downstairs three years prior, she had to admit she missed the sound of flipping pages as he read Rimbaud each night before bed. Oh well. For herself, she had the complete works of Christopher Marlow to keep her warm at night, and you can believe that Faust’s dealings with the devil was enough to keep anyone company!

When her lids finally felt sufficiently heavy, she dimmed the lights and pulled her satin night mask down over her placid eyes, and, as the sound of heavy rain drowsily continued the rhythms of classical music into the night, she slipped into slumber.

But then: pitter patter pitter patter… “Mommy?”

“Janie? What happened honey? Did the thunder frighten you?”

“No, but the lightening is really bright, mommy. I can’t sleep.”

“Do you want to crawl into bed with me?”

“Okay.” Pitter patter pitter patter…rustle rustle…

“Are you good, Janie hon?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Love you, Janie Wanie.”

“Love you, mommy.”

“You’re okay?”

“I think so.” And so the minutes ticked by. Now Gail was awake again, fully. Her mind began to race over the little events in her life, present and future. She had to host this month’s book club meeting. She thought she would have it in the garden. The baby blue eyes should be in bloom, not yet killed by the torturous summer heat. A little white wine and some cucumber sandwiches would be perfect. It should be darling, as long as Lilly finds it in her heart to keep her goddamned eyes in her head and off Gail’s cleavage. Honestly. It was a privilege to have a lesbian in the group—in fact it was a social goldmine—but was it worth it to be ogled in that manner? Still, Lilly IS a very beautiful and strong woman. Sometimes Gail would catch her mind wandering about her…Peter never thanked her for the nutritious meal she had prepared tonight. Gail knew that sprouts and bean curd was not his favorite dish, but she had worked very hard on the cream fennel sauce—he could have said SOMETHING. Gail thought she could hear him breathing, even all the way downstairs.

Wide awake now. Shit. She nudged Janie with her foot. Janie moaned, half asleep. Gail nudged her again, harder. “Janie, honey, are you awake?”

“No.”

“You must be excited for your classmate’s birthday party Saturday. Is she going to be nine years old now? Already?”

“Mommy, I’m sleepy.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think so.”

Gail knew there was nothing for it. If she was going to rest, she was going to have to put Janie to work. She’s old enough to pay her keep now, thought Gail, so she can help me sleep. “Do you want to nurse, honey?”

“Okay, mommy. Yummy.”

And as Janie rolled into her mother’s breast and curled into the fetal position, ready to suckle, Gail could already feel peace overtake her. Darkness overtook her mind.

At that moment, the incredibly intelligent race of aliens parked on the far side of Saturn blew up the entire planet Earth, having finally grown weary of the experiment they had begun so many billions of years ago. The whole thing was fucked anyway.

Lately there has been a plethora of articles from the New York Times website describing the habits, follies, and hardships of the upper crust, and every time someone in the desperate bullpen of Jose el Retardo’s editorial department runs across one of these tasty items, there is much retching and shouting, and without fail, our lazy yet trusted janitor—lil’ Tommy Lyon—must be called in with his steam carpet cleaner to suck the pools bile from under our Ikea desks. We’ve talked about it before; you can read a previous article by clicking here, or view our brother site Medium Happiness for their take on the subject. Today, we spied another article regarding the plight of the modern rich and how life for the financially advanced can be a precarious balance. Check it out here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/fashion/01rich.html?em&ex=1212552000&en=d3fe3d03622d334b&ei=5087%0A

It would appear that the worst-case scenario is unfolding before our very eyes in this, our moderately decent nation: the super rich are becoming slightly less super-rich in recent months, and their egos are taking a real beating. I for one was absolutely shocked to find this article, because I must say, I thought the upper classes had been doing just fine; but little did I know the hits they have been taking—not only in their pocketbooks, but in their personal relationships and, perhaps most importantly, in their sense of self. Take a look at this frightening quote from the Times article:

Interviews with the people who actually see the bank statements, like divorce lawyers and lenders, say their clients are definitely living on less than they did a year ago, regardless of how expansive the definition of “less” may be. Hairstylists and private jet rental companies say the wealthy are cutting back on luxuries like $350 highlights and $10,000-an-hour jet rentals. Even nutritionists and personal trainers notice a problem. The wealthy are eating more and gaining weight because of the stress.

If your heart didn’t just break, you might want to try going back and re-reading that quote one more time. They are so stressed out that they are eating more and gaining weight. GAINING WEIGHT. This is unhealthy to the extreme, and sends these unfortunate wealthy souls into an inevitable shame cycle, from which it may take days or sometimes weeks to recover. Conversely, when you or I run into times of financial adversity, we cut back on the extras and generally tend to LOOSE weight, which is fantastic. It’s almost as if having less money to spend is a good thing for you and me—it’s downright healthy. We look better, feel better…our work uniforms fit us better, giving us greater mobility—which, through the added exercise, takes off even MORE pounds. We can’t go wrong. Hell, no wonder our federal and local governments are constantly striving to ensure that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Like it or lump it, it’s the only way to make absolutely certain that a proper balance is established, and that a general sense of public well-being is maintained. If you cannot find the sagacity in this sound and prudent policy of fiscal disparity, then I pity you, sir.

I can tell from your smirks that many of you—the faithful readers—are skeptical of my concern for America’s distressed well-to-do. I am asking you as a friend to withhold your judgment until you have read this passage, from the same clipping:

“Even if they’re not in danger of not paying their mortgage, there’s still a psychological change,” said Chris Del Gatto, chief executive of Circa, which has watched its business jump by 50 percent in the last year as wealthy clients sell their spare diamonds and Rolexes. “The economy is an issue even for people who don’t need the money.”

Can you imagine how it must feel to lose your spare Rolex? It must be like selling off your own organs. In many parts of the world, the poor will sell their children into slavery or prostitution in order to make ends meet, but again we see the same pattern of underlying benefit for the underprivileged. Anyone who has raised or been around children knows how much of a monetary and mental toll they can take on a household. By selling the child, the parent makes a few extra dollars, while at the same time cutting expenses. Win/win. Meanwhile, the child learns priceless job skills (free of charge, btw) that they will keep for a lifetime, and are immediately given a gift that can never depreciate: job security.

But a Rolex…ahh…this is not something so easily disregarded. How could one forget the moment of purchase? The expectation of extreme consumerism, the elation and discovery at the time of procurement, the weight of luxury, and the glory of fine craftsmanship—one does not embark upon this humbling responsibility of sumptuous ownership lightly. One enters such a relationship with a lavish object assuming it will be for life…and yet…one day you awake and find you must part with this item so beloved, and most likely at half its original price. It’s demoralizing and criminal, and we must find some way to put a stop to it before anything worse can happen.

Oh, but wait. Something worse IS happening:

On a spring afternoon, a half-dozen hairstylists to the very wealthy talked about how customers are stretching their $350 highlights and $150 haircuts to every eight weeks instead of six weeks. Some women are cutting out highlights entirely, saying they would “rather be brunettes.”

Rather be brunettes?! You must be joking! I almost threw my computer out the window at the very thought. With any luck it would have crushed a hobo. I would have ran downstairs, taken the change cup from his cold, stiffening hand, and personally delivered the money inside to Ted Kennedy. My lord, it makes me so angry. It makes me INSANE. I hear people all the time prattling away on the television about fighting for public education funds, about revitalizing the docks with scenic public parks, the rising costs of public transportation and fuel prices, and everybody so goddamned concerned with the healthcare needs of a growing population of blue-haired old bitches whining and crying about “my brittle bones” this and “my swelling prostate” that. OMG people, FUCK that! There are very rich women out there threatening to no longer be blonde. People, can you even imagine what kind of chaos could follow? Can’t you see that money and good looks is the only thing keeping most of these power couples together? I suppose you assume that the rock-solid marriages of the rich can withstand any petty beatings we dole out. They can not.

The drop in wealth has also exposed other personal problems, like bad marriages. Money—which bought jewelry or extravagant vacations—helped smooth over many of these difficulties, said Kenneth Mueller, a psychotherapist in the East Village who works with many Wall Street bankers and real estate developers. Now, he said, his clients “catastrophize” smaller bonuses or shriveling stock portfolios.

The marriages of the rich are falling apart, and new alliances will never be formed because of yet another trickle-down effect of the crises of the American wealthy:

Clay Burwell, a personal trainer to many Wall Street executives, said that his clients were also feeling the toll. A year of eating more, drinking more and working longer hours has started to hurt their health. “They come into the gym with a dark storm cloud over their head,” he said. “They look like hell.”

Fattened, ugly, mousey, and not quite as rich as before, these titans begin to crumble. They fail to procreate (decimating the nanny industry), severing chains of sovereignty forged in a time when people knew their place. Despondent, with nothing better than a cheap Timex strapped to their wrists to count off the dreary seconds of their now-paltry existences, the once-affluent begin to disband and walk among us, the filthy and undeserving proletariat. And so comes crashing down around us the nobility of America.

I hope you’re all happy.

Last night, making my way with the amiable KTray to the NYC Chinatown restaurant Dim Sum Go Go to meet our mutual friend LP (KTray, I’m sure Jose readers will be looking for a review soon), I found I wasn’t sure where I was going or how long it might take to get there. This is a common side-effect of New York City living, but last night it was alleviated greatly with the help of one of the greatest companies of this, or any, century: Google. I simply reached for my excellent Motorola Q 9c, opened the Google Maps program I had previously downloaded and installed on my Q (for free, of course), turned on the (free) GPS function included in the Google Maps program, plugged in the address of the restaurant, and arrived at my destination in no time at all (sort of).

It made me so happy I cried. I love you, Google.

I’m not a complete fool. I know that no company could possibly be perfect. Anyone who has the brilliance to start, grow, and maintain such an undertaking must be off balance in some way, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin are certainly no exception. Read this fairly humorous site for more on that: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/googlife. Nevertheless, compared to what other companies are up to in the world, Google does seem to be a kind of utopia for those geeky enough to land a job there, and the products they produce, as a whole, are infinitely more useful to the world than those of, say, Philip Morris.

Microsoft will never be able to topple Google. They are smarter than Bill Gates, they are leaner and more flexible, their products are far less bloated than Microsoft’s, and not nearly as interdependent upon one another as the products served up by Apple and that rotten liar, Steve Jobs. Even as I type, the Times has published and article outlining Google’s plan to offer smelly Yahoo their ad placement technology, which could potentially net Yahoo an extra BILLION dollars a year, effectively keeping them from making any deals with Microsoft, as well as pouring more dough into the coffers of Google. The deal would also most probably cement Yahoo’s position behind Google in the internet search game. You lose again, Bill and Jerry.

And so they should. Google understands the world in a way their competitors do not. This fundamental quality in their thinking makes them, for the time being, impossible to beat. I use gmail for my webmail client, and I have no complaints because it simply works and it works simply. I use Google for my search engine, and it is hands-down the most thorough and straightforward. Sure, there are paid ad placements, but they are easy enough to identify and avoid, and no where near as distracting as all the useless articles cluttering Yahoo’s undignified mess. Google Maps and Google World are ubiquitous for finding point B, my Google reader delivers all the latest blog nonsense my friends concoct, Google analytics tracks the health of my own site, Google docs helps out every person who can’t scrape up the $350 for a new copy of Microsoft Office. YouTube is owned by Google. They have a pretty damn good calendar program. There is photo editing, sharing, and organizing via Google’s Picasa software (which I recently downloaded and was delighted to find it was far more intuitive and less clunky than Adobe’s own Bridge software). And a hell of a lot more. And I can bring it all together with my iGoogle home page. Click here to see an amazing array of free stuff for you to do to make your life more interesting (as long as you own a computer).

And every single bit of it is free to anyone with an internet connection. That is fucking amazing. Google, you have my vote for president of the world.

We here in the Political Crow’s Nest at Jose el Retardo are far from being members of the Rudy Giuliani fan club, but we must send him sympathy as he deals with the Asshole Cardinal Egan.

Rumor has it that the Cardinal is getting on Rudy’s case for receiving the Eucharist (known as communion to laymen like you and me) during the recent Big Bad Pope-A-Dope visit. It seems that in 2000, when Egan became the head of the Archdiocese of New York, he made Rudy promise to never take communion again because of Rudy’s abortion beliefs (read more about it here).

You must be joking. Lest we all forget, Egan got into hot water back in 2003 for concealing the names of a bunch of child-molesting priests. He’s been found on lists for being one of the most complicit Cardinals in the whole cover-up of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. So which one of these men has it in for kids? It seems bizarre that Egan would want children born just to sit back and let them be traumatized by the very men he has ordered them to respect.

Giuliani is far from an angel. He made it difficult for kids in New York City to get decent education or healthcare during his term as Mayor. However, at least you can say this for him: he didn’t aid in their molestation. He didn’t have to. We have Cardinal Egan for that.

Thank you, Cardinal Egan, for being such an ass-biting jerk. You make my job easy.

Good readers, I don’t know what to tell you. Earth Day has passed. It is gone. Did you celebrate? What present did you give to your great, blue mother? If you have yet to make a decision, fear not. Common etiquette states you have at least six months to give this magnificent bitch that special gift she truly deserves. And we in the Ideas Bureau at Jose el Retardo are here to help you become the best tenant on the global block.

I know what you think you should do: Green up. Recycle. Take the Hummer to the crusher and buy the Prius. Mesh grocery bags. Purchase corporate carbon credits. Do all the things that our friendly celebrity monarchy tells us we must do in order to sleep soundly this evening.

But is all this do-gooder status maintenance really in the best interest of our home planet? Many would argue that the solution isn’t as simple as a couple of million people making a change in their ‘carbon footprint.” Even if we here in America started to give a shit about climate change and greenhouse gasses as early as tomorrow—and we won’t; check out this article from last month’s Science Daily—we would, as a nation, have little effect on the actions of developing nations like China and India, neither of whom give the slightest crap about what you or I think regarding anything. But even setting this “stinkin’ thinkin’” aside, read this blurb by noted environmentalist Patrick Michaels from a 2004 article on climate change on the PBS website:

So here’s the real answer: We can do very, very little about human-induced climate change. If every nation on earth that signed the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, which reduces emissions in most developed countries roughly 6 percent below 1990 levels by the period 2008-2012, the amount of “saved” warming by 2050 is a mere 0.07 degrees Celsius. Because human-induced warming is a linear (constant-rate) phenomenon, that works out to 0.14 degrees Celsius in a century. Consider that the normal year-to-year variability is about 0.15 degrees Celsius, and you must conclude that we couldn’t even find the “signal” of our attempt to slow warming within the year-to-year “noise.”

He goes on to say that nothing can be effectively changed until we shift completely away from fossil-fuel based energy, and that just costs too much money, people. It takes limitless ingenuity that the oil companies would do anything to prevent. And it would mean making too many sacrifices. What would we store our food in? Make toys out of? Listen to music from? What would we make our dance clothing from? How would we make our bicycle helmets? What would we insulate our super-efficient households with? How do we keep the lights on? Or the refrigerators? Do you like elastic? What else would hold up your undergarments? From what would you make cell phones? Carpet? Buckets? Remember, we aren’t talking about the fear of running out of oil—if that was it, we could very easily use those oil-shitting organisms that Craig Venter is building (click here to read about it)—we are talking about the temperature of the earth. And to halt the warm-up, it’s so complicated as to be impossible.

And that isn’t really going to help mother earth. I say that this task—helping her—is really much simpler than we had previously supposed.

One could argue that humans are the worst thing to happen to this planet since the surface cooled. It won’t be healed until we are gone, and the faster the better. Rip the Band-Aid off, right? Global warming isn’t killing the planet, it’s killing HUMANS (and leading up to the release of tons and tons of methane gas into the atmosphere, where it will wait for ignition by lightening and then explode like hundreds of nuclear bombs) and the faster we’re gone, the faster the earth can get on with the methodical task of cleaning up after us.

So lighten up, America! Just keep doing what you’re doing! Buy those SUVs! Eat pounds and pounds of meat! Spray your deodorant in the air like ya just don’t care! If we keep it up, we can really go out in style, turn the whole planet into something magical and tropical for ourselves (mmmm…I can taste the pina coladas and the margaritas already, yum yum), and for our children, and maybe even our children’s children, and then after that, does it really matter that much?

In review: the best gift we can give the earth is to die, so let’s go out with a bang.

The end.

It always blows my mind when I hear someone from a lower income bracket sympathize with anybody from the Richie Rich set. What is there to feel sorry about? Have no doubts: the lives of these people are full of wine, women, and song. They wake up in the morning to a squadron of sexy chamber maids in low-cut blouses ready to wash them thoroughly with warm bath sponges and gentle suds; cleansing their palette with chilled champagne and feeding them ripe strawberries; dressing them carefully in the finest wool blends and silks. Then, the Lord Fancybottoms of the world receive their perfectly creased Wall Street Journals parked expertly next to their steaming hot cup of Hacienda La Esmeralda coffee—hand ground by immigrants and brewed to perfection inside of a flawlessly polished French press. And then it’s off to work! where they spend much of their time “cultivating relationships” at some damned English sporting event or on the back nine of the most “exclusive” country clubs while some poor slob of a loading dock worker back at corporate headquarters is peeling dead rats off of glue traps and making stew out of them for the kids squealing hungrily back at the shack. Later, Prince Softskin will eat lobster salad and roast duck off of silver platters, sipping cognac, wearing satin slippers, and so on, and so on…

I hate them. I wish I was one of them.

Why am I talking about this? Because I spotted an article today that sited a new report by a couple of smarty pants economists named Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers from the Brookings Institute (a place where smarty pants hang out and study cool things and stuff) which states, basically, that money can in fact buy happiness. To be more exact, it buys the things that can make you happy. Better healthcare, more time to visit friends, and the piece of mind that comes when you don’t worry about spending the night out on the sidewalk. You can see the report in its entirety by clicking here.

So big deal. I think most of us instinctually knew this long before Betsey and Justin decided to make some charts illustrating the numbers (click here to see one). I guess I like it because now I can roll up a copy of this report and keep it handily in my coat pocket so that whenever some wealthy punk-ass saunters up to me in his deer-skin jacket and Moss Lipow sunglasses and tries to bemoan how he has pain like any man, that his tears are just as salty, that all hearts break the same, and how he always wanted to pitch for the Yankees and never got past watching his dreams slowly die right in front of his pampered eyes, I can take out this report and stab him in the throat with it.

Christ. I wish I had a swimming pool.

Yes, I’d love to be rich. I would fucking LOVE it. I would have loved to be born into it and not to have had to work for it. I would love to win the lottery today. And I can guarantee you this: I would never talk to any of you pitiable assholes again.

Lorraine P, a long time, loyal supporter of the dreadfully necessary mission we are so committed to here at Jose el Retardo, informed us of a website where you—the loyal reader—have the ability to create your OWN Jackson Pollock style painting. Is that CRAZY, or what? It seems that the interesting people over at jacksonpollock.org (where you go to make your drunken splatter-fest, btw) have the same feeling as we do here in the editorial offices of Retardo about Pollock’s work—that is to say, he kinda sucked and just about anybody can do it. You can find the original post by clicking here.

And above, you will find my Pollock painting. One staff member here at Jose el Retardo has said he likes my work better than any of Pollock’s. Take that, you stupid art snob jerk ass knee-biter fool head shit-pants.

I applaud the staff of jacksonpollock.org for coming out against the talentless raging alcoholic that is Jackson Pollock. Thanks guys. Keep fighting the good fight.

I will never forget the moment I saw it: I was wandering the top floor of the Museum of Modern Art somewhat aimlessly. I could sense the encroaching, restless feeling one gets after spending enough time in a museum to become bored—but not long enough for others to proclaim it an “enriching experience”—creeping in around the corners of my brain as I gazed at a life-size installation of a dishwasher interior stacked with brightly colored plastic dishes and plaster crumbs affixed; a penis replica constructed from broken egg shells and dyed with bald eagle sperm; a canvas depicting four large dots, all black, but with varying shades of gray for their backgrounds. I was finding it all rather underwhelming, but had not yet become outraged at any particular pretense…and then…there it was, lurking in prominence. Red Square, Slightly Rounded. I don’t remember the name of the (and I use this term VERY loosely) artist, nor can I locate it on the internet, but the painting has burned itself into an unflattering subdivision of my memory, and I have placed an approximation of the painting (which took me all of about four minutes to make, btw) to the left of this article. Look at its sad retardedness. How I hate it.

I was incensed to find such useless trickery in one of the world’s most established and respected museums. Just what the hell was MoMA playing at, anyway? Were they TRYING to make me feel stupid? Was it purposeful resentment of the normal man that made them hang in a position of high repute a painting that has no relative merit to the untrained eye? Of course, several friends who think themselves very erudite tried to repeatedly explain to me how, even though I might not see the genius, it is extraordinarily important that someone had painted this painting, even if its actual artistic merit is meager. In other words, to be clever enough to point out that this can be art is more important than it being “good” art. I guess then that we could say, by comparison, that although we might hate discovering the nutritionally-impaired Hot Pocket in our grocer’s freezer, it is nonetheless important to our society that somebody somewhere decided to manufacture it, and then market these pastry-covered floor sweepings into our mouths. Well, god bless you, Nestlé! Thank the heavens for you!

I think it’s all a scam, and the artist in this instance scoffed all the way to the bank as he cashed the check given to him by the MoMA man in the hounds tooth-jacket, with his hand on his chin, stroking his moustache, squinting his eyes, and saying over and over, “Hmmmm…” and “Ahhhh…” and “Oh, yes, yes, of course, of course”!

Such is the struggle that the average person has with Modern Art. Shame on you, average person! Don’t you realize how much of an asshole Jackson Pollock was? That means he was good! Artist + Asshole = Oh, yes, yes, of course, of course! Get it straight, you lousy world full of simpletons.

Jackson Pollock. Are you as confused about this cat as me? Look, I get what all of you knowledgeable bad asses are saying. I’m not completely daft. The guy did his dribbling shits thing all over the canvas with some vague shapes occasionally barfed out for the sporadic “wow!” factor, and it’s all about the textures, and it was oh so stream-of-consciousness, and sure, it might look great above your couch as long as the colors don’t clash abhorrently, but why are we giving such a small achievement any more than footnote status in the world of American art? And the critics will of course drag the Norman Rockwell’s down off the wall, snap them in two, pull down their critic drawers and basically crap all over them—and what do I know except that my Grandma freaking LOVED Norman’s work—but hey, at least he was DOING something, right? He could create something that we cannot perform ourselves—and a lot of it was cheesy, but much of it was not, and at least it varied, and had content, and could make me think—even if the thought was simply, “wow, boy scouts are fucking DUMB”.

But as far as I can tell, much of Jackson Pollock’s work is merely a lot of drunken repetition. There is more to the world than simply colors and shapes. There is also love, hate, pain, hope, and ideas—and Pollock seems to come up short in all that kind of crap. With this in mind, doesn’t his jazzy dribble seem overly cynical? This much I do know: the world has always loved a guy that drinks too much, smokes too much, and fucks too much.

Click here to see some much cooler shit than Pollock ever dreamed of.

PS and BTW—Saw this quote in the Times today, and it made me wants ta’ barf. It’s the whole reason behind today’s topic, as a matter of fact:

He flashed a slide of Ellsworth Kelly’s “Study for Colors for a Large Wall” on the screen, and the audience couldn’t help but perk to attention. The checkerboard painting of 64 black, white and colored squares was so whimsically subtle, so poised and propulsive. We drank it in greedily, we scanned every part of it, we loved it, we owned it…

Gross. Read the whole article by clicking here. It’s about something.

Once again, the influence of Jose el Retardo flexes its muscle, and giants fall: first we took the military to task and triumphed magnificently (click here to read up), and now we reap the benefits of coming out from behind an iron curtain of fear when we snatched (sexy word alert) the magnanimous mask from Steve Jobs smarmy, lying face (read the original article here).

What’s happening, you ask? This morning our editorial staff was tipped off by our good friends over at the Medium Happiness headquarters about an article coming out in none other than WIRED magazine decrying Steve Jobs as an evil genius, and shedding even more light on his less-than-revolutionary business practices. Check out some of this goodness by clicking here.

You have to wonder if someone over at Wired is a loyal follower of Jose el Retardo. If so, fantastic; the more, the merrier on this crazy roller-coaster ride we like to call THE TRUTH.

Just to give you a tidbit of what was uncovered by Wired Magazine when Job’s veil of bullshit was torn:

Everybody is familiar with Google’s famous catchphrase, “Don’t be evil.” It has become a shorthand mission statement for Silicon Valley, encompassing a variety of ideals that — proponents say — are good for business and good for the world: Embrace open platforms. Trust decisions to the wisdom of crowds. Treat your employees like gods.

It’s ironic, then, that one of the Valley’s most successful companies ignored all of these tenets. Google and Apple may have a friendly relationship — Google CEO Eric Schmidt sits on Apple’s board, after all — but by Google’s definition, Apple is irredeemably evil, behaving more like an old-fashioned industrial titan than a different-thinking business of the future. Apple operates with a level of secrecy that makes Thomas Pynchon look like Paris Hilton. It locks consumers into a proprietary ecosystem. And as for treating employees like gods? Yeah, Apple doesn’t do that either.

Looks like another untouchable is beginning to crumble under the weight of the entire Retardo staff’s mighty disdain.