Table of Contents
praise foroPtion$
You get the feeling Lyons planted a spycam in one of Mr. Jobss mock turtles.New York Times
Politically incorrect and breezy.... Options skewers Silicon Valley, with touches of Bonfire of the Vanities, Dilbert, and Revenge of the Nerds.San Francisco Chronicle
A romp.Los Angeles Times
A funny send-up of Apples CEO, the go-go culture of Silicon Valley, and the cult of Mac, iPhone, and iPod.
Boston Globe
In the establishment-skewering tradition of Voltaire, Cervantes, Jonathan Swift, and Laurence Sterne.... Mac-slappingly funny.... The book is hilarious.Newsweek.com
Peppered with deft comic touches.... Even the real Steve Jobs might want to pick it up for a quick, self-enlightening way to pass some time on the Jobs Jet.
New York Times Book Review
A gleeful send-up of the real Steve Jobs set amid the recent stock options backdating scandal.... Tech industry watchers who know (or know of) the players will get a kick out of seeing them skewered.Publishers Weekly
Takes to a new level Lyonss depth of understanding of all things Steve Jobs, and stretches his Steve Jobs voice to a place the blog could never go.... Youll chuckle and snort and youll laugh at the over-the-top whimsy that IS Steve Jobs.
CNBC.coms TechCheck blog
From between the plot lines of Options bubbles a raw, honest look at Silicon Valley culture.... Fake Steves ruthless inner monologues about those around him ring truer than most nonfiction profiles of techs movers and shakers. By inserting himself into Steve Jobss mythical oversize shoes, Mr. Lyons has exposed the entertaining humanity behind the machines.
Wall Street Journal
To L. S., P. B. and M. B.
Much love. Namaste. Peace out.
While some of this book is based on real events
and people, much of the book, including the
dialogue, thoughts, and attitudes attributed to
characters, is purely fictional and invented by
the author to enhance its parody value.
sometimes I feel like a great chef
sometimes i feel like a great chef
who has devoted his entire life
to monastic study of the art of cooking
& gathered the finest ingredients
& built the most advanced kitchen
& prepared the most exquisite meal
so perfect, so delicious, so extraordinary
more astounding than any meal ever created
yet each day i stand in my window
& watch ninety-seven percent of the world
walk past my restaurant
into the mcdonalds
across the street.
fsj
prologue
Your average frigtard probably figures Ive got it pretty sweet. Im one of the richest people in the world, and Im hailed everywhere as the most brilliant businessman of all time. Im lean and handsome, with close-trimmed hair and a Sean Conneryesque salt and pepper beard. And Im famous. Like People magazine famous. Like everywhere I go people recognize me, and they get all weird around me, and you know what? I love it. I never get tired of it. If theres one thing I cant stand its retards like Britney Spears who say they wish they werent famous. Come on. If you really feel that way, then give away all your money, turn your wigger spawn over to Child Protective Serviceswhich, lets face it, is where they ought to be anywayand move your cottage cheesy ass to a hut in Tibet. Whats that? Yeah. Thats what I thought. So shut up.
Whats even cooler is that Im not famous for being some steroid-taking action movie star or illiterate dick-grabbing rapper or moronic freak-of-nature basketball player. Im famous for being a genius, and for running the coolest consumer electronics company in the world, which I totally started in my garage, by myself, or actually with this other guy but hes out of the picture now, so who cares. Im famous because the devices I create are works of art, machines so elegantly crafted and industrially designed that they belong in a museum. My iMac computers and iLife software restore a sense of childlike wonder to peoples lives, and bestow upon their owners a sense that they are more intelligent and even, well, better than other people. I also invented the friggin iPod. Have you heard of it?
People ask me all the time what motivates me. Its not the money. Theres already way too much money, so much that I cant even remember how much there is. I never really cared about money anyway. I could wipe my butt with hundred dollar bills, thats how little I care about money. I actually did that once.
To recap: Im a handsome, famous, spiritually gifted genius; and I wipe my ass with money. No wonder people are jealous of me. I understand. Id be jealous of me, too. Yet what most people dont realize is that in many ways the life of El Jobso is not always so fantastic. I travel too much. I work too much. I sleep too little. I rarely take a day off. Ill be honest; its a hard life. Its like Bono always says when were hanging out, People think being a rock star is just nothing but sex and drugs and having fun, but its a grind, man, it really is.
But the really tough thing about being super brilliant and successful is that people get jealous, and they try to knock you down a peg. In my case the top-seeded jealous frigtard Ive ever encountered was a United States Attorney named Francis X. Doyle, a big sweaty blockhead who one day decided that he wanted to run for governor of California and who figured that the best way to launch his career would be to prosecute a high-profile celebrity CEO. Why not, right? Eliot Spitzer worked this same scam, bringing charges against dudes on Wall Street, and now hes governor of New York.
So Doyle and his tiny sidekick, a young lawyer named William Poon (I swear I am not making this up), decided to take down El Jobso. They sat up there in their ugly office in San Francisco, pecking away at their Windows laptops, plotting and scheming, making phone calls to the SEC and leaking information to the press. Fatman and Robin, we used to call them. Or Inspector Clouseau and Kato.
I wasnt their only target. These idiots went after dozens of companies in Silicon Valley. They concocted a fairy tale about greedy executives lining their pockets and cheating investors, and of course the nitwits in the press bought the whole story and ran with it, because let me tell you something, if theres any group of people in the world who are suckers for a story about evil rich people, its the filthy hacks in the media. These spiteful, hateful, small-dicked losers spend their entire lives in a constant state of jealousy and resentment. Heres their job description: Interview people who are richer, more successful, and more interesting than you are, then take cheap shots at them in print. Theyre parasites. Theyre leeches. To overcome the shame of what they do, these conniving bastards convince themselves that theyre saving the world by exposing all those rich, successful, interesting people as phonies. Which is ridiculous. But whatever.
No doubt youve heard what happened to me. Youve read the stories about the big scandal at Apple. The fact is, youve heard only one side. Youve heard a distorted tale based on leaks and lies, fabrications and falsehoods created by prosecutors, government flunkies, and media hacks. Now it is my turn. And believe me, my lies and fabrications and falsehoods are way more convincing than theirs.
