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

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

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

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

Peace.