Things can only get better.

Outrageous things are happening in New York. Okay, so I can't say much. But here's the skinny. One day last week I pick up the phone and I hear B's frigtard voice and I'm 90% tempted to do that thing where you pretend you're the voice mail system, and say, "Sorry but I'm either away from my desk or on the other line, but if you leave a message I'll call you right back." Instead, like a bonehead, I go, Hey B., what's up. And he says he wants me to come meet.

Lot of people don't know this but B. really has a very silly and sometimes sick sense of humor. He totally loves to pull practical jokes and make prank phone calls. Especially when he's blitzed.

B., you're fun to hang out with, but I think you are getting stoned too much. Too much sun down there in San Jose. Maybe you need a new challenge. I dunno. Take up karate. Or merge with Mickey Mouse.

It´s like with S. Now that D. is living in a loony bin in Southern India, S. thinks he is Da Man. The only thing constant in life is change. You cannot accept and adapt to change, you inevitably end up in a loony bin in Southern India, after working for C.


B. I mean seriously. Can you imagine a world where someone with no experience in finance, business or engineering could become CEO of a huge publicly traded corporation just because they're charismatic, look good on stage and know how to stab people in the back? It makes me shiver when I think about it. Thank God Getty is a meritocracy, that's all I'm gonna say.


While on the topic of C. Do you realize S. now has a company called "SnapAsshole" ???? Seriously. Totally missed that. Check it out.

And come on. Do you mean to tell me of all the possible names in the world, they couldn't come up with something that every teenage boy in the world wouldn't immediately make into a joke?

Like did nobody on the team kinda look at the name and go, like, Uh, hey, dudes, we might have like a problem here or something.

My theory is that they hired a consultant to develop the name and actually paid a boatload of money for it, and that the consultant was somebody who got burned by F. on some other deal. And now that old cow with a disastrous career runs around betraying the ones who once trusted her, and still trust.


Anyhoo. Only five days to go. And then THANKGODITSFRIDAY again, Jesus.

Me and Napoleon

So I'm often asked about my management style. Especially people will ask that again after my upcoming amazing speech in our next conference call and everyone will realize again what an incredibly deep thinker I am.

(I've seen those rumors about how I didn't really write my speeches, how I just hired some ghostwriter to prepare some clunky statement. All I can say is: Please. My PR gofers only fix fix some grammar errors and punch it up a bit. But I'm the one who spends half a day running around figuring out what mellifluous news to announce this time).

Anyhoo, my management style. Okay. I'm a little geeked about sharing my secrets, so I won't tell you everything. I'm saving the best stuff for the book I plan to write after I leave here. Then again, I'm probably not gonna be around much longer so here's a little taste.

Most important thing is I never subscribed to the conventional wisdom of the East Coast management "experts" like Jack Welch, who used to run General Electric or General Motors, whatever.

For example. Welch says do a lot of reviews and always let people know where they stand. I say, No way. In fact, quite the opposite. Never let people know where they stand. Keep them guessing. Keep them afraid. Otherwise they get complacent.

Creativity springs from fear. Think of a painter, or a writer, or a composer, even a photographer, working furiously in his studio, afraid he's going to starve to death if he doesn't get this piece of work just right. That's where greatness comes from. Well, same goes for little girls and boys at Getty. They come in every day knowing it could be their last day. They work like hell, trust me.

Because you know what? Fear works. Look at the crappy cars that get made in Detroit, where they had these jobs for life and union rules and nobody is worried about anything. Now compare that to the stuff that gets made in Vietnamese sweatshops. Or the bridge in "The Bridge over the River Kwai." That bridge was friggin perfect. Please don't say it was because the Brits were just these amazing perfectionists who wanted to do this ace job.

Come on. I love the Brits but these are not people who are known for the quality of their workmanship. Ever bought a British car? My KleinMobile is italian. Okay, enough said. No, what motivated those lazy, stupid Brits was their fear of the efficient, vicious Japanese. You put people's lives in danger, and they do their best work.

Obviously we can't literally put our employees' lives at risk. But we have to make them feel that way. This requires a lot of psychological manipulation on our part. But look at the result. You think we could have made our new web site so reliable if our developers didn't believe in their hearts that every time a bug surfaced one man was going to be killed?




Which leads me to my next management myth. You don't have to hire the best people. You can hire anyone, as long as you scare the bejesus out of them. That's the key, the fear. This applies not only to middle management and cubicle jerks, but to all of your staff, including top executives and even the board of directors.

In fact, especially the board of directors. A corollary to this rule is this: Only promote stupid people. But not just any stupid people. You have to find the certain type of stupid people who actually believe they're super brilliant. They make insanely great managers and are super easy to manipulate. It's pretty easy to spot them. Former McKinsey consultants are top candidates.

The MBAs say you should set high standards, let people know what's expected of them, and hold them to that. I do a little twist on that and say, Hold people to an impossibly high standard, but here's the twist -- don't tell them what that standard is. And fire them if they fall short. You know what that does to people? Makes them friggin crazy. And guess what. Crazy people are more creative. And more productive. Every shrink in the world knows this. Go rent "A Beautiful Mind" if you don't believe me.

Another MBA type rule that I never follow is where they say a CEO or manager should be consistent and predictable. I say just the opposite. Be inconsistent and unpredictable. Be totally random. One day say something is great and the guy who made it is a genius; the next day say it's crap, and he's frigtard. Wait a few days, and repeat the process. Watch how hard that guy will work now, trying to impress you.

Management gurus also tell you to reward performance, and dole out loads of praise. I disagree. My motto is this: No praise. Ever. You start praising people and pretty soon they start thinking they're as smart as you are. You cannot have this.

All employees must know at all times that you are better in every way than they are. Look at former D. at C. Repeated criticism, in the most humiliating fashion, is one way to accomplish this. Once you have established your superiority you must make a big deal of being super modest and humble in public. Toss around some Zen type stuff and chinese wisdom blaH blaH, and tell people you're a super-progressive liberal. (Which, fair enough, I am).

One way to keep people's spirits broken is to fire people on a regular basis for no reason. Fly off the handle, shout at people, call them names, then fire them. Or better yet. Don't fire them. So they think they survived. Then wait a few days, till they're totally relaxed, and then fire them. It's all part of creating and maintaining the culture of fear.

It´s fun to play the "Terminator" game and pick some random reason to fire someone, like we'll just fire the first person we meet with red hair, or the first person who dares to speak to us without being spoken to first. You're all fired, you assholes! Get out! Right now! Usually I call security and have them taken out in handcuffs and don't even let them clear their desks. Family photos, personal items, car keys -- all into the trash. Tough noogies, traitors.

I also keep an eye out for enemies and potential insurrections, and I kill them off quickly. My advice here is simple: Be friggin ruthless.

Well, that's my little food for thought, and I hope you find it helpful. I could go on all day but I need to prepare my speech for the first day in November, and we´re all excited about the news. Peace out.

Arnie is a nice guy

Unfrigginbelievable. This just happened in mid-week and I'm still soooo pissed.

Met with X17 goofballs in LA. Back in what they call in Golden State (where all agencies are headed by smart gays or lesbians) a goddam hotel I couldn´t sleep, so like at 3 or 4 in the morning I'm out cruising on the 101 in the KleinMobile trying to brainstorm something for a certain product that we're about to announce to the whole friggin world in like three friggin weeks and we still don't have it ready ... anyway I do this sometimes just to get my head together.

And I get pulled over.

This total CHPs guy. Says I'm going eighty. I'm like, Dude, maybe you didn't notice, but I'm in a Maserati Quattroporte, which can go like 180 miles per hour, so, uh, like going eighty is like standing still, okay?

I mean it's not like I'm in some Volkswagen Golf and I'm gonna blow a gasket or something.

So then the guy gets all pissy and wants to see my license and I'm like, Dude, I don't have it. But do you really not know who I am? Did you not see the license plate? (Which says JDKLEIN, kinda hard to miss that, right?).

He tells me to step out of the car. I'm like, Bitch, I'm Jonathan D Klein, WTF, #&@?! I invented the friggin $ 49 hammer, okay? Have you heard of it?

Next thing I know I'm flat on the pavement, face down, hands cuffed behind my back.

I don't want to relive the whole experience but let's just say that it involved a few unpleasant hours spent in a police station holding cell and a small army of Getty lawyers (now that would have been a job for touchy John boy) and finally a phone call from the Governator himself. (who happens to be a HUGE fan of Getty and is making his next blockbuster available entirely on our footage web site).




The good news is that while sitting in my cell, meditating and humming my syllable or whatever, I totally had a breakthrough and realized how we could eliminate an unnecessary button on the user interface of this as-yet-unannounced product by combining two function sets into a click and double-click arrangement. Brilliant, uh? Linda, hello?

And to all you CHPs guys: Yeah, that really was Arnold, and he really is a friend of mine, and now he's got your names on a list. Enjoy your new career as shopping mall security guards, frigtards.

Creative Express. CFOs are wimps.

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 and not this wacked out paranoia-inducing hydroponic stuff that they grow today. This stuff that makes you want to crawl under your bed and hide.

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 the US out of Vietnam and Getty out of acquiring Masterfile or one of the other clowns lurking around.

In my own life, but more in the life of my creative team, drugs and booze have played a huge role not only in helping us relax and unwind and have a good time, but also in being able to open up creativity and see things in a very, very new way.

Without marijuana and hashish, I can almost guarantee you, there would have been no Valueline. Without booze-ups, certainly there would have been no $49 web use product.

After Liz left, I needed Vodka, all kind of stuff. CFO leaves, it´s always analysts argue like "CFOs are extremely cautious characters. They leave voluntarily, there must be something going on. Biz is down. Liz left, biz left. CFOs know - wait they feel, they smell a rat in advance." iStock.

Then there's a story in it for somebody, investor community is up in arms, but they won´t tell you personally. "Hello Jonathan", and big grin. Wimpy bastards. When they get a feather whatever in their analyst asses, like CFO leaves, the shit flies high. We´ve seen it elsewhere.

Which is all a long way of saying that the first thing I did when I got home last night was put on some Leonard Cohen, and watch this video. (Fair enough, the blood towards the end is the blood of my enemies). And fire up a bowl of some fine reddish buds.

It’s mellow stuff, Seventies style weed. I have our weed specially grown for our creative team, up in Oregon, by a grower who knows how to keep the THC content low. Really, really nice. I highly recommend it. We have new creative products in the pipeline.

Ya'll have a great Columbus Day Weekend.

It´s just, you know, I just don´t like that

So you kids are waiting for our consumer site to view images and ask yourself, uh, what the fuss? You will be scared shitless when we release it these days. Sad to say, we´re long overdue.

Now can someone over in Calgary whom I appointed SVP Technology please be so kind to admit his responsibility and guarantee that at least JUST ONE SINGLE DAY your micro cowshed is fully online, WTF!? Now that would be - - JUST GREAT! Wall Street won´t like another execution glitch burning $1.5 million.

Larry Page came to visit

Now I´m about to make another goddam fortune, and that´s because I´m a smart guy.

You may not know this if you're not in the search freak industry but these Yahoo and Google guys are a bit like Roman Catholic nuns. They think they are God. At least close to him.

They never travel in groups of less than 20. I have no idea why except that everything at Google seems to require massive logistics and planning and scheduling, and a series of pre-planning meetings to discuss the later planning meetings to discuss whatever the actual meeting is. I swear the execs there can't take a dump unless it's on their calendar. It´s like with C. And before they go they have to find three other dudes to take with them. Yeah. Anyhoo.

This visit in New York was the top brass, with Page and about two dozen of his thugs and flacks and bodyguards and yes-men and shoeshine boys. They rolled up in armored SUVs and they were all wearing suits but they'd taken off their ties and stuffed them in their pockets in an attempt to be cool. (Like Christina girl dreaming of 500 million bucks for her dump). You could see the bulges.






Page had a guy with him whose job, it appeared, was simply to tell him where he was and the name of whatever guys he was meeting. When I came down the guy was whispering to Page and then Page walked toward me with this big jock smile and I saw him very quickly glance down at a little card in his hand and he said, "Hey, uh," (glance down again), "Jonathan, well, it's great to see you, and thanks so much for making time to see us."

And he gives me the big phony salestard handshake and says, "And I'm here on behalf of the Google Corporation to tell you personally how much we value your business and how much it means to us to have you as a customer." I'm looking at him like, What the frig? Getty customer of Google Image Search? Just because of 60,000 square feet sublease you think you can sound such old familiar with me?

His handler dude grabs his sleeve and they do this little huddle where the handler is whispering to Page and Page says, "Huh? Who? Where? Wait a minute, this is Jonathan Klein? Jonathan Klein of Getty Images? But what's he doing-- oh, we're at Getty? This is Getty? Right here? Oh Jesus." Then he just looks back at me as if I couldn't hear what he just said and he's like, "Well, the famous Mr. Jonathan D. Klein of Getty Images, man oh man, do I like what you're doing out here! Man, with those micro stock images. Wow! My kids love them."

Now someone got a barf bag?

My guys have arranged to take the dweebs on a dopey do-nothing tour of a fake image shoowroom that we've set up, just something to keep them busy and walking around for thirty minutes until we can get rid of them. So we get to this area where we've got our best RM product line on display and Page is looking at an image and gets all excited about these "beautiful micro stock images."

I tell him that they're not micro stock, they're high end RM. He seems kind of confused for a moment. Then he goes, "Wow, are you getting into that game too? Smart move, if you are. But the big money is in consumer space."

So right. Whatever. There's no point to any of this, it's purely a meet-and-greet. Smart ass he is he called in March and introduced himself, "Um, any smaller expenses, like tea or milk and media acquisitions Google can pay out of petty cash, eh?"

Now he stands there shaking his head and whistling, his guys over at Google have told him "stay out of that picture business though. No money there. Just a huge sink hole." And he goes, "Wow. I'm sure you'll do really well with these images, no worries." Common tactical tricks dudes like him play. I´m used to it. I play´em all the time. Hehe.

Right. So we walk along and he asks me if I ever played any football in college, I tell him no, he tells me he played college football and was a lineman and man oh man it was a different game back in the old days, different game, you didn't have the equipment that these kids have today, why the helmets were just these cheap plastic things with barely any padding, can you believe that? I start thinking "Is he dumb or just plain retarded?," so I tell him, Yes, I can believe that, for sure.

By then we're back in the lobby and he says, "Well, uh," (glances down at card in hand again) "Jonathan, thanks again for letting us come visit and thank you again for being such a great partner, and you've got to come visit us in Mountain View sometime and we'll play some golf. You play any golf? Right guys? We gotta get this guy out on the golf course! Don't we?"

Then Tom and I just stood in the lobby watching them all waddle their fat asses out to their armored SUVs, putting their ties back on as they went. You know what? Bad thing is they´ll return soon.

Jonathan XIV

I´m always the nice guy next door.

My HR folks. They´re so goddam touchy. They really take all kind of stuff personally. They hate conflict. Especially ones where people get laid off or disappointed or whatever. They hate me when making hard decisions. I fire someone, they have to retreat from the world and cleanse the soul on a lonely island in Thailand or take zero-gravity flight with vomit comet. Saw me getting touchy in Goldfish Sachs presentation?

I mean, Jesus didn't go around being all humble and pretending that he wasn't who he was, right? He just said, Dude, I'm Jesus, okay? Don't get me wrong. I'm a liberal. I vote for Democrats.

Do you expect me to run our company like it's one big popularity contest? We like this guy, we like that girl, you can´t fire them? Can you imagine what happens if companies chose their executives just by having employees vote? You'd have Billy Bob the forklift operator running sales in EMEA, and Shirley from the cafeteria running marketing in China. I mean seriously. L'État, c'est moi.






Before Christmas retarded ASMP will praise me to the skies for my cleverness and genius. Look how smart this guy was to figure this $49 firecracker out. ASMP? AIPA? ASHRAE? ASP? American Society of Primatologists? I always confuse them. You think this company is the Great Ape Project?

I've got an idea. Maybe you ASMP kids should start your own stock photo firm. You know, like sell your car and beg some money from relatives and buy some components and start putting all together. Work your ass off, hire the best people you can find, work your ass off some more and change the world. Every picture tells a story, a picture is worth ten thousand words, "Un bon croquis vaut mieux qu'un long discours, " said Napoleon to Josephine.

Then, in ten years, when you've created the most beautiful (and powerful, you morons) imagery company ever known to mankind, you can have some punks and pinheads deface your agency and gripe about you being a rapacious exploiter. That's how the world says "Thank you." I´m used to it.


A disastrous good week. Craig met with the BQ folks, created by some stone age ex-Digital Roller Coaster grandpas out of business. Honestly he has never met a bigger bunch of buffoons than these old clowns. But sounds like a great idea. He says he'll get back to me on Monday. Lost a crown after Goldfish presentation. NY dentist, little immigrant from Bulgaria, Transylvania, whatever, bores me to death with schmaltzy folk tales. I hate New York. The taxi drivers. Wall Street. This climate is not good for my skin.


In two billion years balloon head S. will brand their $48.95 all-web-all-eternity-license Getty product clone the C. online-image-trots-channel. Dumbfounded D. will write on creamy Creative whatever how exciting all this is and take his birth control pills. Very funny. I take the heat for it. Now! WTF #&@?! For this micro pay, plus a small bonus.


To my critics: Geniuses have feelings, too. It's easy to be a critic these days. It's easy to snipe. The same folks who admired me for years now piss one me. Remember, there's a human being on the receiving end. To be sure, a very wealthy, brilliant human being, a human being who has changed the course of history and who lives a life you could not even begin to imagine. Friends, we're all brothers and sisters. (Except you JH asshole in Washington DC and wannabe CFA - how ridiculous).

So go easy. Music is in the air.

After official announcement soon, more news from me.

New York pisses me off, and Bill just called

So this is supposed to be confidential but whatever.

Bill-Godfather-of-C. has screwed everyone who ever got close to him, and on top of that he´s been secretly trying to poach away our programmers for our new website for the past 8 months. So what do I owe him? Nothing.

Anyway, booby called me last night after MS put out its lame Q2 financials two months earlier which beat the Street but only because the Street already knows how badly MS sucks ass these days. And our stock?

You know what? You think this is bad? You think this is funny? Q3 and Q4 are gonna look like downtown Beirut and Baghdad compared to this.



For Bill of course, not for us.

So here's the gig. Bill says to me, How'd you like to come run C.? Sell your dump to Prada or Burger King, there are larger movements going on, and you care about visual content and Pimp Audio, are you stupid?

But here at C. with me as backup you can really shake the pagoda tree. This S. thing ain't working out. The guy sits in his office bellowing about how he doesn't need this shit, he can go retire tomorrow and sit on his ass counting his money for the rest of his life, blah blah. A chicken hearted wimp, no semiannual telcos with analysts, WTF!

Basically, he's about to get canned, and he knows it. I thought D. could step in again but it's obvious now that he can't run this place. He's a nice guy and all. But he's a doofball. You need a Saddam Hussein type, someone who can rule through fear.

So how about it, he says. I'm like, Dude, I'm flattered, but I've already got two jobs. Let us talk again when they fire me and Bruce becomes CEO. I hate New York. Maybe you haven't noticed this, but I think your products suck more than ours. You morons have nothing to sell.

See ya, Bill said, hung up on me and griped that anyway, if you need any help, Daddy’s right here, just pick up the phone.

Lot of people ask me why the frig is it taking you guys so long to make a friggin $49 product? I mean, how hard can it be?

But you know what? This is how I do things. This is my process. Valuelined. I can't be hurried. The work comes at its own pace. Call me a perfectionist. Fair enough. I am. Now will someone please see what happened to the friggin chai latte that I ordered a half hour ago? And make sure it is at exactly 165 degrees?

And yes, I mean Fahrenheit, not Celsius. Jesus! Do you realize how hot 165 degrees Celsius would be? It's like a million degrees Fahrenheit or something. You could burn a hole through my desk with it. And no, not Kelvin, either, you assholes. And hurry up because I've got yoga at noon and then Pilates at one and at two we've got some dickwads from our next acquisition coming to visit. Good grief.

What were we talking about? I hate New York. I love the dudes working for us. Sorry D. is no longer with us. Well, good luck, girl. You know everyone in the industry is rooting for you, cause you’ve been so nice to everyone over the years. The office in Seattle is a coop. Have they any clue where they´ll be working in a year? Hehe. Sorry, I get you guys mixed up sometimes. Where is that latte?!

Okay, I get it. I'm the big bad evil guy now. Right? To C. from Weisel Partners and your stupid questions: Look out your window. Right now. See that man across the street? His name is R. from the Teaster SWAT. Take a good look at him. His face will be the last thing you are ever going to see if you throw such stupid questions again at me in your ugly slang, Q3 earnings and call soon, got it?

New York. I am so lonely. Any thoughts?