Attention: Fake Steve is now Real Dan

Dear friends,

Please check out my new blog, which I'm calling "Real Dan." (URL is realdanlyons.com/blog.) I really was hoping to just take the summer off and relax, but stuff keeps happening and I can't resist blogging about it.

I hope you'll bookmark the site and/or add Real Dan to your feed readers. Most of all I hope you'll start sending in your sicko ideas and strange photographs. The email for the new blog is simple to remember: realdanlyons@gmail.com. With luck we can all pick up where we left off, before Fake Steve decided to head for parts unknown. As my dear friend Bike Helmet Girl likes to say: Peace.

I'm sailing away

My goodness I am so high it's not funny. Apologies for all the confusion lately and much love to the many folks who have written in asking, Dude, what the hell is going on with the blog? There's no big scandal or anything. It's just I tried to add a new permission for "Real Dan" to post some items on the Fake Steve blog and somehow "Real Dan" gained admin privileges and Fake Steve appears to have been wiped out and is unable to log back in. Not sure if this is Google screwing with me or if it's just the meds -- I'm thinking it's the latter. I'm so pumped full of chemicals right now that most of the time I can't remember my own name. Iulia and Natasha are looking into the Blogger situation but at this point it probably doesn't matter.

Just FYI, I'll be launching a new site under my own name in the near future. Should be next week. I'll announce it here as soon as it's ready and provide a link. I hope you'll come check it out.

Meanwhile I've compiled a "Greatest Hits" book for anyone who'd like a small keepsake of the FSJ blog. I did it using some Web site called Blurb. I made a huge version of this book for myself but it was way too expensive for regular civilians. So this morning I created a short version. It's 120 pages long and costs $25. You can get more info by clicking on the box in the right sidebar.

UPDATE: I've had a few requests for the bigger book that I created for my own personal use. So I've included a button for that too. Unfortunately, the two buttons look exactly the same. Just FYI -- the top button takes you to the shorter, less expensive version. The bottom button takes you to the longer, more expensive edition.

I'm sorry that the blog is fizzling out with yet more screwups and confusion. But I suppose it's somehow appropriate, too.

I know you'll miss FSJ. So will I. But rest assured, Fake Steve is not really going away. He's just taking on a new form. As Jimi Hendrix once said, If I don't see you no more in this world, I'll meet you on the next one, but don't be late.

Namaste to all. Much love. Peace out.

This site inspired me

Fair enough, I'm having a bit of a rough day. But then I saw this page and I really cheered up. So much so that I went and looked at the rest of the Web site. It's truly moving, and I'm sharing it with you in the spirit of love.

If you have any favorite inspirational sites, please send them along. Much love.

Proof that God exists and has a sense of humor

Jesse Helms and Bozo the Clown, dead on the same day. Nice work, O Great One. I honor the place where your sick sense of humor and my own become one.

More raves for Vista

Even Intel won't run it. Shocking.

Silicon Apartment

Some dude named Mechael has created a site called Silicon Apartment. The premise? Bill Gates and I have to live together in an apartment. And Walt Mossberg is our host, for some reason. Check out this one to get a taste. Or check out today's offering. Much love, Michael. You nasty nasty boy.

New threats from Apple PR

I've heard they're upset about me going to Newsweek. Fair enough. But making videos like this and distributing them on the Interwebs as a way to scare me? Totally uncool.

A lesson in badges

Here at Google we don't like hierarchies, which is why we believe in flat management, which basically mean keep people the hell away from Largey and Eric. Nevertheless we need to have some way to keep track of who can have access to what (massages, tea rooms) so the powers that be have invented an ingenious system of badges to keep the proles and hoi polloi away from the rest of us. For the uninitiated, here is a rundown of badges and what they mean:

Red: Contractors. These are people who can't get hired as full-time employees because they went to state schools. Also, the food service people, who as a rule can't speak English so they can't work here anyway.

Green: Interns. These are kiddies here for the summer to leech off us and pad their CVs. Also, just FYI, a green badge is usually synonymous with "easy lay." As my friend Misha likes to say, there's nothing like some overwhelmed, wide-eyed Yale undergrad who's here in Mountain View for the summer, totally lost and innocent and tighter than a carpenter's clenched fist. And the blowjobs! Vot eta da! These girls from college give them out like free mints at the restaurant. First date? Kiss goodnight? Nah. How about a blowjob instead? Then a slurpy swallow, big smile, all proud of herself, a quick peck on the cheek and she leaps out of the car and runs into her shitty apartment complex. Heaven!

Honestly, the fellatio abilities of the average American undergraduate never cease to amaze me. How do they learn such filthy tricks at such a young age? Where do they get the time to devote to practice? Who do they practice on? Oh, American college boys, I envy you. I truly do. In Russia these talented sluts could be earning millions. Here they give away oral sex away simply to win some sliver of affection and attention, the stuff their self-absorbed parents denied them.

Better yet, they also give up the pussy, and even better better yet, they have insurance to pay for their abortions! Ah, America, you sweet blonde cheerleader whore of a country. I love you. I do. Misha, who's been here fifteen months, tells these brain-damaged whores that he's pre-IPO and only working as an AdWords drone because it's what he loves. He's got a whole story about the glory days at Stanford with Larry and Sergey, working in a dorm room, eating pizza and coding all night. Works every time. He's seen more 20-year-old pussy than the gynecologist at a college health clinic.

Visitor badge: This is just a very simple sticky badge affixed to outsiders to (a) mark them as losers; and (b) ensure that they don't get anywhere close to the magic elixir in Building 40. You can treat them with as much contempt as you'd like. We are allowed to have sex with these people too, and it is often very easy, though not as easy as the interns. Misha likes to nab a visitor once in a while just to mix things up. He calls it his "diversity initiative."You must understand. Misha is tall, and blonde, and a former member of the Russian junior national team in track and field. He did hurdles. He's also a Muscovite. Women cannot resist him. He volunteers as a tour guide, just for this reason. He spots his target in the first five minutes -- he looks into their eyes and he can tell which one is wanting it. He fucks them in a men's room, right in a toilet stall. I told him, Misha, that's so degrading. He says, Yes, that's why they love it.

Stan's badge: Yes, of course Stan has his own badge. This is simply because the cretins in our security squadrons kept harassing him for standing around unbadged.

White: This indicates a full-time employee. You may speak to them, but only if they speak to you first. Misha and I both are full-time employees and so we are allowed to speak to one another. This dork, James, however, is someone neither of us speak to. Why bother? Look at him. Lights are on, but no one is home, as our friend Ethan says.

Non-badge wearers: Reserved for the crème de la crème, kings of campus, employees 1-100. Misha and I call them the Ivankovs. You do not speak to Ivankovs. You do not even look at them. Don't believe me? Try it and see where you are when you regain consciousness. Honestly, in some ways being at Google is not so unfamiliar to those of us reared in the former Soviet Union. There is a certain amount of discomfort in this. But the food is so good! And those interns! Makes me look forward to summer, honestly.

Deadline? You must be joking.

I rolled in early today, in my new Prius. I sped down 101 from the city to campus to see the power in this princess. She handled the stop and go traffic pretty well. But I’m kinda already over this 2009 model. The aesthetics are a little boring. Check this: I had to come in early because I have a deadline. Whooooooa. Pravda stop printing! Who the hell gave me a deadline? I was so pissed when I found out about this (it was 6 months ago) that I had to have an emergency session with the Shiatsu masseuse. We helicoptered him in from Berkeley for an intense deep-tissue refreshment before I stopped breathing hard. My feeling about deadlines is this. Just tell me when you need to have something by, and then 2 weeks later, tell me when you really really need it by and we’ll aim for a few days after that. Is OK? Whatever – deadlines don’t matter here anyway. The product will languish in beta for a few years no matter what I do. Fuck. Now I’m all worked out about this. I’m going to do some pushups before my afternoon French lesson to make sure that I focus my full attention on the authentic Gallic nasal “eu.” As in, “pardonne-moi? Oo the fook made me a deadline? Eu?!” Peas out.

Hiring freeze means fewer ex-Yahoos to wipe our asses. Wah!

The hiring freeze made us cut down on the number of ex-Yahoos we could take on, so they’re being replaced by technology. Like this. Oh, and the price thing is just because they started using Google Checkout and their cost came down so radically that they were able to slash prices. Same amazing cleansing technology.