Dear Dan Lyons -

Get over yourself. Really. You’re funny when you do Fake Steve Jobs because your satire matches a warped, bizarre, narcissistic megalomaniacal personality disorder a lot of people would like to believe is an accurate representation of The Master.

The basic fact is, it would be impossible to accomplish Apple 2008 with that kind of flaky behavior.

Still, it’s funny.

The problem is, you’ve started to believe your own line of bullshit. And it is bullshit. You aren’t that frigging smart, dude. You have no real idea what you’re talking about. When you’re satirizing, it’s fun. When you carry that to the next step – to the point where you want to be taken seriously – you look like a buffoon.

Sorry. You can either be a responsible, intelligent journalist or a satirist. You have to pick. You can’t be both. People are starting to look for the underlying motive in your satire, and the punch line in your analyses.

In other words, your serious stuff is being taken less seriously, and your satire is less funny. The paradox of this is obvious. What’s also obvious is that The Master doesn’t consider your opinions to be worth a tinker’s lunch money. If he did, you’d have been out of the FSJ business a long time ago.

The Fake Steve Jobs magic died when the mask came off.

The Fake Jerry Yang schtick is silly.

You’ve become a bad parody of Dan Lyons.

Damn shame.

Love,

Mom

…

In other news, the Kansas City Star (Sprint corporate newsletter) wonders out loud if replaceable batteries will help the Instinct beat the iPhone.

A: No.

If replaceable batteries are your first priority, I suggest you buy one of these.

…

ZDNet is holding true to their clueless flamebaiting. The banner says Larry Dignan, Jason Perlow, Tom Steinert-Threlkeld. The story is by Jason Hiner.

I’m not going to link the story. If you really want to read it, Google Hiner.

The title of the story is “Google joins the Microsoft and Apple fraternity of delayed OS vendors.” Seriously. For those of you who haven’t been keeping up, this concerns the late release of Android. 

Apple delayed releasing a useable update to the right of the decimal point for six months. Microsoft delayed the release of a massive overhaul that sucks like a Tijuana hooker with a fistful of fifties for five years. Please find the similarity for me.

Recipe for permanent vaporware:

Multiple corporations, each of whom wants to be the one to capitalize on the Next Big Thing; each of whom has to ferry every decision through multiple meetings; each of whom has to justify every decision to the stockholders.

Scads of open source programmers, each of whom secretly believes everyone else is getting paid; each of whom detests that corporations are getting rich on the fruits of their labors because getting paid isn’t as noble as programming for free; each of whom secretly wishes for a big pile of money to fall out of the sky.

Throw all the above into a project and add media speculation to taste.

Shake well; expect nothing.

…

I think that’s enough. Can I get a doggy bag?

Late addition: Google Hiner sounds like an ailment you might bring home from a really good party.