My (Brief) Life As Steve Jobs

Less is...less

   I rose early and went downstairs. The first thing I noticed was that we had too much furniture, so I began removing it piece by piece. It was all junk and clutter. Our closest neighbors were away and I had the keys to their house and garage, so I put a lot of it in both. Then, I put some of it in another neighbor's back yard and garage. They all had terrible taste anyway and deserved having even more bad stuff around.

   The emptiness enveloped me.

   I had recently showered, about three days before, and I could still smell the remnants of Irish Spring upon me. I took a solemn vow to get rid of this by not showering for at least a month. I began to feel pure and well on my way to enlightenment.

   Then, I looked in the refrigerator and was horrified to find that most of what had accumulated in there came from animals: cold cuts, bacon, eggs, and, as disgusting as it may sound, butter. I threw it all away and made a note to get to Whole Foods that afternoon to get some healthy vegan food in the house. I wanted to feel like I had, when I had tramped around India in the corporate jet fifteen years ago, when I ate only peeled fruit and some seeds.

Bozo phones. Morons.

   Then, I called the head of the company for whom I was selling on commission and told him he was a complete bozo and that their products were s@*t and that, if they didn't shape up quickly, I would leave. When he reminded me that they had never hired me, and, in fact, didn't owe me a dime or anything else, since I had not yet sold squat, I quit. This is what geniuses must do.

   As soon as I hung up, my daughter called. She had not called me to say she loved me since the previous day, an extreme betrayal of my devotion to her. So I immediately hung up and said I wouldn't speak to her for a year.

   After meditating, I went to my desk and decided to make something that would change the world and be insanely great. A four-week presidential campaign? Never work. An inkjet printer that works more than two days a month? Impossible even for me. Buy a piece of the Mets and win a Series? Oy.

  What would be worthy of my unique combination of an artist's sensibility, a designing eye, an engineer's obsession with precision, not to mention an Olympic-sized ego, unbridled arrogance, and an ability to burst into tears an instant after being slighted by bozos who make s#@t stuff?

   As usual, I was all alone in my hour of need, abandoned once more by those who could not love me enough, because they could not see that I was smarter, more creative, richer, smellier and meaner than just about anybody.

   I went for a long walk with my editor and tried to manipulate her into accepting the stories I'd submitted, which she had hurtfully and summarily rejected. We walked and walked in my neighborhood, while I told her how much I admired her and her little paper. Feeling kind and compassionate, as the Buddha has taught us, I didn't even mention that my column had saved her whole enterprise. After a couple of hours, even I was exhausted. So, I took a shortcut home and called the Publisher and said that he had to get rid of her, and mentioned that I was not available to replace her, because she was a friend. This is what great friends do for each other. If he begs, I will have to take the job.

SJ's Hero

   By now it was dinner time and I had forgotten to go to Whole Foods. My wife, who was sitting on the floor in our living room, asked why the fridge was emptied and what were we going to have for supper. I immediately forbade her from ever calling dinner supper again and said that there was a head of iceberg lettuce left, which, together with some purified water, would make an excellent purge of a meal. She got her car keys and left in a huff, or maybe went to get a cheeseburger. Once again, I was alone, unloved, misunderstood, and, I must admit, really hungry.

   Being left alone in the house gave me an opportunity to get rid of the beds and most of the upstairs furniture, which I put by the curb for people with no taste to pick-over and take home to their imperfectly designed houses. I slept on the mattress just as my Indian teachers had done many years before during the time I was learning to hide my superiority by being a world class jackass.

   Gratefully, I woke up for real, with my wife sleeping beside me and all of the furniture in place. Alas, it was all a dream, and I was, once again, just another bozo, but felt much better for it, and was hungry for a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich and a long shower.

Ed Note: Disclosure: I have a Macbook, an iphone, and an iPad and am an admirer of Apple and, to a certain extent, of Steve Jobs. While reading Walter Isaacson's book, Steve Jobs (I do not consider it to be a real biography, but think it's a long profile), I had a frightening thought: will parents force their children to read this book and expect that the kids will use deceit, dishonesty, meanness, greed, and manipulation, as Jobs did, in addition to his finely-honed intuition, creativity, and great communications skills? Will those young people believe that you can't be a genius and be a well-mannered, truthful and mature adult? Consequently, I thought it would be good for at least one person to poke fun at St. Steve. Perhaps, as many reviewers have suggested,  Jobs had a bit of Einstein and Franklin in him, two other lives Isaacson has chronicled. But, we would do well to recall that Jobs also had a lot in common with another one of Isaacson's subjects: Henry Kissinger. That is not a compliment.