouch! Hey! Bzzzzzt! Bzzzzzt! Hey! I told you not to pick up the phoooooone!!! G-g-g-g-g-g ... aaaaaaaarghhhhh!!!"

But last week I outdid myself. I called him in the evening, right after dinner. I was totally baked but whatever. I asked him if he wanted to come in and talk to us about running Apple again. "Like, dude, I know we've had our differences, but I'm so busy with the Pixar and Disney stuff, I can't do both jobs, I'm burning out, blah blah, so we really need you, I'm begging you, please, why don't you just come in and talk to the board, just hear what we have to say." The poor suffering idiot hasn't had a real job since we tossed him out in 1993 and so of course he falls for it and comes bounding in yesterday morning, all dressed up in his snazzy suit for his big comeback moment, like he's probably been up all night jizzing all over himself just thinking about being CEO of Apple again -- only when he gets to reception they tell him that nobody is expecting him, there's no board meeting, and they totally pretend that they've never heard of him, don't recognize his name, and they tell him I'm not even on the campus, I'm in China or something, even though really I'm up in the Jobs Pod with Jon Ive and we're just like totally watching the whole thing and laughing our asses off. Ha! You been punked, bitch! He totally knew it too and for a long time he just stared up at the security camera giving me the finger. Then he stomped out, looking like he was going to cry. We switched to the camera feed from the parking lot and saw him slumped in his Mercedes for like ten minutes, just staring out into space. Priceless.

Party time

There's big news about to break from IDC and our legal folks say I can pre-announce it here. Basically, the latest PC market share figures show we've taken another huge bite out of the beast from Redmond. The report's gonna come out like Friday or something and it's gonna show that as of the end of June we had 3.17% market share, up from 3.15% in the previous quarter and 3.12% in the year-ago quarter. Everybody inside is just massively stoked. It appears these new ads are truly kicking some butt. We're thinking about having a beer blast or something on Friday. We are so on a roll. Six months ago I wouldn't have said this but I can't believe how fast things are moving. By year-end I'm betting we hit 3.2%, no lie. Watch out, Acer! We're reeling you in!

Unfrigginbelievable

This just happened and I'm still soooo pissed. Like at 3 or 4 this morning I'm out cruising on the 101 in the JobsMobile trying to brainstorm something for a certain product that we're about to announce to the whole friggin world in like three friggin weeks and we still don't have it ready ... anyway I do this sometimes just to get my head together. And I get pulled over. This total CHPs guy. Says I'm going eighty. I'm like, Dude, maybe you didn't notice, but I'm in a Maserati Quattroporte, which can go like 180 miles per hour, so, uh, like going eighty is like standing still, okay? I mean it's not like I'm in some Volkswagen Golf and I'm gonna blow a gasket or something. So then the guy gets all pissy and wants to see my license and I'm like, Dude, I don't have it. But do you really not know who I am? Did you not see the license plate? (Which says STVJOBS, kinda hard to miss that, right?) He tells me to step out of the car. I'm like, Bitch, I'm Steve Jobs. I invented the friggin iPod, okay? Have you heard of it? Next thing I know I'm flat on the pavement, face down, hands cuffed behind my back. I don't want to relive the whole experience but let's just say that it involved a few unpleasant hours spent in a police station holding cell and a small army of Apple lawyers and finally a phone call from the Governator himself (who happens to be a HUGE fan of Final Cut Pro and is making his next blockbuster entirely on Macs). The good news is that while sitting in my cell, meditating and humming my syllable or whatever, I totally had a breakthrough and realized how we could eliminate an unnecessary button on the user interface of this as-yet-unannounced product by combining two function sets into a click and double-click arrangement. And to all you CHPs guys: Yeah, that really was Arnold, and he really is a friend of mine, and now he's got your names on a list. Enjoy your new career as shopping mall security guards, frigtards. Remind me to send you each a flaming Dell laptop as an early Christmas present.

Earth to Nicholas Negroponte, come in please

His stupid hundred-dollar PC is the ugliest piece of crap I've ever seen. There, I said it. Look at him with those stupid glasses propped halfway down his nose. This guy really thinks he's the shizzle, doesn't he? Mr. Big Brain from the MIT Media Lab. A real intellectual. Pop quiz: Name one thing this guy has ever predicted correctly. Question Two: Name one worthwhile product he has ever built. Question Three: Name one useful idea that has ever come out of the MIT Media Lab in its entire history. The one time I visited those guys they were friggin around with this like "robot" contraption that emulated a cockroach or something. "Yeah, and it can kind of like, uh, learn and navigate around its environment, so it's kind of like artificial intelligence or whatever." Great, you've spent fourteen million bucks in DARPA grant money to make a friggin Roomba. Except yours lacks the useful vacuum cleaner feature. Nice. Now these whiz-kids have dreamed up a half-baked PC that you have to crank up to get running. If I were some kid in the Third World and I got up on Christmas morning and found this frog-green pile of crap waiting for me under the tree, I'd fly to Cambridge and shove my hundred-dollar PC up Nicholas Negroponte's butt. The best part is they aren't even going to give these kids any training. They're just gonna drop the PC in their lap and say, "Here you go, Pradeep, it's your very own cheapo plastic Linux PC with no hard disk and no manual. Just start typing away on the keyboard and figure it out for yourself. Why, soon you'll be cranking out J2EE apps. Then you can move to Bangalore and work for IBM."

The genius behind "genius"

People often ask me why the tech desk people in our stores are called "geniuses." Well, first of all, though you didn't ask, yes, this was my idea. And the reason we do this is simple. How else can you get pretentious a-holes to work for seven bucks an hour answering stupid questions about computers? Call them "clerks" or "tech support reps" and you've got to pay them at least ten bucks an hour, maybe more. Yet you should see the letters we get from Prius-driving posers begging us to put them to work in our stores and call them geniuses. A lot of them, you'll notice, tend to shave their heads to look more like me. Sad. Sometimes when we're bored we'll pull random applications out of the pile and just laugh our asses off. Half of these losers would do it for free, I swear, just so they could get the black T-shirt and hang out in our cool-looking emporiums and lord it over the poor clueless saps who drift in all upset because their precious little Macs didn't come with any manuals explaining how to use our software. Check out Carrot Top in the first photo up above. You just know that's what he-she is bitching about, right? Surprise, sucker! You bought the Mac, now you gots to dish out $59 for a book plus $40 an hour to get insulted by this smarmy douchebag "genius" who says he can't believe you're so stupid that you couldn't figure this out for yourself, since it's so friggin intuitive. I mean, what is wrong with you? Are you retarded? This after you just paid twice what you'd pay for a Dell machine. And the more we abuse these idiots, the more they keep coming back! Some of them buy two, three machines. Amazing. Honestly.

sometimes i feel like a great chef

sometimes i feel like a great chef
who has devoted his entire life
to monastic study of the art of cooking
& gathered the finest ingredients
& built the most advanced kitchen
& prepared the most exquisite meal
so perfect so delicious so extraordinary
more astounding than any meal ever created
yet each day i stand in my window
& watch ninety-seven percent of the world
walk past my restaurant
into the mcdonald’s
across the street.

Housekeeping

Folks, a few items to deal with.

1. The Jobsmeister is gonna post some "greatest hits" from the old archive here, and DJ Fakey is taking your requests. Let me know which ones you want to see.

2. Does anyone give a damn about the new team members? As I said yesterday, I've been against the idea of a "dream team" blog from the start, but Random Johnson, the VC, insisted on it, and since he's putting up the bucks I said I'd give it a try. But my sense is that nobody gives a crap what other people have to say and that people only care about my opinion. Then again, that has always been my sense, at every monent of my entire life. So I'm maybe not the best judge of this. But frankly I feel like I'm in a friggin boy band or something, with Chris, the moody one who reads books, Kevin, the funny one who rides a skateboard, Random, the mature one who knows about business, and Hog, the fat naked frigtard. And Steve, the front man, the one the girls all crave. Anyhoo, it's kinda gay, so whatever. Gimme some ammo in a kind of online focus group so I can fire these idiots ASAP.

3. The leakage has ended. I'm feeling much better. Many thanks for your cards and flowers. Really.

4. You may have read that options problems have now popped up at Pixar, from before the time of the Disney acquisition. And you may be wondering whether these two companies, Apple Computer and Pixar, have anything in common. Like, is there any connection between them? Is there any way to explain this strange coincidence that both of these companies are reporting similar problems at about the same time? Hmmm. Hafta get back to you on that one. But meanwhile, remember, there's nothing to worry about. Just think about Nemo. Happy little Nemo, swimming in the ocean. Look, he's a clown fish! And he's orange! Have you ever seen anything so cute? And look how happy he is! So should you be! Or you can think about products. Gleaming, white, shiny, clean, sleek, fast. Watch them do amazing things! You are so cool if you own them. Say this word like a mantra to yourself: Products, products, products. Mmmmm. Ommmm. Something like that.

Peace out.

So, about that keynote

This jagoff from Wired says my speech was uninspiring and that I looked "very thin, almost gaunt." Let me tell you something, you'd look gaunt too if you'd spent a weekend having Jerry York shout at you from close range. The guy's got dog breath, by the way, and he spits when he gets mad. Not fun when you're sitting like two feet away from him. Anyway, Wired sucks. Honestly. We're pulling them out of our stores, immediamente if not sooner. Also, on the "Why did Steve look so gaunt" theme, let me share something with you. The friggin 7 Day Miracle Cleanse turns out to have some seriously bad side effects. I don't want to get too graphic but let me give you a one-word hint: Leakage. Yeah. So I called Paris DeAguero, aka the Health Man, aka the a-hole who sells that crap on TV, and he's like, Steve, Steve, it's the herbs, Steve, the herbs, you can't do the program over and over like that, there's a disclaimer right on the box. So I look and sure enough, you turn the box over and there's this thing that looks like a bar code but if you put a magnifying glass on it there's a warning saying, like, don't use this stuff too much or it will cause your organs to liquefy and leak out of your butt. Paris DeAguero goes, Steve, Steve, look, don't get mad, don't put this on your blog, okay, let's keep this quiet, and I'm like, My blog? Frig the blog, pal, I'm gonna fly to Maui and bury you up to your neck on the beach at low tide. Seriously. And all this is happening on Sunday night, like hours before the keynote. So my doctor comes over with four kinds of medicine and a box of Depends. And I'm like, No way. No. Friggin. Way. He says they're not really diapers, more like a sanitary pad. And I'm like, Oh, well, that's a lot better. Really. Now I'm not freaked out at all. He tells me I can suit myself but if you get jeans that are one size too big nobody can tell. So I call Andy Grove, who is the one who put me on to the 7 Day Miracle Cleanse in the first place, and I tell him what's going on, and he goes, So what's the big deal, I wear those things all the time, makes life a lot easier, believe me. So what if a little tobacco juice squirts out of my hoo-ha, what do I care? But I'll tell you what, Steve, nobody wants to go swimming when I'm in the pool, I have noticed that.

So yeah. I was feeling a little gaunt on Monday. I wasn't at the top of my form. Like, sue me.

I've also seen complaints about us not announcing many products. The answer is yes, we did have more products to announce, but we held them back. Why? Mostly just to frig with that fat-ass know-it-all Scoble, who I'm happy to say had to issue an apology on his stupid blog. You know what? I honestly cannot believe that guy is a vice president of something or other at a real company. Can you? I mean look at the photo on his blog. He looks like a dishwasher at Denny's. And yet in the wonderful world of Web 2.0 he's a friggin guru, a media mogul, and a book author to boot. Hey, note to you, Scoble: Your book blows. So does your blog. Everybody at Microsoft used to laugh at you behind your back. And when this bubble bursts and the world regains its sanity you'll be back working out back at a Mexican restaurant where you belong.

Okay, sorry folks. I'm in a cranky mood. I'm living on vegetable broth and carrot juice. And then there's still the options crap hovering over us. I'm trying not to think about that too much. Hope you all do the same. Just think about products. Beautiful, shiny products that restore a sense of childlike wonder to your life. Peace out.

El Jobso rides again

People, I had no idea. Honestly. But I feel the love, as Elton John says. And I'm totally sorry for going AWOL on everyone but here's what happened. I got an offer. Several offers, actually. Dudes wanting to put in money and build this thing into something real, and I'm like, Right on. Right friggin on. So I chose the guy who seemed least like an a-hole and took the money and I'll be honest it ain't life changing money, and in fact we need more, so if you know any angels or VCs send them my way, no shizzle. But here's the idea. We're gonna get like some Web designers and real hosting and a real domain and the whole works and make this a real deal, not just some crappy thing on Blogger, which, uh, as I guess most of you know, has some limitations. Like it seems to be down half the friggin time. So. For now we'll do it here while we get the new site up and running, which could take a while cause as you know I am all about the creativity and I want everything to be perfect and whatever they dream up and show me, the first few hundred I'm just gonna go, Nah, not right, try it again. Still not perfect. Keep trying. But we'll get there. And then maybe we'll sell this puppy to some big media company. And old FSJ will spend his life sitting on a beach sipping drinks from a coconut while hotties fan me with big like palm leaves. Or something.

But anyway. We've now got a VC on board and he's got this vision, cause they all have to have their friggin vision, right? Douchebags. Anyhoo. Instead of just having the Steve-inator write the whole blog, VC dude says let's have a team blog, with multiple members. A dream team is what he's calling it. And we'll take turns posting. I'm not sure if I like it but I'm going along with it for now and if don't work out, I take over again. But for now we've got me, as CEO, cause you know I ain't giving up control, so put down the marker and get the frig away from my whiteboard, a-hole! And the VC guy, Random Johnson, who says he wants to post but honestly I can't imagine he'll have anything interesting to say and definitely the guy has zero sense of humor but whatever I gave him permission and maybe he'll come up with some gossip on deals or something. Next we got this open-source dude from Iceland named Hans-Olaf Gutmansdottir who appears to be out of his mind. Plus two really sharp dudes from the Valley that everyone knows, Chris Anderson of Wired and Kevin Rose of Digg. Ya. No shizzle. Talk about a friggin Dream Team. Only problem is, Blogger sucks ass so bad and we can't get the invitations to work. I'm not kidding. So for now it's just me until I can get these other idiots connected. Man the sooner we got off Blogger the better, as far as I'm concerned.

And hey, to the dude who's selling those T-shirts? I like them, man, but isn't there something kinda sick about adopting someone else's identity and then, like, making hay with it? Think about that. Peace out.