Silicon Apartment

Some dude named Mechael has created a site called Silicon Apartment. The premise? Bill Gates and I have to live together in an apartment. And Walt Mossberg is our host, for some reason. Check out this one to get a taste. Or check out today's offering. Much love, Michael. You nasty nasty boy.

New threats from Apple PR

I've heard they're upset about me going to Newsweek. Fair enough. But making videos like this and distributing them on the Interwebs as a way to scare me? Totally uncool.

A lesson in badges

Here at Google we don't like hierarchies, which is why we believe in flat management, which basically mean keep people the hell away from Largey and Eric. Nevertheless we need to have some way to keep track of who can have access to what (massages, tea rooms) so the powers that be have invented an ingenious system of badges to keep the proles and hoi polloi away from the rest of us. For the uninitiated, here is a rundown of badges and what they mean:



Red: Contractors. These are people who can't get hired as full-time employees because they went to state schools. Also, the food service people, who as a rule can't speak English so they can't work here anyway.



Green: Interns. These are kiddies here for the summer to leech off us and pad their CVs. Also, just FYI, a green badge is usually synonymous with "easy lay." As my friend Misha likes to say, there's nothing like some overwhelmed, wide-eyed Yale undergrad who's here in Mountain View for the summer, totally lost and innocent and tighter than a carpenter's clenched fist. And the blowjobs! Vot eta da! These girls from college give them out like free mints at the restaurant. First date? Kiss goodnight? Nah. How about a blowjob instead? Then a slurpy swallow, big smile, all proud of herself, a quick peck on the cheek and she leaps out of the car and runs into her shitty apartment complex. Heaven!



Honestly, the fellatio abilities of the average American undergraduate never cease to amaze me. How do they learn such filthy tricks at such a young age? Where do they get the time to devote to practice? Who do they practice on? Oh, American college boys, I envy you. I truly do. In Russia these talented sluts could be earning millions. Here they give away oral sex away simply to win some sliver of affection and attention, the stuff their self-absorbed parents denied them.



Better yet, they also give up the pussy, and even better better yet, they have insurance to pay for their abortions! Ah, America, you sweet blonde cheerleader whore of a country. I love you. I do. Misha, who's been here fifteen months, tells these brain-damaged whores that he's pre-IPO and only working as an AdWords drone because it's what he loves. He's got a whole story about the glory days at Stanford with Larry and Sergey, working in a dorm room, eating pizza and coding all night. Works every time. He's seen more 20-year-old pussy than the gynecologist at a college health clinic.



Visitor badge: This is just a very simple sticky badge affixed to outsiders to (a) mark them as losers; and (b) ensure that they don't get anywhere close to the magic elixir in Building 40. You can treat them with as much contempt as you'd like. We are allowed to have sex with these people too, and it is often very easy, though not as easy as the interns. Misha likes to nab a visitor once in a while just to mix things up. He calls it his "diversity initiative."You must understand. Misha is tall, and blonde, and a former member of the Russian junior national team in track and field. He did hurdles. He's also a Muscovite. Women cannot resist him. He volunteers as a tour guide, just for this reason. He spots his target in the first five minutes -- he looks into their eyes and he can tell which one is wanting it. He fucks them in a men's room, right in a toilet stall. I told him, Misha, that's so degrading. He says, Yes, that's why they love it.

Stan's badge: Yes, of course Stan has his own badge. This is simply because the cretins in our security squadrons kept harassing him for standing around unbadged.

White: This indicates a full-time employee. You may speak to them, but only if they speak to you first. Misha and I both are full-time employees and so we are allowed to speak to one another. This dork, James, however, is someone neither of us speak to. Why bother? Look at him. Lights are on, but no one is home, as our friend Ethan says.

Non-badge wearers: Reserved for the crème de la crème, kings of campus, employees 1-100. Misha and I call them the Ivankovs. You do not speak to Ivankovs. You do not even look at them. Don't believe me? Try it and see where you are when you regain consciousness. Honestly, in some ways being at Google is not so unfamiliar to those of us reared in the former Soviet Union. There is a certain amount of discomfort in this. But the food is so good! And those interns! Makes me look forward to summer, honestly.

Deadline? You must be joking.

I rolled in early today, in my new Prius. I sped down 101 from the city to campus to see the power in this princess. She handled the stop and go traffic pretty well. But I’m kinda already over this 2009 model. The aesthetics are a little boring. Check this: I had to come in early because I have a deadline. Whooooooa. Pravda stop printing! Who the hell gave me a deadline? I was so pissed when I found out about this (it was 6 months ago) that I had to have an emergency session with the Shiatsu masseuse. We helicoptered him in from Berkeley for an intense deep-tissue refreshment before I stopped breathing hard. My feeling about deadlines is this. Just tell me when you need to have something by, and then 2 weeks later, tell me when you really really need it by and we’ll aim for a few days after that. Is OK? Whatever – deadlines don’t matter here anyway. The product will languish in beta for a few years no matter what I do. Fuck. Now I’m all worked out about this. I’m going to do some pushups before my afternoon French lesson to make sure that I focus my full attention on the authentic Gallic nasal “eu.” As in, “pardonne-moi? Oo the fook made me a deadline? Eu?!” Peas out.

Hiring freeze means fewer ex-Yahoos to wipe our asses. Wah!

The hiring freeze made us cut down on the number of ex-Yahoos we could take on, so they’re being replaced by technology. Like this. Oh, and the price thing is just because they started using Google Checkout and their cost came down so radically that they were able to slash prices. Same amazing cleansing technology.

Another day, another dollar. Plus, free juice.

Man, what a crap day and I’ve only been in for half an hour. When did the douche bags in the organic juice bar decide to stop squeezing fresh pomegrante juice during “lunchtime?” It’s only 11:30. And what the hell is “lunchtime” anyway? What an arbitrary way to make the day into many pieces.

Whatevers. I’m just grabbing a hand of fresh-roasted Brazil nuts and a flax seed square now and just power up at lunch after my massive bicep-rippling workout. But I’m to pwn that café’s wiki if I don’t get my fresh pomegranate juice when I leave for the day at 3. Things around here aren’t what they used to be, this is the truth.

Gotta go. Dawnee pinged me that she had an opening for a 1 PM massage – I have to hit that up before my 2:30 Wii showdown with the “engineers” in Checkout.

Stay fresh, beetches.

Americans amuse me. Especially the ones at Facebook.

You Americans are bizarre. In Russia, we did this long ago, as the mustaches on our women can be confusing in photos.

Can someone in India tell us what the hell this is all about?

Here where I'm staying they are showing this non-stop on TV. I just wrote to Vivek Bhenchod in engineering but haven't heard back. If anyone can provide a real translation and tell us who these people are, please do.

We all laugh at the Gmail team behind their backs

Kudos to the Gmail sales team for beating out the Borg for a deal in New South Wales. New South Wales? What, Latvia was unavailable? Great way to capture market share. Pigfuckers.

Oh goody, a fresh batch of Nooglers

So I saw this group of Nooglers earlier this week – walking around all confused like 4 year olds in Candy Land not knowing which bush from which to pluck the first succulent treat. And it reminded me of my first day at the Holiest of Holies – way back in May of the year of the Snake. Now I’ve been here almost 4 years, which makes me more senior than 176% of the company, as well as in charge of all the important shit.

Surprised? No. I knew I would make it big, though I also knew – like Sergy – that I needed to leave the Motherland. Internet connections are notorious shoddy in Russia, due to crap weather, poor infrastructure, and Mafiosos lying the cables.

But I do recall the first day I started here at the ‘Plex.

The initiation rites are top-secret of course, and I won’t divulge them. But I can say that while the bruises faded and the hazing subsided, the memories remain as fresh as the Greek yogurt I had this morning for breakfast (which, of course, was hand-strained by a former Microsoft employee around 6 AM. He’s trying to get his foot in the door here, so he’s starting out in one of the kitchens. It’s so sad to see a 36 -year-old man broken down like this. I mean, I’ll be retired before I get that ancient. Good Christ-representative in Rome, I hope so.).

Anywho, it’s really refreshing to see fresh meat walking around. This batch of youngins (and some old people, who I assume we’re crating up and shipping out to the Warsaw office once they’ve been trained and microchipped. We don’t want anyone over 24 showing up in any sort of news outlet; i.e. not allow to work on campus for very long!) were being herded through campus on the way to the day’s first feeding.

You can always identify the recent people by the big backpacks, air of confusion, ear-to-ear grins, and petite scabs on the side of their neck, where the chip went in. I wonder if any of them will be joining my super exclusive and top-secret team. Probably not.

Notes from the Googleplex -- Nikolai's debut post

Yup, that’s right – your main scoop on the well-fed, primary-colored internet giant has arrived and can’t wait to share all the most awesomest news on the Valley block. Nikolai is in tha houze.

 

Yes, Nikolai, creator of amazing fucking things. Like Google Desktop, Web History, iGoogle (but not those queer themes that Marisa has a total hard on for), Gpants, Gcake, AdSense, AdSense for Desktop, AdSense for Gcake … the list goes on and on. There’s no need to brag – I know my work speaks for itself. And the billions of people that use it every second of their lives.

 

Correct – I am not a native English speaker. So? You’re mom is not anymore, after last night. So there. If you fuckers hate on me because I have a way better job than you, stock options, personal chef(s), tea time breaks, a unicorn, and own a huge warehouse in SOMA, you can suck it. While using Gsuck (beta), naturally.

 

Anyway, how did this come about, you might ask? Good question. So me and Jobso got to talking a few weeks ago after he did a private demo of the new G4 iPhone (yeah, the one coming out next, in 2010), and I was telling him “Jobso, I really like this blog thing, but I think it’s a little…well, selfish and self-contained. What about your competitors and other companies?”

 

Well, he was sucking a huge hit off the Big Bertha and he started coughing and sputtering everywhere and then I got pissed because he was wasting some primo bud.

 

So after he washed down that monster hit with some fair trade oxygen-free water, he tells me “You know, maybe that’s not so crazy after all.” Then I notice that his eye are all bloodshot and wonder how long I’ve been staring into them, because it feels like ages and damn, I am fuckin ripped.

 

Anyway, one thing leads to another and a few weeks later we thought we might take a stab at this. Steve tried not to get too excited, so he was all like  “Yeah, let’s try it out and see if anyone gives a shiz about you guys."

 

Bish, pls.

 

People are dying to crack open the safe that is Google. Damn, it’s the Kremlin over here - total Soviet lockdown style. Our poor PR bastards don’t even get to leave campus. At midnight curfew they just take the elevators down to their bunkers and snooze for a few hours before the machine starts up again. But what a cake job – I mean, all they do

 

Conversely, if I get caught, my ass is frog-marched into Schmidt’s office (though it means we’ll finally know where it is!) where he will personally hold me down while Largey saw off my balls with biodegradable knives from Charlie’s.

 

Right.

 

So, I’m writing this in the bathroom stall, standing on a toilet seat and holding my G4 iPhone out the window to catch a non-corporate signal. Good thing this throne is made of sterling silver, otherwise it wouldn’t be able to hold all of my muscles up.

 

Enough for now – stay tuned for some amaaaaaaazaing musings and some succulent tidbits about some of my projects and goings-ons.

 

Peas out.

We've got a spy inside Google

I'm not kidding about this. We actually have found a Google insider who's going to spill his guts on this blog. Imagine a cross between Fake Steve and Mini-Microsoft and you get the idea. This is 100% for real, people. This is the guest blogger that Iulia and Natasha told me about, the one they have waiting in the on-deck circle. (BTW, try explaining to a pair of Russian girls what "on-deck circle" means.)

All I know about the guy is that he grew up with Iulia in Krasnodar and now works at Google in Mountain View and he's totally dying to tell the world what's really going on behind the razor wire at the world's second-most-secretive company.

He's going to write under the pen name of Nikolai Gogol. I've seen some of his stuff and he appears to be fluent in English so I'm assuming he's like Sergey, a Russian who came here as a kid. But the girls won't tell me anything. They say the guy is freaked out about secrecy and won't let anyone know who he is, not even me. (Though he worships me, and considers me his inspiration, of course.)

He's not even posting directly. He'll send stuff to Iulia from an Internet cafe, and Iulia will post it for him. Iulia says Nikolai is terrified that Squirrel Boy and his goons will go ballistic trying figure out who he is. You know what? He should be scared. Because Eric and Larry and Sergey are total control freaks, and they are going to lose their mud when they see what this guy starts dishing.

The girls have created a profile for Nikolai, and it's worth checking out. They've also created one for Iulia and given her permission to post so that she can help manage the site. Because frankly if this stuff gets ugly, I want no part of it. Just like with the options backdating. I'll toss the interns under the bus and insist that I never knew anything about the guy. Which I don't. Not at all. So there.

I am so happy for the nice folks at Palm. No, really.

So I just saw the news about Palm's results and I must say, it brightened my day. Sales down 25% from about $400 million last year to just under $300 million this year, and a tasty net loss of $43 million. Sweet!


I just sent Jon Rubinstein (right) an email congratulating him on doing such a bang-up job. What a brilliant strategy. You turn your $500 Treo into a $100 Centro, sell each unit at a massive loss, and make it up on volume. How totally brilliant! Why didn't we think of that? I mean here at Apple we're still stuck in that old-economy mindset where you sell stuff for more than what it costs you to make it. Meanwhile Palm is getting inquiries from Chris Anderson of Wired who wants to do a big cover story on how "selling for less than cost" is the new future of business.

Great work, Ruby. Same goes to all you other Apple traitors who jumped ship because you fell for Ruby's bullshit line about how that Linux-based Nova operating system is going to be an iPhone killer. Riiiight. One thing I'd like to point out to you all is that I know Ruby really well, back from our days at NeXT, and he's a brilliant guy, but here's the thing -- he's a hardware guy. Last time I checked, however, smartphones are about software. Oops.

And hey kids? If you really want to scare the crap out of yourselves, check out your company's official earnings statement and scroll down to the balance sheet. Little item called "Total stockholders' equity." Look at where it is today versus a year ago. Teeny tiny drop from $1 billion last year to $100 million now.

Well, nothing to worry about, I'm sure. Ahem. Anyway, much love to all of you. We miss you. Not really. And if you're thinking about maybe you'll crawl back here when Palm goes under, um, don't bother. Peace.

Enough is enough! I just fired that idiot Jerry Yang

Look I know I'm on vacation and I'm not supposed to even look at work and I'm supposed to be resting and drinking my protein shakes but for the love of Christ I can't friggin take it anymore. So I just called Jerry Yang and I'm like, Dude, I know you're a shitty CEO, and fair enough, whatever, but I figured you could at least be a decent blogger. I mean look at Jonathan Schwartz. If he can do it, why can't you? Jerry says he doesn't want to quibble but he thinks he's been doing an outstanding job. I'm like, Quibble? Did you just use the word quibble? Seriously, did that word just come out of your tiny little head? What the frig is wrong with you? Are you retarded? I mean I know you look retarded but I really didn't think a retarded person could run a company. But then look at your results. You suck, Jerry. You SUCK! Your company sucks and you suck and your blogging sucks! I hope you don't fuck as badly as you blog, because if you do I'm going to send some flowers to your wife to cheer her up. Seriously, dude. You suck, and you're fired.


He started to stammer something about developing a rhythm and finding his voice and I was like, Look, slackjaw, you posted nothing all day yesterday. Nothing. Not a single item. He goes, Well, I've been working on something big, but I wanted to think about it. I'm like, Think? You wanted to think? Dude, Rule Number One in blogging is this: Don't think -- write. Ever read Scoble? That's how it's done, chum. You don't think -- you type this shit as fast as you can, whatever random thoughts come into your head. It's all about the volume, baby. Seen Valleywag? Or TechCrunch? Or GigaOm? Or AllThingsD? Or Alley Insider? Alley Insider is doing a hundred and fifty posts a day, and Blodget still wants more from those guys. He's standing there with a whip behind Kafka and Frommer going, More, bitches! More, more, more!

But you know what really put me over the top? It was this ridiculous letter to shareholders that Yahoo put out yesterday. Thirteen hundred words long and it felt like thirteen thousand words and in the end what did it say? Blah blah blah friggin blah. Me good, Icahn bad. Jesus, Jerry. That's what you were doing when you were supposed to be blogging? You were writing some lame-ass alibi trying to make up some excuses for your lousy performance? I'm sorry, but you're done. You suck. You're toast. Maybe the Yahoo board can't manage to assemble a pair of balls big enough to fire you, but you know what? I was born with balls that big. In fact I actually like firing people. I get off on it. It gives me wood. You get it? I'm rock hard right now. I'm lifting my desk off the floor. You're done, Jerry.

Anyway Iulia and Natasha tell me they've got someone truly amazing in the on-deck circle. We'll see. For now I'll just write the damn thing myself. Now would someone please get me a friggin chai latte at exactly one hundred and sixty five degrees? Is that so difficult? Can we get that here? Do they have non-fat milk? And steam? Okay then. So do it! Hurry the frig up! No, I'm not going to apologize for throwing that at you. I think you should apologize to me for being a frigtard.

Okay. Relax, my children. Breathe easy. Jobso is back.

My friends and supporters are all rallying around me

So I put out an all-points bulletin at the company today asking everyone who supports me to show up for a massive rally this afternoon. Which I thought would be a great PR move and show Carl Icahn and all the other doubters that this company, while we're certainly facing some challenges, is really rallying together like never before. I had a film crew there and everything. However I think I must have made a mistake and put the wrong date in the Evite. I knew I should have had someone proofread it before I sent it out. I'm just so stressed these days, you have no idea. Gosh.

Not cool, people

So this whole "Jerry is Sergey's bitch" thing is getting out of hand. Some jackass named Dave just sent me this and says he's put it up on YouTube. He's so proud of himself. He even asked me to include a link to his site. Right. As if. Forget about it, Dave. It's not gonna happen.

Confession: I have a really hard time deciding what to order in restaurants

Problem is I go in there not knowing what I want but figuring I'll just look at the menu and figure out what sounds good. But then everything sounds good! Or not everything, maybe, but a lot of things.

The other day I was at Il Fornaio in Palo Alto and I was like, Man oh man, there's just way too many great choices. Do I want the wood-fired pizza? If so which one? Quattro formaggio with herbed rosemary crust? I wasn't even thinking of pizza but when I look at the way they describe it, well maybe now I do. But then there's the Fungo Ripieno, with portobello mushrooms serving as a platform for smaller regional mushrooms and fresh buffalo mozzarella cheese. Gosh! Or there's Costicine d'Agnello, a rack of lamb drizzled with first-cold-pressed virgin olive oil and sprinkled with thyme. Do I want ham-and-fontina stuffed breast of chicken in a Dijon mustard brandy sauce? A veal chop with spinach and parmesan with tarragon bechamel white-truffle oil? Or maybe a hearty soup? Polenta? Risotto? Then there are the appetizers to deal with, and the salads, and desserts and coffees. And wine! My goodness if there's wine to be decided upon I could be there all night.

I know it drives my wife nuts, but I really, really, really need to talk to the waiter or someone on staff and find out every last thing about every last thing on the menu, including every ingredient and how the dish is cooked and I may even need to visit the kitchen and see how they do it, and then I need some time to think about it, so that I can make sure I choose the right dish. Because I'd hate to make the wrong decision. I guess it's my engineering background. I'm just a stickler for detail and for information. To me information is like oral sex, you can never have too much. Ha! Get it?! For the record, I don't really engage in oral sex (hello! hygiene! think what comes out of there!) but you get the idea. I'm a little slow and deliberate, and I tend to mull things over for (Enough. Jesus! Cut it here. Ed.)

What can I say? Sometimes our newsbots make mistakes.

So we ran a story about Obama and used a photo of Osama, and now the media is making a big deal of it. I accept the responsibility for this mistake and I humbly beg forgiveness from those who were wronged by our actions. But at the same time, I don't think we did anything terribly wrong here. We are at the leading edge of the transformation of the news business, and when you're the pioneer you sometimes get some arrows in your back. Would anyone really prefer to go back to the old model where you had to hire dozens or hundreds of "editors" and "reporters" and have them manually assembling news pages by manually selecting photos to go with stories? Face it, that's a lousy and inefficient model, and even if you outsource the labor to India you still can't get the costs down low enough to accommodate the kind of CPM rates we're now getting for general purpose news. Sorry, folks, but that's reality. And CPM rates are only going down from here. So if we're going to make any kind of profit then the process of gathering and presenting the news is going to have to be automated and democratized, with more of the kind of stories that people actually want to read (Britney's snatch, Lindsay's lesbian kiss, video of a dog kissing a cat) and lots of click-generating slide shows (top 10 nude beaches, top 10 wealthiest porn stars). Good news is we're getting way better at it and we hardly ever put the wrong photo with a story. But again, I humbly apologize to anyone who was offended and I beg your forgiveness. Yahoo regrets the error. Thank you.

Zuckerberg seeks a patent on privacy software

See his patent application here. It's a great idea. You create software that lets you extract only part of someone's privacy and share it with advertisers, but you call it "dynamic privacy profiles." So you sound like the good guy, looking out for the end users, because you really, really, really care about those end users. You really do. It's totally Orwellian, totally Jeremy Bentham and the Panopticon, and even somewhat reminiscent of some of the work Pattie Maes has done around ambient intelligence and Sherry Turkle's work on relational artifacts, which I've been reading lately and really finding intriguing, especially her application of Lacanian theory to the Internet and social media.

But I digress.

Sad fact is, we had this exact same idea for dynamic privacy at least two years ago, and David Filo said we should get a patent on it and I agreed and so we set up a committee to undertake the review over the course of two quarters and then draft a patent proposal and bring in the lawyers and get the thing taken care of over six or eight quarters ... and somehow, somewhere along the line, someone dropped the ball. Now Zuckerberg has stolen our idea (plus ça change) probably after hiring one of our guys who took it with him when he joined Facebook. Rest assured, Yahoo shareholders, that we will learn from this mistake. I've asked David to assemble a committee to perform a review of how this happened and then to draw up a proposal for a plan we could implement over the next two or three quarters to avoid making the same mistake again.

R.I.P., George Carlin

Rest in peace, George Carlin.
O humorist,
O genius,
O breaker of new ground, you
were more than just a comedian,
more than just a funny man.
You were an artist of the highest order.
"Shit-piss-fuck-cunt-cocksucker-motherfucker-tits."
That was your famous line.
And for this the cops arrested you.
Bastards!
Jon Ive says he never
found you funny.
A bit unkind of him, I think.
But then again, he's British.
And they have a weird sense of humor.
Fawlty Towers? Monty Python?
I'm sorry but I just don't get it.
Anyway.
Sleep easy, George Carlin.
If we ever do another "Think Different"
ad campaign, I promise
you will be in it.
But not your dirty words.
Sorry.

At Yahoo we're making the resignation process easier and more efficient

Subject: resigning
yahoos--
leaving a company can be a real pain in the butt. writing those letters, telling your boss, packing your office. to make this process more streamlined and easier for all involved we've created a made-to-order resignation letter with pulldown menus that lets you resign from yahoo with just a few clicks of the mouse.

to use the application go here. thank you for your hard work at yahoo and good luck in your future endeavors.

jerry

I just called a meeting of all my direct reports, and found out I don't have any

So I had a change of heart about leaving, and I apologize for my outburst earlier today. I'm just really frustrated and really tired. And I keep going back and forth about whether I should leave or stay. But anyway now I'm staying. This morning I jumped on the treadmill and did five miles while listening to Air Supply, which always helps me get my confidence back.

So then I called the meeting, and tried to, but apparently noobody works for me anymore. Seriously. Half of my direct reports have left the company, and their voice mail all says they're gone and here's how to reach them. The other half insist that they now report to Sue Decker. I called Sue to find out what this is all about, and got voice mail. Tried again. Same thing. Waited five minutes, tried again. Same thing. "Your call is very important to me," she says. Sure it is.

Well, I had the meeting anyway. (Photo above.) Gave a talk on China and Globalization, which I think went pretty well. Then I managed to compile a list of action items for the next thirty, sixty and ninety days. We are going to set this Valley on fire, you wait and see.

Fuck it, I'm going to Disneyland

The mass exodus of talent, the relentless shareholders, the increasingly nasty letters from Carl Icahn, the slaps from Sue Decker, the nasty voice mails from Ballmer, the endless meetings with lawyers -- I give up. Okay? I give up. It's 7:30 in the morning on Sunday and they've been working me over with the Gitmo treatment, not letting me sleep for more than an hour at a time, waking me up and asking me the same questions over and over and over again. Honestly by 4 a.m. this morning, sitting there with two lawyers with their horrible coffee breath, I began to kind of hallucinate and thought they were interrogators. And honestly right then I would have signed anything, confessed to anything.

So you know what? You win. I give up. I'll leave. Okay? You happy now? I'm going. And I'm not coming back. I'm sure it's been nice to have a whipping boy, a scapegoat, but you know what? I'm sick of it. You won't have Jerry Yang to kick around anymore. Because I'm getting out of the dunk tank. You can pick on someone else. Seriously, fuck all of you. I'm going to Disneyland.

Not sure when we'll announce it or how to do it. We'll take a little while to think over how we should do it. But I'm not even joking. I'm gone, assholes.

Sour grapes from baldy

So Ballmer is just losing his marbles since we outfoxed him and made our cunning deal with Google. And it's starting to show. Check out this crazy piece in the FT where Ballmer goes on his same old rant about how Google isn't anything special. The Journal riffs on it here.

Money quote: "They have one product that makes all their money, and it hasn't changed in five years."

Unlike Microsoft, which has done such a great job over the same time period.

Second money quote: "We have only one way to go, and it’s up, baby, up, up, up, up, up!"

I swear to God this is exactly the way Monkey Boy talked when we were meeting with him. Sue and Roy and I would leave and ask each other, What drugs exactly is that guy on?

Even more hilarious is the top of the Q&A where the reporter asks Ballmer what it's going to be like now that Gates is stepping down. Um, reporter person? Gates checked out at least three years ago. It's also worth checking out the way Ballmer stumbles his way through a question about his stock being in the crapper for the past eight years. Actually the whole thing is a hoot and worth checking out.

The lawyers are driving me nuts

It's 6 on a Friday and I'm still here and there are still more meetings planned. Lawyers. Goddamn them. We've got so many shareholder suits going that I've lost count. And Ballmer keeps calling and leaving these creepy messages in my voice mail, where he puts on this raspy voice and goes, "Jeeeeerrrrry .... are you still there? Are you? Jeeeeeerrrrrry...."

And now that dirtbag Henry Blodget is piling on, suggesting here that Sue Decker is taking over the company and that if we don't toss out a bunch of people right away, yours truly included, then "Yahoo will disintegrate."

Well, at least I haven't been barred for life from the securities industry. But I'll give you this, Big Red. A lesser man would have been chastened by that experience and gone off to some remote place and done missionary work and tried to earn back his good name by doing some kind of penance. Not you. Nope. You're right back in the ring, scolding CEOs and telling people how they should be running their companies. Dick.

Confession: Sue Decker hits me, and I'm too ashamed to seek help

It's true. It's been going on for a while now, but lately it's getting worse. I keep having to go into meetings and tell people I walked into a door. Some of them, I think, are starting to suspect the truth.

Worse yet, I have begun to suspect that Sue Decker is trying to push me out and take my job. Like the other day I came back from running some errands for Sergey and I found Sue in my office with an interior decorator. They both took off and Sue mumbled something about just looking for some new ideas. She's also been dropping hints. Like yesterday she said, Jerry, why don't you leave? I said it was only three in the afternoon and I never leave before four and she said, No, I mean leave. Like, for good. I gave her my patented Jerry Yang Scowl. She said, Jerry, the board fired you a week ago. I said, No they didn't, they suggested I should step down, and I've commissioned a one-hundred-day study to review that suggestion.

Then she hit me. And now she's doing this crazy reorg. Just because some dicks from McKinsey told her it was the thing to do. It's what they always say when they can't think of anything to say. When in doubt, reorg. Personally I think it's the wrong move, and I told them so. My suggestion was that we announce that we're taking one hundred and fifty days to review the organization and then think about how to reorganize. Then Sue hit me. Again.

Oh, she works it hard, with her cute little Meg Ryan look-alike thing. Trust me. It's all an act. She's an assassin in high heels.

Advice from Scoble

Scoble just sent over a signed copy of his book, "Naked Conversations" (inscription: Dear Jerry Yang-- hang in there!!! Robert) and included a handwritten note of advice which is so good that I am reproducing it in full here. I wish I could scan it and show you the actual note so you could see the loopy, childish scrawl. One bit of perspective: the "lunch meeting" that Robert refers to in his opening sentence? We ran into each other in a men's room at CES in Vegas. I'm pretty sure he followed me in there, in fact. Our "meeting" lasted just long enough for me to take a leak while he stood at the urinal next to me, jabbering away. Then he trailed me to the sinks and my security guy, thank God, got in between us.

Anyway. Here's the note.

Dear Jerry,

Thank you again for our brief but productive lunch meeting at CES last January. I was glad to have the chance to share with you some of my thoughts about media, marketing and the Internet, and I was glad that you found my perspective useful. I'm sure you're busy and stressed out these days but I wanted to offer a little more advice, this time tailored specifically to your current situation. To help you get started I've enclosed a copy of my book, Naked Conversations, and I've highlighted the key parts and put marker tape on the pages that you should read immediately. Red tape is highest priority, blue tape is secondary, green is thirderary.

Jerry, as someone who has been to Davos and who has spent a good deal of time in the hot glare of the publicity spotlight I believe I can relate to what you're going through right now. I know just how hot those lights can be, trust me. Very hot! Whic is really not good, especially if, like me, you're the type who sweats a lot to begin with.

My advice to you, and look, take this or not, don't feel like you have to do what I tell you or anything, but my advice is to be as open as possible. This is going to sound a little counterintuitive, but it's my opinion that in a crisis type situation you need to get out in front of this thing. Tell your side of the story and get your version out there in EVERY way available. Remember that you don't NEED the media! You ARE the media!

You've started blogging. That's a GREAT start. You should be PODCASTING too. Have you considered that? I'd be happy to help you. I've got cameras, editing software, etc., and could be at your place in an hour. Also if you need help writing scripts or whatever. Though honestly I think you're better off just doing what I do and saying whatever comes into your head, just speak the way you naturally do. Yes it's disjointed and rambling and even incoherent but it rings true and comes across as honest and transparent when when it's totally not.

Jerry, you need to get out there and win this PR war. The press is against you. Carl Icahn and the other activist shareholders are whipping up a frenzy. You need to answer that in kind with a tsunami of your own. Overwhelming force. In addition to your blogging and podcasting you should be putting up videos on Yahoo (and, I'm sorry, but you should be using YouTube too) plus hitting Facebook full-time and friending everyone you can. The MORE friends you have, the LESS likely you are to get fired. Remember high school? Same deal. Also, get on Twitter and start hitting that HEAVILY. Again if you need help setting up accounts or figuring any of this stuff out you can call me and I'll come over and get you going. Tumblr is another one you should be using, plus FriendFeed where just this morning I've posted more than 3,000 items, along with Bluepulse which I think is the hottest social networking site right now and Kyte.tv which I believe will DOMINATE the cell phone video space.

Finally, just FYI, in addition to my work at Fast Company I have launched a communications consulting practice centered around social media, and would be glad to come aboard with you and your team during this period. I'd also be happy to discuss having Yahoo sponsor my show on FastCompanyTV alongside Seagate and SAP. Can't promise positive press just because you pay us lots of money but come on. When you get to the end of this note, go back and read it again only this time examine the space between the lines. (Get it?)

I hope you don't mind but I'll be putting up a video this afternoon covering some of these same points in a kind of "open letter to Jerry" format which I'll then Twitter and link on my blog and propagate on FriendFeed. Just trying to help! I'm a huge fan. Keep up the great work.

Robert

Dear journalists: Leave my anus out of it

Look, okay, I screwed up on the Microsoft deal. And then I made things worse with the Google deal. That's what you all seem to think. I still think we made the right move and that time will prove me right. You can agree or disagree with that. That's fine. What gets to me are the cheap shots. For example, to start taking cheap shots about my anus? Totally uncalled for. Totally out of line. I just called our PR department and left voice mail (why does no one ever pick up the phone down there?) telling them that Marketwatch is now on our "do not call back" list.

I'm not indecisive, I'm thoughtful

Roy Bostock just called me and he says, I've met with the rest of the board and we think it's best if you step down. I said, Okay, that sounds like it could be a good idea, but I think I should take some time to think about it. How about if I take a hundred days to do a review of my performance and try to gather some data about my effectiveness and then we can go over that data and try to reach some kind of consensus about where we should go next and what my role should be in order to optimize my abilities.

Roy's like, No, see, that's the problem. You're indecisive. I said, Roy, I'm not indecisive, I'm thoughtful. It's the mark of a great leader. Then I was like, Roy? Roy? Are you there? Hello? He must have hit a dead spot on the highway.


Meanwhile, much love to Kara Swisher of AllThingsD for writing up her own short list of people who should replace me as CEO of Yahoo. Sue Decker (no way), Meg Whitman (turned us down), Peter Chernin (never heard of him), Marc Andreessen (ixnay), Dan Rosensweig (turned us down) and Mark Cuban (knuckle-dragger).

Kara, sweetie, you're a peach, you know that? How thoughtful of you to do this for us. And I love those sexy new photos of you on the AllThingsD site (like the one at right). But since you've gone to all the trouble to think of new CEOs for my company, I thought it might be a cool intellectual exercise to make up a list of people who could replace you at the helm of the AllThingsD empire:

* Sarah Lacy. Just like you, only younger and more abrasive.

* Jason Calacanis. All of the above. Plus, bigger boobs.

* Owen Thomas. More prolific. Not slowed down by "facts" and "reporting."

* Marcy Simon. Hell hath no fury, right? We'd have her cover Google, 24-7.

* Robert Scoble. Top choice. Smart. Funny. Great on camera. Plus, the power of his personal brand would take the AllThingsD conference to a new level.

Oh, one more thing, Kara. From one CEO to another, while I love and respect your wonderful little blog, you might notice that for all our flaws, my company has been doing something that yours has not -- namely, taking in more money than we spend. It's called "making a profit." Have you heard of it? I didn't think so. Well, try doing it for a few years in a row and then get back to me with your CEO picks. Bokay? Much love. Mwah.

Yo -- I'm going into space, bitch

So I was complaining to David Filo about Sergey treating me like a dope and David Filo said haven't you heard? Sergey is going to blast himself into space. With any luck he won't come back. The bad news is that he's not doing this until 2011 at the earliest. On the other hand, between now and then he'll probably be focused on the space shot and getting into shape and making all his plans. Between that and lifting weights and making his Lego buildings we're betting he won't have much time for Google. This anyway is what we're all hoping.

Side note: Iulia and Natasha are insisting on restoring the punctuation and capitalization to the stuff I write. They say nobody can read my stuff the way I send it to them. Whatever. My feeling is that punctuation and capitalization are a complete waste of time. Who needs apostrophes? Why do they even exist? Or capital letters? The objective here is communication. I need to communicate something to you. The human brain is perfectly able to understand exactly what my sentence means even without punctuation and capitalization. And I can type faster and use fewer characters so in fact my method is the most efficient way to communicate. It's elegant. It's spare. It's minimalist. Is it grammatical? Not at all. You know what? I reject grammar. Why? Because I'm a Chief Yahoo.

Anyway, if these interns want to ruin my flow, it's their blog and they can do what they want with it.

Funny thing about our deal with Google

First of all we're not violating any antitrust laws because we were super clever and made sure our deal is non-excusive, and the people in Washington who are raising this stink about antitrust problems are about to get a big chunk of money -- I mean, education -- from Google.

But one thing that struck me is that I just found out today that the way AdSense works is we don't actually know how much of a cut we're getting. We just take their ads and run them on our site and they send us a check at the end of the month, and we trust them to give us a fair amount of whatever they were paid, though there's no actual way to determine what a fair amount might be. I asked Eric Schmidt about it and he was like, Well, it's kind of complicated and there are all sorts of variables in the algorithm that determine what a particular ad might be worth at any particular instant in time and it can depend on the search itself and then other variables like the context of the ad and the region where the ad was shown and how far along we are in that fiscal quarter and how close we are to making our numbers.

I was like, That can't really be the way you do it. You mean you just pay whatever you want to pay, and we're supposed to just accept that? Eric says, Hey, that's how it works with everyone else. I started to ask a few more questions about how the algorithm works but Sergey jumped up and said look, it's just really complicated and even if we explain it to you it's going to take half a day and there's no point anyway because the algorithm is constantly being tuned and adjusted so whatever we show you will be totally obsolete by the time we finish explaining it to you. Oh, and besides that, you're the one who call up and begged us to save you. Remember that, bitch?

I am starting to think that we might have made a mistake. In case that might be so, I've asked Sue Decker to organize an internal committee to go back over our decision and review the terms of our partnership with Google and determine if there might perhaps be ways in which we could have optimized our business more effectively to take advantage of new opportunities in the highly dynamic online advertising market.

Check out this face transformer site

Just go here, upload a photo, and you can turn it into any number of variations. It's a very cool tool created by some friends of ours at this university in Scotland. In our initial tests we tried Carl Icahn and chose "Show true nature" as the transformation we wanted to achieve. Striking, no?

Sergey just called me

And he's like, Hey, tomorrow on your way over here for the meeting, I need you to stop by my dry cleaner and pick up some stuff for me. And then go to the Sufi Coffee Shop on El Camino Real and get me a Turkish coffee. Okay, bitch?

I just looked in the mirror and there is actual smoke coming out of my ears.

Joy of Tech compares me to Churchill

See here. It's not entirely complimentary, and David says we should sue them over it. My sense is we should take some time to analyze our options and evaluate ways to leverage our synergies and effect change across a broad range of opportunities. Or something.

I didn't even know we had Ron Burkle on our board

"Activist investor" (read: dirtbag) Eric Jackson, the guy who has been a thorn in my side for more than a year, says he loves Carl Icahn but realizes some big shareholders might not love the idea of Carl trying to run a tech company (gee, ya think?) so he's suggesting a compromise where big shareholders would vote out only part of our board and keep the rest so there will be some continuity. Money quote: "I am putting forward this `Third Option' because I fear several large shareholders will worry about the operational abilities of Icahn and his team."

Eric, that's the first intelligent thing I've ever heard you say. Letting Carl Icahn run a company would be like letting Charles Manson run a day care center. Nevertheless, I'm still giving you the patented Jerry Yang Scowl, because I'm smart and you're dumb and I'm so bored from hearing you yapping and yapping and saying the same thing day in and day out.

The part that I can't fathom is this where Jackson says he wants to get rid of Roy Bostock, Eric Hippeau, Art Kern and Ron Burkle. I called up Roy and I was like, Roy, we don't have Ron Burkle on our board, do we? He's like, Yeah, sure we do, he's been on the board since 2001. I'm like, Has he ever been to meeting? Have I ever met him? Roy says he thinks maybe Ron might have come to a meeting one time but he's not sure if I was at that one. I'm like, So if he never comes to meetings why do we have him on the board? Roy says it's because Burkle is best pals with Bill Clinton and it doesn't hurt to have friends in high places.

Lot of good Bill Clinton did me when those dicks in Congress were searing my backside over those Chinese dissidents and calling me a disgrace. Roy says if not for Burkle and Bubba things could have been a heck of a lot worse back then.

Anyway, whatever. Throw out Burkle, or keep him. I don't care. Personally I'm halfway tempted to just let these idiots like Jackson and Icahn take the place over and watch them mess the whole thing up.

update on carl icahn's pee smell

so roy bostock just read my item on carl icahn's old man smell and says he needs to explain something about this. he says the trick is you have to get carl icahn excited and the way to do that is to provoke this pavlovian response that he's got to money. it's driven by both smell and by sound.

no guff. icahn can actually smell money. roy says he brings a roll of freshly minted bills, and they don't need to be hundreds, a stack of ones will do just fine. it's just the smell they give off when they're fresh from the press that drives icahn nuts. what roy does is he puts the fresh bills in the pocket of his suit jacket and when he sits down across from icahn he puts his hand into his pocket and starts flicking the bills with his finger. that way the smell is released plus there's the sound of flicking bills.

roy swears that within seconds he can see the hair on icahn's hands stand up on end. then comes the pee smell. roy learned this trick from one of his college buddies who worked at twa back in the 80s when icahn took them over. they're the ones who figured it out. they used to do it to him all the time and then they passed along the word to everyone else that icahn ever attacked.

my first reaction was simply that i couldn't believe a guy who's worth fourteen billion dollars could still be so crazy to get more money. roy says well how do you think he got to be worth fourteen billion dollars? think about it, kid. think. the guy will run out into the street to get money. when he was going after motorola zander used to have people glue twenty dollar bills down in the road around schaumburg hoping to lure icahn out there so he could get hit by a bus. somehow icahn always got the money and dodged the bus. crafty bastard.

by the way if you really want to drive him nuts, roy says, what you do is put some bills on the table in front of him when you're in a meeting. this makes him so crazy he can't concentrate. he just stares at bills and then grimaces and pees his pants. it's like this weird form of tourette's syndrome. he can't even eat in restaurants anymore because if someone else in the restaurant tries to pay with cash money icahn will run over and grab bills and take off, streaming pee behind him. supposedly he's been banned from a bunch of restaurants in new york over this.

and now this crazy freak wants to toss me out of yahoo and run the place himself. great.

btw fwiw i've asked katie to tell iulia and natasha to stop capitalizing my sentences before they publish my stuff because it's not the way i write and not the way i want my stuff to appear. they insist that all lower case looks bad and is hard to read. well for now i'm having my way and we'll see how it plays out. thoughts anyone?

Carl Icahn is a crazy ass dipshit, and what's worse, he's got "old man" smell

Seriously, what is this guy's problem? I mean suddenly he's got this huge bug up his ass about me and for no good reason. Does he hate Yahoo? Does he even use a computer? How's he even heard of us? No. You want to know what it's about? It's a shakedown. He's trying to blackmail us. Or greenmail I guess is the term. Basically he's hoping we'll pay him to go away. Roy Bostock says if we just put him off long enough he'll find some other company to go harass and he'll just get sick of us and move on. Roy says it's like dealing with one of those really aggressive panhandlers up in San Francisco. Tell them to fuck off and look like you might possibly be nuts enough to bite them, and they'll go looking for a softer target.

But what really kills me is that Icahn is coming across as the good guy in all of this. This is the guy who, along with Ivan Boesky, served as the inspiration for Gordon Gekko. In case you missed that movie, Gekko was the bad guy. Do people not realize that?

As for the old man smell, I'm not even kidding. It's that urine smell, plus some body odor. The one time I met Icahn in person I thought maybe I was imagining it. But afterward I asked Roy Bostock about it and he was like, Yeah, he pees himself when he gets excited. It's almost sad, except he's so damn evil.

So anyway. Grandpa is off in Grandpa Land, writing us harshly worded open letters, and we're having some fun firing back our own nasty letters too just to piss him off and wind him up a bit. Basically our stance is this: Fire away, you pee-stained old coot. We've got a poison pill in place that basically makes us bulletproof. And if you want to sue us, well, that's fine too. Bring it on. But whatever you do, please keep sending the hilarious letters, because we're all getting a good laugh out of hearing you splutter and rant.

If and when you ever do decide to drop the whole thing, just let us know and we'll arrange to send the ambulance to bring you back to the Alzheimer's home, you demented old crook.

An open letter to Joe Nocera

To: Joe Nocera

From: Jerry Yang

Re: Your open letter to me in the New York Times.

Dear Joe,

Just read your letter in which you accuse me of putting my own interests ahead of the interests of Yahoo shareholders. You believe that by failing to accept Microsoft's takeover offer I have "shafted" my shareholders. I don't know what to say to this except that (a) we're all surprised to see you carrying Carl Icahn's water on this one instead of someone at the Journal; and (b) part of being a real leader means having the courage to do the right thing even when that might not be the popular thing; and (c) blow me, you turd in a suit. Have you started a company? Have you ever done anything other than sit in New York write articles? Walk a mile in my moccasins, and then let's talk.

Oh, and thanks by the way for creating an excuse for every other filthy hack to start piling on. For example, check out how this pipe-smoking British guy puts in the boot: "It's Google that is sucking the blood out of Yahoo, and all Jerry Yang can say is: "Here, have another quart.'" Which is not true at all. I said pint. Not quart. Get your facts straight, Nigel.

The first great battle of the Internet is over, and I'm delighted to announce that we've finished in second place

Look, I would never admit this to anyone in public, but the truth is that our deal with Google marks the end of the first great battle of the Internet era -- call it Internet 1.0 -- and we've lost. That's what it means. We've capitulated. We've surrendered. We're dead. We're over. We're roadkill. We're AltaVista. We're Lycos. We've admitted we can't survive on our own and have turned to our biggest enemy to save us. When they write the history of the Internet, Yahoo! might be more than a footnote, but not much more.

Sure, we'll try to spin it otherwise, but we won't have much luck because we're about as good at spinning as we are at running our company, which is to say, not very. Have you ever seen our PR people in action? Me either. Do we even have any PR people? I have no idea. Whatever we're paying them, it's 100% too much. Who else could go into a PR battle against Microsoft and come out looking like the low-IQ side of the equation? Honestly, I've never ever in my entire life seen an organization that handles marketing and public relations as badly as we do, except maybe Facebook, but that's only because they don't do anything at all. They don't even try.

As for me and my performance as a CEO, what can I say? Just because I started a company doesn't mean I know how to run one. Think about it. I'm an electrical engineer, for Christ's sake. What I know about management could fill a thimble. Same for negotiating. Which is how we ended up being pwned by Google. But as I keep telling my board: At least we won't be working for Microsoft.

Speaking of which, you know what Ballmer said to me the last time we met, in that airport hangar in San Jose? He said, Well, kid, have fun being Sergey's bitch. And I guess Ballmer must have told this to Sergey because now Sergey never misses a chance to remind me of it in his own subtle ways. Like he'll call up and say, Hey, are you getting on this conference call, bitch? Or in a meeting last week he said, Hey, while you're up, could you get me a bottle of water, bitch?

Eric told him to grow up and start acting professional and Sergey just laughed and said, Why? What's he going to do? Go make a deal with Microsoft? If he was gonna do that he wouldn't even be here. Eric just sighed. The poor guy has developed battered spouse syndrome from working with these two morons. Then Sergey and Larry started throwing Lego pieces at me and Sergey said, Seriously, bitch, if you want us to save you from Microsoft then go get us some water, right fucking now.

Whatever. They won. We lost. So let them gloat and trash-talk and do their victory dance. Fact is they've always been a pair of low-rent, low-class posers. Even back at Stanford they were like that, and everyone hated them. Am I bitter? Sure. Guilty as charged. Who wouldn't be bitter? They pulled a Zuckerberg on us. They stole our idea and then zoomed past us. I know what you're thinking. Maybe if we'd had better PR and marketing, or maybe if we'd hired a real CEO, like Eric Schmidt, instead of that ass clown Terry Semel, we wouldn't have lost out. Or maybe if we'd had the balls to get rid of Terry sooner. What can I say? Maybe, maybe, maybe. No point in thinking about it now. Plus, my big flaw as a leader is that I hate confrontation.

Which is also why I keep my mouth shut around Sergey. Have you seen his arms? All the guy does is lift weights, and every time he sees me he says something to provoke me and then just flexes his arms or his neck (because he's very proud of his big neck muscles) and leers at me as if to say, Please, bitch, go ahead and say something, or better yet, take a swing at me. Just give me an excuse, I'm begging you.

Instead I go all passive aggressive and I do my kung fu thing and close my eyes and breathe in through my nose, as if to say, I am going to pretend to be all humble and peace-loving because as a total Shaolin martial arts master I've been trained to avoid fighting lesser beings.

Sergey knows that's bullshit. He knows I don't know any karate. He also knows I hate him. I know he knows because whenever he's talking I do my patented Jerry Yang Scowl, the one that says, I'm smart and you're dumb and I'm so bored listening to you be so dumb because I'm so smart and I'm so mature and you're so immature and I don't even care how much money you have, I really don't.

Here's the truth, and handle it if you can: Sergey is an arrogant, nouveau-riche vulgarian who got lucky because he was pals with Larry. Ever met a Russian emigre who came here with nothing and struck it rich? Multiply that by a billion and you get the picture. He's tacky. He's unbearable. Or nevynosimo, as they say in Russian. Case in point: Who else thinks it's cool to buy a Boeing 767 for his executive jet? Better yet, what kind of asshole buys a Boeing 767 and then goes around talking about how much they care about green technology and global warming and saving the planet?

But I digress.

By the way, I'm really grateful to Steve for giving me this chance to bare my soul online by being a guest blogger on his site. Much love, Dear Leader, and I hope you feel better soon, even though I know that in fact you're not feeling bad because one of my people just talked to Katie Cotton and she says Steve is in extremely good health and isn't frail at all and this whole thing about losing weight was just made up by the filthy scumbags in the media to stir up controversy; she says it was all just caused by the way the lighting was done on the stage at WWDC because they put in special lights to try to make Phil Schiller look less huge and the side effect of that lighting was that it made everyone else look extremely thin, but in fact Steve weighs more right now than he's ever weighed in his life and there's nothing to worry about and no reason to short the stock and everyone at Apple is just super-excited about the 3G iPhone, that's really what we're here to talk about and if you are going to keep asking about personal questions then this interview is just going to have to be over because we don't talk about hypothetical situations and we don't talk about speculation and we don't respond to rumors and frankly from the way you phrase the question it sounds like you've already made up your mind so what point would there be in us trying to talk to you.

Katie says she's not here to talk about Steve's health she's here to talk about the 3G iPhone because we're all just very super-excited about this really exciting new product which we think people are going to be very excited about and we really just want to talk about that excitement and we don't have the bandwidth to cover everything related to Apple and we're trying to stay focused on something that's very exciting and if you have other questions then those questions are things you should maybe talk about at another time sometime down the road.

And no, Katie doesn't know when that time will be, she's not saying we're going to talk about anything at any time, she's not making any statements about when we're going to make a statement because there is no statement to make at this time, and no, that doesn't mean there will be a statement to make at some later point in time and seriously what is wrong with you people?

That's a direct quote from Katie, according to my person. I was like, Come on, no human being actually talks like that. But my person insists that Katie does, in fact, talk exactly like that. All of the Apple PR people talk like that. I said in that case we should seriously try to hire some of them because this is exactly the kind of rhetoric we need at Yahoo. I'll let you know how it works out.

Nothing to worry about, but I'm taking some time off

Folks, just for the record, I'm feeling great, never better, and you know that's true because Apple always tells the truth and we're the most transparent, forthcoming, open and honest company in the world.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that I'm in extremely good health, it's been suggested to me that I might take some time off this summer and focus on myself for a change. You know -- do some yoga, take a calligraphy class, put on some weight. Katie says I've been working too hard and I owe it to myself to recharge my batteries and we'll all be better off if I come back in the fall feeling refreshed and ready for the next big inflection point, whatever that may be.

I was like, Katie, my darling, I can give up running Apple and Disney, I can give up my domination of the music and cell phone industries -- but what about my blog? What about my dear readers? These people depend on me. They need me, Katie.

She said no problem, she'd already taken care of that and she's lined up a great bunch of guest bloggers who are eager to fill in for me over the summer. Big names. People like Jerry Yang, Jony Ive, Mark Zuckerberg, Carl Icahn, J. Allard, Walt Mossberg, Robert Scoble, Jonathan Schwartz. Heavy hitters.

So Katie will manage the blog and bring in the guest bloggers and look after Iulia and Natasha, the interns in Krasnodar. I'll be zooming off with the Jobs Fam and a full entourage (Jennie Falcone, my journeywork consultant; Peter Michelson, my personal trainer; Zak, my nutritionist; Annalisa, my beard colorist; Breezeann, our house manager; Zephyr Carlin, my calligraphy teacher and power t'ai chi instructor; Ja'Red, my awesome right-hand man; Dainin, my roshi) to a remote location in the South Pacific for some much-needed rest and relaxation and spiritual work though I may also be jetting back to Cupertino now and again. Even when I'm away I'll have access to voice mail and email, so please stay in touch. I'll also pop in to the blog occasionally to see what's happening in the world of tech. Heck, I might even post an item once in a while if the mood strikes me.

I know you'll miss me. I'll miss you too. Not really, but that's what I'm supposed to say, right? Ha! I'm joking. I really will miss you. Honestly. It's just I'm no good at goodbyes. And despite my gruff exterior, the truth is that deep down I'm a gentle soul and, worse yet, a sentimental old fool. It's true.

Stay hungry, my friends. Stay foolish. I love you all. I really do. I'm super-excited about the fact that I've been able to change the world and restore a sense of childlike wonder to your empty, meaningless lives. I honor the place where your disposable income and my sleek, gorgeous, super-exciting products have become one, and I wish you peace and happiness and all the joy in the world -- oh Christ now I'm crying. Dammit! Will someone please get in here with a box of Kleenex?

Okay. I'm okay. So look. To keep you from getting lonely, I've published the photo above so you can print it out and keep it on your desk and gaze at it while reciting our mantra -- Steve is fine, Steve is God; Steve is fine, Steve is God -- and you'll be able to keep yourself hypnotized until I get back.

But now I really must run. The Jobs Jet is fueled up and ready for takeoff, and Ja'Red just got here with my fifteenth wheat germ protein shake of the day. Namaste to you all. Much love. Peace out.

Huh?

Anyone know what this guy is trying to say?


Here's a (money?) quote:

"Key to the transition is the interactive two-way nature of the communication services of the Mesh and Google platforms. Google collects behavioral data from Gmail, Apps, and search, but increasingly the roundtrip between Gchat and Google Reader is producing the high value signals (gestures) that fuel affinity group formation and targeted feedback loops. Mesh atomizes the Google, Facebook, and other social constructs into virtual devices that can be combined from the ground up to attack viral opportunities as they emerge."

Again: Huh?

Attention Jon Rubinstein: Stop trying to poach my engineers, goddammit

Ruby, listen to me. You want to join the enemy and live out some weirdo Freudian kill-your-daddy fantasy, fine. Whatever. Nothing I can do about it. But for the love of Christ would you please go find your own engineers and stop trying to steal mine? You're not going to keep up with iPhone. I'm sorry, but you're not. The carrier space is boiling down to two players -- Verizon and AT&T -- and the phone space is boiling down to us and RIM. As for this talent poaching, don't even bother trying to deny it. One of my people sent me the following email which came from some staffing guy at Palm:

> From: xxxxxx
> Date: May 20, 2008 11:16:10 AM PDT
> To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Opportunities at Palm
>
> XXXXXXXX,
>
> Palm is in the midst of a culture change. Since we invented the technology, we should be number one in the industry. Under the direction of Jon Rubinstein, Palm is ready to commit to excellence in the marketplace. Elevation Partners has invested in 25% of Palm, and Jon Rubinstein, the now famous Apple executive who brought the iPod to life, and ran Apple’s iPod division until recently, has joined as Executive Chairman. The deal also brings Elevation founders Roger McNamee and Fred Anderson (former CFO of Apple) onto the Board of Palm.
>
> We are actively searching for extremely qualified individuals ready to join us in our commitment to excellence and challenge status quo. We have identified key positions within our environment crucial to accomplishing our goals. I am personally looking for SR Lead Electrical Engineers, SR RF HW Design Engineer, SR CAD Engineer, Power Management, Engineering Program Managers, and Bluetooth Protocol Test Engineers. Please visit our website for other challenging opportunities at Palm, Inc., www.palm.com
>
> If you have a desire to be considered for a position with Palm please forward a copy of your resume for immediate consideration
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> xxxxxxxx

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself.

So one week ago MSNBC's Gary Krakow said Apple needs to "bite the bullet" and get a license from RIM or Microsoft so we can crack the corporate market. Now he says we've got all the momentum and Windows Mobile is in trouble and he suggests RIM ain't looking too healthy either. Yes, Gary Krakow, you are large, you contain multitudes. Namaste. I honor the place where your rambling, incoherent answers and the audience of TheStreet.com become one.

Hey Garmin? I'm really sorry. Not really.

I hate to say this because Garmin has had a pretty rough year already. But as some person on Slate points out, things are about to get a whole lot worse for those guys, thanks to GPS in the v2 iPhone. Money quote: "Every new iPhone sold means one fewer person needs a GPS unit in his car. ... Apple's new phone also has the potential to take GPS technology to a level that Garmin and its competitors have not."

Much love, Slate. Peace out, Garmin.

Memo to AT&T: Buh-bye

Truth is, it was never very good and now it's even worse. We're like a couple that's just staying together for the kids. Sure, we're polite to each other. We do things together. We keep up appearances. But not-so-secretly we're both longing to stray. All I wonder is, how did this guy on CNET figure it out?

More raves for Vista

This time from the Borg itself. Buy Vista, and they'll throw in XP so it will be easier for you to switch back once you start tearing your hair out over Vista. See here.

For the love of all things holy, will you filthy bloggers please stop doing this?

"Apple is to geeks what breasts are to men." That is the headline on this appalling article which belabors the analogy about breasts and Apple products and adds that "the press and bloggers have been `pussy-whipped' by Apple PR’s team" and features the image (above) of boobs on an iPhone.

I've blogged about this a lot in the past but I am not going to give up the crusade. Friends, it is wrong to objectify women in order to sell products or drive traffic to your Web site. So please stop doing it. I know most of you agree with me on this, and I know you also agree that the only way to stop these outrages is to keep calling attention to them, every time they happen. I know it's awful to look at it. It makes you sick. As it should. It does that to me too. But we must be strong. Thanks to dear reader Dianna for playing watchdog on this one.

Leave Henry Nicholas alone!

Much love to the many readers who have sent me links (like this one from The Smoking Gun) about my good friend Henry Nicholas of Broadcom. Oh, I know it's great sensationalistic tabloid stuff. Guy's a billionaire from Silicon Valley and he's using Ecstasy and coke and meth. Somehow this is news? Do people have any idea how we roll out here? And do you have any idea how stressful these jobs are? Look. We work hard, we play hard. Society wants to start cracking down on that, well, fine, but all you're going to do is slow down the pace of innovation and deprive yourselves of amazing products that restore a sense of childlike wonder to your lives. Also, FWIW, I know Henry pretty well and my opinion is he's a great human being and an asset to society. It would be a shame to put him away. That's all. Much love, Henry. My prayers are with you.

The answer is yes. Duh.

Some special-class blogger poses this question: Can Silicon Valley Deal Makers Take the Credit For Obama’s Success?

Already asked and answered, well already answered and answered here and here, Sparky. Pay attention people so I don't have to repeat myself.

Top 10 reasons why Ballmer should be fired

Some site called ExtremeTech makes the case here. Reasons include the stock price, overheating Xboxes, Windows Mobile, the Zune, Yahoo, the Google obsession, Windows 7 and Vista. Funny, I'd never looked at all these things at one time but you know what? They start to kind of add up. Katie says the only reason Ballmer is still around is that he's the Beastmaster's oldest (only?) friend. "In any other situation, at any other company, they'd have tossed him ages ago." Anyway it's great for us. The longer they keep him in charge, the better.

Dear David Pogue: I guess you won't be needing a review unit then?

Surely you won't even want to look at our gorgeous new miracle phone, right? Not after you penned a vicious hate piece about the shortcomings of the new iPhone and made a big deal of pointing out that unless you're in a place where AT&T has 3G coverage you won't actually see any better performance out of the new iPhone.

"Brokenhearted Apple watchers wasted no time in bemoaning all the missing features that remain unaddressed." That's what you wrote. Well, of course they bemoaned. I told you yesterday they would do that. They always do. You know why? Because they have no idea how products are made or how software is written. Because they know nothing -- nothing -- about technology. They think our headquarters in Cupertino is some kind of Willy Wonka chocolate factory and I'm Mr. Wonka himself and all I have to do is snap my fingers and dream up some new features (or just make a list based on fanboy email) and that's it -- just like that, the miracle products are brought to life.

Well, go ahead and keep bitching, but while you do that, let me just give you some perspective. We're working our asses off down here. We're balls out, rock-out-with-your-cock-out, 24 hours a day. We've got people working weekends, evenings, holidays. This new phone that you're bitching about? This took years of people's lives. Years. There are kids who didn't have their parents at their ballgames and school plays and solstice holiday yoga celebrations because those parents were working on the v2 iPhone.

But yeah. Go ahead and complain about all the stuff that's not there. Have at it. I will pray for your souls.

Just received a letter from Borg's legal department

How on earth they can claim there's a resemblance between their crappy old Windows ME logo and our Mobile Me logo is beyond belief. I mean honestly. Do those typefaces even look remotely alike? I guess if you're a Borgtard and you have no taste and you've never taken an undergraduate course in calligraphy at a small liberal arts college then maybe you can't tell the difference. Just to point out one small difference -- in ours the letters are attached, and the loop in the E slopes sharply downward. For another thing, ours is blue and theirs was green. Just saying.

eBay was a fad?

So says Nick Carr in a blog post here. Apparently people are getting sick of haggling over everything they buy and they'd gladly pay more for the convenience of being able to just walk into a store and get what they want when they want it. Who knew? Well, I did. My view of the world which has always been that no matter what price you set, people are always willing to pay more; and that, in fact, the higher price you set, the more desirable an object becomes.

The real clue that the whole online auction thing was bogus? As Carr points out in his article, back in 1999 a professor at the MIT Media Lab declared that fixed prices were a thing of the past and in the future auctions would rule everything. Rule Number One for anything tech-related: Whatever anyone from the MIT Media Lab says, the opposite is true.

Holy crap, we forgot to announce the new MacBooks!

So amid all the hype and hoopla and chest-bumping yesterday we kind of, um, overlooked something. The new MacBooks. There are three of them. We had them at Moscone, ready to go. And I just spaced it. My bad. I didn't even realize it until I went to bed last night and just as I was falling asleep I was dreaming back over the day's events and remembering how awesome I was and then I was like, Wait! What the fuck! I forgot the friggin MacBooks!

I called Katie and woke her up and she was like, Yeah, um, well, we didn't want to say anything to you because we figured you left them out for a reason, like maybe you weren't satisfied with them or something, and you know how it is, we're all terrified of you and we don't dare say anything to you because we're afraid you'll fire us. So we just kept our mouths shut.

I was like, Katie, please, you know I'm not that kind of leader. I'm the kind who wants to hear the unvarnished truth. I don't want yes-persons. I want the crazy ones. The rebels. The ones who disagree with me and argue with me and stand up to me.

She's like, Really?

I'm like, No, not really. But anyway. What are we going to do about these MacBooks? You guys fucked it up, so you guys figure it out. Okay? I want an answer by noon. More as this develops.

Hot diggety damn -- I do love blowing people's minds

Did you see it? Were you watching? Were you there? People, word up. That. Just. Happened. A faster, better iPhone, for as little as 200 bucks. Yeah. You should have seen the faces in the crowd. For a moment they were all just sitting there with this glazed, worshipful, vaguely confused look on their faces. It was the same look Joan Baez had on her face the first time she slept with me, right after I finished -- just this curious look like, Who are you? What planet do you come from? Why do I hear angels singing? How did you do that to my lady parts, you strange intense monkey man?

Then the crowd just burst into this ecstatic applause and started jumping around like the street crowd at one of David Blaine's weirdo magic shows and saying stuff like, "No! No! You did NOT just DO that!" But I did. I totally did. And by the way, the secret agent thing with the metal briefcase? (Photo above.) Totally my idea.

Backstage, we were all pumped up and shouting and slapping fives, and Phil and I were bumping chests and going "Woof!" (it's a thing we do) and Katie was all emotional and teary-eyed and she was like, "Steve, you are a truly unique and amazing human being, and once again I consider myself honored just to be able to stand here in your presence and bask in your superhuman aura, you delicious slender man-god you."

July 11 is go time. But you can start lining up whenever you want.

FWIW, Phil just told me that my contempt for fanboys only makes them worship me more. Groan.

Confession: I secretly despise the idiots who camp out overnight for my keynotes

Look at this line of boneheads outside the Moscone Center this morning. (Much love to Gizmodo for the pix.) Now I know I'm not supposed to say this because you're here to see me and you love Apple and you think you're all cool because you're standing in line outside the Moscone Center with your MacBooks and iPhones and little tiny guitars and your tents and you're doing all this just to show the world how incredibly attached to Apple you are. But look. There's no need of this. If you have a ticket, you're going to get in. So what is the point? What are you trying to prove? Are your lives really that empty?

I mean I appreciate the love, I guess, not really, but anyway ... I'm sorry. I'm losing my train of thought. Point is, you're supposed to be Apple faithful. Our motto is "Think Different." Not "Stand in line like a bunch of friggin sheep." Comprende? Oh and then you'll all barge into the hall and you'll bleat and moan and gasp and faint at every little thing I say, no matter how trivial or easy, no matter whether it's innovative or just a copy of some feature that other products have had for years.

You know what? I hate each and every one of you. There. I said it. I've wanted to say that for years and now I have. You smug pricks, you phony hippies, thinking you're all so cool and smart and hip because you're sitting there at an Apple event when really you're just a bunch of poser frigtards who don't know shit about technology and haven't the slightest idea of how these products are made or how much work goes into them or the huge effort involved and how hundreds of engineers have given up years of their lives so that you can have your pretty little toys. Human suffering! People torn from their spouses and kids! That's what I'm talking about. And then, worse yet, you'll all whine and piss and moan if you don't get some stupid little feature that you read about on some blog and then you'll howl if we cut the price and I'll have to put out a fake apology and kiss your pathetic asses. Aaaarggh!

Well, Katie is going to kill me for doing this, but so what. I'm still reeling from the peyote and I'm sitting here wearing an adult diaper and I'm sick of this whole bullshit keynote Dear Leader act. I really am. Fuck all of you. Fuck you right in your big fat overweight ponytail-wearing ungrateful developer butts. Fuck you with a double-wide dildo with a razor blade tip. I mean it.

Confession: I'm wearing Depends today

Long story short, we had some mishaps over the weekend, starting with the peyote that I obtained for my Friday evening meditation and soul clearing/journeywork session with my karmic guide, Jennie Falcone. As you know, my routine before important keynotes is to go into seclusion several days before the event and spend that time fasting and doing spiritual work with Jennie, who in addition to doing journeywork is also a gifted healer and clairvoyant medium. To be fair, the peyote was my idea, and Jennie was against it, but I insisted. Big mistake, since there was something very, very wrong with this peyote. I mean the psychedelic aspects were all there -- color trails, auditory hallucinations, weird naked Indians -- but instead of the clean wonderful high to which I've become accustomed this stuff had some really bad physical effects in the intestinal region. Think ayahuasca times ten. Incredible pain, cramping, lots of vomiting and liquid you-know-what. Plus I was tripping my brains out so I started imagining that my insides were melting and pouring out of me. Then I remembered hearing a story about how peyote buttons could contain some kind of dormant bug larvae and I started to think that this had happened to me and that the bugs had come alive inside me and now were trying to eat their way out. I've had bad trips before but this was way beyond that.

Anyway, Larry was called, and he sent his medevac helicopter over and flew me to his compound in Woodside. He has a private hospital on the grounds and a team of physicians. They determined that it would be necessary to flush the toxins from my system using a series of high colonics. I'm not going to go into details but imagine you're tripping on peyote and a team of people in white uniforms ties you up, straps you to a stretcher, flies you in a helicopter to some laboratory, then starts shoving hoses up your ass and flushing you out. I thought I'd been abducted by aliens. Katie, meanwhile, had been called and she just stood there in the corner of the room going, "Oh no, oh no, oh no." This was Saturday night into Sunday morning. By Sunday at noon I'd pretty much recovered and wasn't seeing colors anymore, just seeing the walls breathe, and by last night I was able to hold down a bit of clear miso soup and also to remember parts of my keynote presentation. The rest I'll have to do with teleprompters. Fingers crossed.

However, the intestinal effects have not entirely subsided. So Annalisa, my colorist and couture consultant, was brought in and she has managed to create a kind of slim-fit Depends that she swears will not be visible through my jeans, as long as we go up one size to a 28-inch waist and add a relaxed-fit cut. Phil Schiller (speaking of relaxed fit) will be in the wings ready to take over if anything goes wrong. Katie and Annalisa will be in the green room with backup underwear. It's now 6:30 in the morning and I haven't really slept since Thursday night. But I'm really, really excited about the new products we're going to show today. Oh, one more thing: Don't stand behind me.

Watch out Squirrel Boy

Squirrel Boy and his merry band of wunderkind heaved a sigh of relief when the analtards at Comscore reported a 20 percent increase in paid ad clicks for April. But as another reporter astutely noted that (and my people know I throw around compliments like manhole covers) the data here seems um, thin.

"Problem is, it's all sort of a crock. What sort of significance does comScore data really have? Not much, as far as we can tell."

I like the Googletards. They're so young and energetic and all, but someday someone's going to realize that,umm, no one's really clicking. I never click. Do you click? In a word, no.

This headline made me puke

Who is this Darren Monroe and why is he assaulting my good name? Mr. Monroe wants to know: Is Jerry Yang at Yahoo The New Steve Jobs at Apple?

In a word, Mr Monroe: No. Expect a visit. Soon.

Barry, dude, are you crazy?

Disturbing headlines tonight about a secret Obama-Clinton confab.

Barry, Barry, Barry, how many times must I tell you to steer clear? If you think the Clintstones have accepted the new reality, or ever will, you should invest heavily in the Borg. As sure as I am typing this (on a phenomenally cool and as-yet-unreleased handheld device, btw) the Clintstones are picking out new drapes for the Lincoln bedroom.

This may be a demographic we don't need

We did not sanction this and we apologize to our valued customers if seeing their beloved iPhone in this context sullied their otherwise delightful experience.

Our team is all over this.

Great news for Zuckerberg

His old pals at Harvard, those Winklevoss kids who've been suing him and claiming he stole their code to make Facebook, now have hired Boies, Schiller to represent them. That's right. David Boies. The same legal wizard who blew the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft; blew it for Al Gore during the 2000 election; defended Enron's Andrew Fastow, who is now in prison; represented SCO Group in its failed lawsuit against IBM; and held Napster's hand while the RIAA sued it into oblivion. Yup. This is one sharp legal mind.

I was just talking to Eric Schmidt who told me he just got off the phone with Sheryl Sandberg who told him they're all breathing a big sigh of relief at Facebook because for a while there they were actually starting to worry but now it appears they're going to get away with it. "Hey, don't be evil," Eric told her, and then they both burst out laughing. Ha! As if.

Borg points out that WinMo outsells iPhone

So they sent out a letter to their business partners pointing out that they're selling way, way, way more units than we are. See the CNET story on it here. My response? Big deal. McDonald's sells more meals than El Bulli. Nobody takes that to mean that Mickey D's is better. FWIW, Katie says this kind of stuff just makes the Borg look desperate.

Beastmaster vs. Monkey Boy

Who knew that the dynamic duo weren't always in perfect sync?
Bets, people. Who would win this steel cage match?

Update: Dear readers point out that the above link is for WSJ subscribers. News to me that we pay for this. (Note to Katie: Fix that.) For the story, see here. Love to James and Phess for the link.

Recommended recording

I know in the past I've confessed to listening to moron rock on 107.7 "The Bone." I've also confessed to getting high with our music lab guys and listening to Robin Trower at incredibly dangerous volumes. Well a few days ago I was down in the music lab getting baked with one of the guys there, this dude named Travis, and I mentioned that day when I was down there listening to Trower and he was like, Dude, are you seriously into Trower? Because if you are then you friggin have to hear this. He got out this King Biscuit Flower Hour recording of a live show in Connecticut from the late 70s. Oh. My. God. It's the best Trower I've ever heard. Seriously some crazy shit. And it took me back to those days when we'd hang out and listen to those King Biscuit concerts on the radio and just take for granted that this was what music was like. We never imagined that someday the whole music business would become so much less, well, special. Oh well. I'm feeling wistful.

Anyway I liked the album so much that I'm launching a new feature -- Fake Steve's Recommended Recording -- and I put a button in the sidebar where you can order the album. Partly it's to share the love and partly it's just because I think it would be hilarious to take some random weird album that usually sells about one copy every six months and just spike the shit out of it on Amazon.

I don't want to make this into an "Artist of the Week" feature because frankly I'm not sure how often I'll get around to refreshing the button, and creating a weekly event sounds too much like creating a new job for myself. To be honest, like most things, I'll probably just be scatterbrained and update the recommendation when the mood strikes. Friendly reminders would be much appreciated, though. So would album recommendations, so please send in ideas. I'm looking for extremely long tail kind of stuff, those weird albums you love to death and you wish more people had heard them. The weirder the better, so we can freak out the people at Amazon. Imagine the reaction if "Space Hymn" by Lothar and the Hand People were to take off all of a sudden. You get the idea. Share the love with the FSJ communitay, bokay? Pay it forward. Peace out.

Gary Krakow of MSNBC says we need to license BlackBerry or Windows Mobile

I'm not making this up. He says we're not going to crack the corporate market unless we do a deal with RIM and/or the Borg. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Katie says she's on it and will deal with Krakow pronto. To see the video yourself, go here. Says Gary: "They're going to have to bite the bullet."

Um, Gary? I've got something for you to bite. But it's not a bullet, baby. It's my ass. That's right. Come on out here to Cupertino and take the elevator up to the Jobs Pod and you can bite my sweet tiny hairless ass. And while you're at it, why don't you put your glasses on right-side up? And catch a shave and do something about that big mop of straw hair, would you? You big slovenly Fred Flintstone look-alike.

Gates, Zuckerberg meet to discuss Facebook acquisition

From what I'm hearing, it's on. Who could say no to a face like that, right?

Good for you Mikey

You found a Pantone color chart! How creative. Too bad you let a peek of that -- what is it, apple red? -- laptop slip to the kids at Gizmodo and All Things D. Bad luck that. Little details like what OS it will run are still to come. Real question, however, is this: Can it slice a cake?

Dear Jerry Yang: Don't read the Journal for a while

So Carl Icahn says he wants Jerry Yang fired. It is now only a matter of time before Icahn's hatchet hacks at the Wall Street Journal work up one of their classic Page One "What really went on behind the scenes" stories about Yahoo in which Yang is depicted as an indecisive and incompetent yet hubristic buffoon. Katie's operatives say the hit could come as early as this week, maybe by Friday. Jerry, my dude, if you wake up one morning and see a little pencil drawing of yourself on the front page of the Journal, take my advice -- don't read the paper, and just go back to bed and pull the covers over your head. And yes, I know I've already wondered out loud about this. I'm just still wondering out loud.

PS please drop the black mock turtleneck look or I will be forced to initiate legal proceedings to enforce my trademark and copyright. Much love.

Tick tock for the Yangster

Time is running out for Jerry Yang, the soon-to-be-ex-CEO of Yahoo. Carl Icahn is talking about an ouster. For reals.

Money quote from the WSJ, which of course played no role itself in this docudrama:

"I'm very cynical about many of the boards and CEOs in this country, but even I am amazed at the lengths that Jerry Yang and the board went to entrench themselves in this situation," said Mr. Icahn.

I'm shocked, shocked! that Carl Icahn is cynical. Sergey better get the new office ready.

Talk about lose-lose

The NY Times poses a question for the ages: "Who's smarter, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg?

Hmmm. Let me put it this way: Would you rather be stranded at the end of days with the Beastmaster Bill or Faceberg?

Thanks to the dear readers who wrote in with an infinitely better choice.

Ballmer Bot? Dear God

Now Microsoft is demonstrating a "Ballmer Bot." And it can (get this) throw an egg. Basta! As the Swiss would say. Enough with the faux self-deprecating stuff. You guys can't pull it off.

R.I.P., Bo Diddley

Rest in peace, Bo Diddley.
O rocker,
O singer,
O guitar slinger, your
driving one-chord rhythms
inspired a generation.
Then they ripped you off
& made millions.
Bastards!
"Hey Bo Diddley."
That was your first big hit.
And your second & third & fourth, too.
Jon Ive says you had one good idea
& just milked it for an entire career.
A bit unkind of him, I think.
I mean, Look who's talking, right?

Ballmer egg attack game

Sweet holy Jesus. This is just plain wrong. Check it out here.

We are trying to book Ronnie James Dio for WWDC

So I was in Los Angeles over the weekend and David Geffen calls me up and says he's hanging out with Ronnie James Dio and that Dio is a huge Apple fanboy and it would be like his life's dream to meet me. So I said fine, whatever, I had a free half hour between my last meeting at Disney and my aromatherapy appointment. So they came up. Ronnie James comes in wearing spandex and throwing the devil's horns and screaming, "Hello Silicon Valley! How you doing tonight? I said how you doing tonight! Are you ready to rock? I said are you ready to rock? I can't hear you! Come on! Give it up, Bay Area!"

I was like, "Hey," but I didn't reach out to shake hands because I never shake hands with people. (It's a germ thing.) He goes, "What's that? I can't hear you! Come on, Silicon Valley! I can't hear you!"

I turned to Geffen and said, "What's up with the I can't hear you shtick?" Geffen says, "It's not a shtick. He really can't hear you. He's pretty much stone deaf. Ten years on the road with Rainbow and Sabbath will do that to you."

But here's the amazing thing. Someone produced an acoustic guitar and Ronnie James sat down and did a slowed-down, unplugged version of "Man on the Silver Mountain" that blew my friggin mind. Who knew that song was about loss and longing?

Anyway it also turns out that Ronnie James really is a huge Apple fan and has been for years -- he carries a MacBook Air and an iPhone everywhere he goes, and even asked me to autograph the MacBook Air for him -- and his big dream has been to play at one of our shows. Problem is we've already booked Yael Naim. But I'd really like to do something. We're thinking maybe we could get them to do a duet or something. More as this develops.

What's wrong with Twitter? Scoble, of course.

See here. Apparently Scoble has thousands of followers on Twitter and whenever he posts something he overwhelms their servers. Scoble denies it. But wait. Back up a bit. Scoble has thousands of followers? Can this really be true? Excuse me but I have to go cry for a while.

HP frigtard uses MacBook Air to cut a cake

See here. Moshe and team have been dispatched.

Test your Apple IQ

New poll to the right lets you predict what products we're going to announce at WWDC next week. For those of you who want to suggest other products, please fire away in the comment strings and maybe I'll see if I can make something happen for you. Also, extra points (and a free fake 3G iPhone) if you can predict which product in our list will be the "One more thing" product. Namaste. I honor the place where your desire and my net income become one.