Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs Read Online Free Page B

company,” I say, “operates under the highest standards of integrity and honesty and transparency. These have been our principles from day one.”
    “Jesus. It’s worse than I thought. Fuck.” He slugs down the end of his coffee. “Kid, you do understand what it means when your general counsel quits and hires her own lawyer, right?”
    I inform Tom that earlier in the week I instructed Sonya to fire herself, so it could be that she was just following my orders.
    He makes this sound that’s halfway between a groan and a sigh. He tells me he’s done some asking around and discovered that the guys who are really running this investigation are way above Doyle; it’s all coming out of Washington. “This goes right to the top,” he says. “These people want your head on a platter.”
    I ask him what people he’s talking about. He says he’ll answer my question with a couple of questions of his own, which are: (a) which political party do I make a big deal of supporting every four years during the presidential elections? and (b) which political party actually won the last two elections?
    Fair enough. The fascists in Washington hate me because I’m a super liberal lefty Democrat. It drives them nuts because, unlike the big oil companies, out here in Silicon Valley guys like me manage to make a lot of money without resorting to being evil and exploiting people.
    “The problem,” Tom says, “is that you gave them an opening. You see? These guys hate you, and you gave them something to attack you with. It’s like when Clinton got the blowjobs.”
    “I didn’t get any friggin blowjobs. Jesus. I wish.”
    “I’m speaking metaphorically,” he says.
    Tom says that when you know you’re in the public eye you’ve got to be a total friggin Boy Scout. This applies not only to blowjobs but to compensation and accounting. He says it’s one thing to be a really highly paid executive, and another to be the kind of creep who cooks the books in order to get a little bit more than he’s supposed to.
    “There’s an old expression where I grew up,” he says. “Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. Ever heard that?”
    “Dude, I grew up in California, okay? Not on some friggin pig farm.”
    He makes that groaning sound again, and heads for the door.
    “I’ll be in touch,” he says.
    On the bright side, I arrive in time to catch the end of the Ultimate game, and we totally beat the snot out of some chiptards from AMD.
    People often ask me how I feel about drugs. My stance on this is a little bit controversial. I like drugs. I think they’re good. Fair enough, not heroin. And not cocaine or crack or crystal meth. But soft drugs, like marijuana and hashish, and the psychedelics, like LSD and peyote, I think are really beneficial both on an individual level and a cultural level. Frankly, I think marijuana is what got us out of Vietnam. In my own life, drugs have played a huge role not only in helping me relax and unwind and have a good time, but also in being able to open up my creativity and see things in a new way. Without marijuana, I can almost guarantee you, there would have been no Apple Computer. Certainly there would have been no Macintosh.
    As I see it the problem began with Nancy Reagan and her “Just Say No” campaign. Yes, it was stupid. But it worked. They’ve succeeded in scaring an entire generation away from drugs. You should see the kids who come through Apple for interviews. Ask them if they’ve ever done acid and they give you this look like you just asked them how many times they’ve been abducted by aliens. This shunning of drugs has produced a generation of conformists. Look at all these new companies in the Bay Area, all these supposed “tech” companies. God knows what they do, but it’s all some variation on the same theme and they all have names like Zizzl and Drizzl and Dazzl, so you can’t tell them apart. Can’t these kids think of anything original? Apparently not. My theory is it’s