Friends, I’m very happy to announce that my good friend (and loyal Mac user) Arnold Schwarzenegger is making a run for the presidency in 2012. He’s started this blog to promote his ideas, and has created a campaign slogan, which appears to be, “EEEYYYAAARRRGGGHHH^TM!!” I won’t vote for him, but I told him I’d give him a plug on my blog, and in exchange he’d let me keep driving around without a license plate on my Mercedes. One hand washes the other, see? Value accrues in both directions. It’s not a big new concept. But try explaining it to the soulless little “Village of the Damned” children at Google. They’re like, “Yes, we’ve created a piece of software that sits on your phone and takes over all the controls for that phone. Yes, it gives us, not you, the relationship with the customer. Yes, it gives us, not you, all the ongoing value from the device that you spent billions creating and marketing. And your problem is?” At first I thought they were joking. But they weren’t. Then I thought maybe they were just being disingenuous. But no. They really don’t get why we’re upset. They really think that it’s perfectly fine for Google to come along and attach itself to other people’s work and suck all the value out of it. They did it to the news business. So why not us, right? They’re like, “Steve, we’re the not-evil company, remember? We’re just trying to make the world a better place for end users. We want to give them more choices. More freedom. Why are you standing in the way of progress, Steve?”

I told them they could sell that bullshit to the tourists. I’ve been out here in the Valley, screwing and getting screwed (though mostly the former) since I was a kid. I know what they’re up to, and no way in hell am I just going to approve their app and let them take over my phone. Thanks but no thanks, you little freaks. So now Schmidt has pulled some strings in D.C. and is trying to put my tits in a wringer. Eric likes to see himself like this big master manipulator, like he’s Dr. Evil off in his Mountain View lair, playing three-dimensional chess and thinking a hundred steps ahead of the rest of us. He actually uses that expression about 3-D chess. I’m not kidding. Like when he’s talking about how much smarter he is than the rest of the world, and how his job is so intellectually demanding that only he and maybe one or two others on the planet could do it. But I digress.

Phil Schiller says it’s our own damn fault for making a phone that’s actually a computer. He’s like, What do you expect is gonna happen when you put something out there based on open standards? You left us wide open, Steve! Bent over and gaping! Schmidt is just doing what you would do if you were in his position. Remember iTunes on Windows? Remember that stuff about giving ice water to people in hell? Ring any bells?

Don’t worry, Apple faithful. We’ll get out of this one. We may not be big egghead geniuses like Dr. Eric Schmidt (and by the way, he loves when people call him Dr. Schmidt, which makes me sick because, as I’ve told him, over and over, Dude, you’re not a real doctor, bokay?) So we may not be big intellectuals but we do have big huge balls, and they’re made of cement, or cast iron, or some other substance that is very heavy and strong. So we’ll get out of this one. We’ll pull some strings in D.C. or something. There’s a reason we’ve got Al Gore on the board, kids, and it ain’t his understanding of technology, or his razor-sharp intellect, trust me.