June 6, 2008.
atrata has a better version of this. And gabby_silang has a version that will make your heart melt in its cold shell.
So I have these cards -- little blue cards -- with a speech on them. Like this. You know what I think I'm going do with them?
You guys liked that, didn't you?
But you know who I am. If you didn't, the President of this fine university just told you. My name is Anthony Howard Stark. There's a building on campus named the Howard Stark Engineering and Applied Sciences Building. That was my dad. And I know there's a building named that because I donated the money to build it and asked that they name it after my dad if they had to name it after somebody. I walked over to it this morning and stuck my head inside and walked around in it.
My dad founded a company. You may have heard of it. In fact, a couple of you are coming to work for it this fall despite the fact that this company no longer makes weapons. The board and Wall Street and the US government thinks we should still make them. That's why seven out of the twelve guys -- and they're all guys on the board, except for this one scary woman who used to be a man, but she's didn't take part in the lawsuit or support it, so thanks, Lisa -- on the board filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York saying that I was basically crazy and not acting in the best interest of my company.
You see that lady back there? I don't know if everybody up front can see it, but there's a really goodlooking woman in the back who's standing up and down and waving her arms. That's my personal assistant. Pepper. Everybody say hi to Pepper. She wrote the speech for me on the flashcards, asked me for my input, even let me write a couple of paragraphs. I totally went along with it. None of this is her fault. She's probably going to schedule me for a rectal exam tomorrow.
For the first twenty-five years of my life, couple things aside, I had it pretty good. For the last ten years of my life I had it really, unbelievably good. One morning, I get on a plane, fly halfway around the world with a guy who's my best friend because the US government pays him to be, and I sell the US government on a missile program that will cost them about -- $750 million dollars? Give or take. We'll budget for $500 million and tell them the $250 million pure profit is just unforeseeable overrun. So unfortunate. It's a good missile system, though. I designed it. I should know.
On the way back, the convoy gets hit by an ambush. The three people in the Humvee with me die fighting off the ambush. I ask the kid sitting next to me for a gun, but he tells me to stay in the car and gets out on the driver's side. A couple seconds later, the driver's side of the car is suddenly better ventilated with holes, every couple inches, about as wide as your pinky finger. I don't hear the guy scream, though. Maybe it's the gunfire being so loud. Or maybe he died on impact. Probably, my ears are so blown out that I wouldn't have heard it even if he was yelling his head off and screaming for his mother.
Yeah, this makes you uncomfortable doesn't it, mister? Imagine how I feel. It takes two blondes and half a bottle of whiskey to make it go away, and I'm getting a little tired of blondes. Maybe brunettes tonight. What do you think?
I don't really remember much. I remember getting out of the Humvee and running, but after that, nothing. I wake up in a cave. It's cold as hell. At some point, I later learn, they made a video of me tied to a chair and send it out over a little DARPA project we all know and love and watch porn on. I don't remember that, though. It's cold. There's a car battery hooked up to my chest. I've got shrapnel circling my heart, and later, the terrorists -- nice guys -- hold me under water for the point oh oh one five seconds it takes until I'm ready to beg for the honor of doing whatever they want.
That's not the worst part of it, though. They say, "Build us the weapon you just showed to the US military."
I say, "You mean the Jericho? Like you guys would even know the business end of an explosive detonator."
And they walk me outside. I'm holding my car battery that's keeping the shrapnel out of my heart, and they walk me outside with a bag over my head so that I don't know how to get out of the cave. My hair is wet from being held under, I can still feel the guy's fingers on the back of my neck, and I'm in the middle of the Afghan mountains, being held by terrorists, but that's not the worst part of it. They walk me out of that cave into the sunlight. They take the hood off. I'm still holding that car battery.
Yeah, I didn't want to talk about this with you before, Pepper. Sorry. Easier to talk to with seven or eight thousand total strangers. And everybody on Youtube who'll be seeing this in fifteen minutes.
Any of you ever go into a Nike store? Or Vuitton. Or Gucci. Logos. Everywhere. That's what they had. It was like a Stark outlet store down there in that valley. Shoulder-launched multi-purpose assault weapons, thermobaric rockets, assault rifles, sniper rifles, machine guns. Fire-and-forget AT's. Everything. It was like the Grenade of the Month Club. Compliments of Tony Stark. Because my name is on all of them. My name. My father's name.
Just like it's on the side of that building on the hill where at least a couple of you show up for class.
Plus, I designed these things. I only gave money for that building up there. Handed the money to your alumni office so they'd stop bugging Pepper about it, showed up to cut the ribbon, then ducked out to do jello shots with some of the fine, fine ladies of Kappa Alpha Tau. But the reason I didn't hear that kid screaming? The reason he was screaming in the first place? A bomb I trouble-shot. The thing that tore my chest apart? A rocket I built. I didn't exactly the model number on the body before it scattered fifty pounds pounds of heated metal over a two hundred foot radius, but I know my own work. The shape of the tail fins -- you know, the things on the back that make it fly straight. I came up with them when I was thirteen. It was the summer before I came here. Dad showed me the problem. I got the numbers from his engineers, and I fixed it for him. It wasn't at the kitchen table because Starks don't hang out in the kitchen, and we didn't have that kind of relationship anyways, but you know what it's like. Most of you will probably be doing it soon for some other big company. Or to make some other big product.
For years, in fact, I didn't think about my dad being dead. While I was over there, shivering my ass off while holding a car battery, I realized I never said goodbye to him. A little after that, I realized that I never got a chance to ask him if he ever had doubts. If he ever wondered what we made was a good idea. That was more important than saying goodbye. More important than anything else I could ever have asked for from him. Or gotten from him.
Class of 2008, commencement speakers are supposed to inspire you. I'm supposed to tell you how bright you are, how wonderful you are, how wonderful the world is, or, if it's not so wonderful, how you can change it. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to tell you the world is full of good people -- the reason I'm standing here giving this speech is because the world is not full of good people. I get kidnapped, MIT has already sent around letters to the alumni saying that I'm going to be talking here, so they get the CFO of my company. Who also got a bachelor of the sciences here before he went to Harvard Business School. He was in the habit of fixing messes for me. I'm giving this speech because two and a half weeks ago, he died, and when I went to my parents' funeral, he was the one who stood by me and carried my father's casket. In fact, he gave the eulogy because I was nineteen and too drunk to stand. First time he had to step in and give a speech I was supposed to give.
Now, I'm giving a speech that he was supposed to give. First time. For years, Christmas dinner used to be him and me and a bottle of Scotch. And it turns out, hey, he's the one who had me kidnapped. Later, he tried to take this arc reactor out of my chest. He held a little device up to my ear -- not one of my inventions, for once -- paralyzed me and took this light you can just barely see through my shirt. Took it out and put it into a bag. He talked to me while I went into cardiac arrest, and then he walked out the door. Apparently, he hated me for a long time. Who knew?
The world isn't full of good people. It isn't full of people you can rely on or people you can trust. You probably won't be able to change the world. I'm a billionaire genius who was building computers when most kids are investigating the mysteries of the Tooth Fairy. I've built a robot suit so advanced it lets me hit Mach 2 and outfly a F-22 Raptor, yet I can't get my personal assistant to sleep with me.
Don't wait to take responsibility. Don't wait to think of the consequences of your actions, of what you build. I waited until I had a car battery hooked up to my chest, until the man who had saved my life once by taking the shrapnel out of me and who saved it again by picking up a machine gun and running -- not walking, running -- towards his own death so that I could get out of there. He saved my life, twice, and kept me from going crazy or just giving up. I stood over him while he died on a sack of rice that American planes dropped to feed the hungry. Somehow, it ended up in a terrorist cave in the Hindu Kush mountains. I promised him that I would make something of my life. I waited until three American kids were dead, and I didn't even hear them die because the rockets I built were just that good. I waited until I found out that my business partner was selling missiles and rocket launchers and tanks to terrorists.
You might not be able to change the world. You might not even like the world very much. But I waited.
Don't wait.
The idea about Tony not being able to hear the kid because THAT'S HOW GOOD HE IS AT BOMB-DESIGNING is from dafnap. Also, the rectal exam. And atrata had the idea about Tony talking Afghanistan with the crowd, but not with Pepper. I WOULDN'T POST DAILY IF I DIDN'T HAVE ENABLERS. BLAME THEM.
Also, Wiki informs me that tailfins are actually more about controlling yaw? Let's just pretend that's what is generally understood when Tony says "fly straight."
Real speaker, by the way, was this gentleman. And Happy Fourth, my fellow Americans.
So I have these cards -- little blue cards -- with a speech on them. Like this. You know what I think I'm going do with them?
You guys liked that, didn't you?
But you know who I am. If you didn't, the President of this fine university just told you. My name is Anthony Howard Stark. There's a building on campus named the Howard Stark Engineering and Applied Sciences Building. That was my dad. And I know there's a building named that because I donated the money to build it and asked that they name it after my dad if they had to name it after somebody. I walked over to it this morning and stuck my head inside and walked around in it.
My dad founded a company. You may have heard of it. In fact, a couple of you are coming to work for it this fall despite the fact that this company no longer makes weapons. The board and Wall Street and the US government thinks we should still make them. That's why seven out of the twelve guys -- and they're all guys on the board, except for this one scary woman who used to be a man, but she's didn't take part in the lawsuit or support it, so thanks, Lisa -- on the board filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York saying that I was basically crazy and not acting in the best interest of my company.
You see that lady back there? I don't know if everybody up front can see it, but there's a really goodlooking woman in the back who's standing up and down and waving her arms. That's my personal assistant. Pepper. Everybody say hi to Pepper. She wrote the speech for me on the flashcards, asked me for my input, even let me write a couple of paragraphs. I totally went along with it. None of this is her fault. She's probably going to schedule me for a rectal exam tomorrow.
For the first twenty-five years of my life, couple things aside, I had it pretty good. For the last ten years of my life I had it really, unbelievably good. One morning, I get on a plane, fly halfway around the world with a guy who's my best friend because the US government pays him to be, and I sell the US government on a missile program that will cost them about -- $750 million dollars? Give or take. We'll budget for $500 million and tell them the $250 million pure profit is just unforeseeable overrun. So unfortunate. It's a good missile system, though. I designed it. I should know.
On the way back, the convoy gets hit by an ambush. The three people in the Humvee with me die fighting off the ambush. I ask the kid sitting next to me for a gun, but he tells me to stay in the car and gets out on the driver's side. A couple seconds later, the driver's side of the car is suddenly better ventilated with holes, every couple inches, about as wide as your pinky finger. I don't hear the guy scream, though. Maybe it's the gunfire being so loud. Or maybe he died on impact. Probably, my ears are so blown out that I wouldn't have heard it even if he was yelling his head off and screaming for his mother.
Yeah, this makes you uncomfortable doesn't it, mister? Imagine how I feel. It takes two blondes and half a bottle of whiskey to make it go away, and I'm getting a little tired of blondes. Maybe brunettes tonight. What do you think?
I don't really remember much. I remember getting out of the Humvee and running, but after that, nothing. I wake up in a cave. It's cold as hell. At some point, I later learn, they made a video of me tied to a chair and send it out over a little DARPA project we all know and love and watch porn on. I don't remember that, though. It's cold. There's a car battery hooked up to my chest. I've got shrapnel circling my heart, and later, the terrorists -- nice guys -- hold me under water for the point oh oh one five seconds it takes until I'm ready to beg for the honor of doing whatever they want.
That's not the worst part of it, though. They say, "Build us the weapon you just showed to the US military."
I say, "You mean the Jericho? Like you guys would even know the business end of an explosive detonator."
And they walk me outside. I'm holding my car battery that's keeping the shrapnel out of my heart, and they walk me outside with a bag over my head so that I don't know how to get out of the cave. My hair is wet from being held under, I can still feel the guy's fingers on the back of my neck, and I'm in the middle of the Afghan mountains, being held by terrorists, but that's not the worst part of it. They walk me out of that cave into the sunlight. They take the hood off. I'm still holding that car battery.
Yeah, I didn't want to talk about this with you before, Pepper. Sorry. Easier to talk to with seven or eight thousand total strangers. And everybody on Youtube who'll be seeing this in fifteen minutes.
Any of you ever go into a Nike store? Or Vuitton. Or Gucci. Logos. Everywhere. That's what they had. It was like a Stark outlet store down there in that valley. Shoulder-launched multi-purpose assault weapons, thermobaric rockets, assault rifles, sniper rifles, machine guns. Fire-and-forget AT's. Everything. It was like the Grenade of the Month Club. Compliments of Tony Stark. Because my name is on all of them. My name. My father's name.
Just like it's on the side of that building on the hill where at least a couple of you show up for class.
Plus, I designed these things. I only gave money for that building up there. Handed the money to your alumni office so they'd stop bugging Pepper about it, showed up to cut the ribbon, then ducked out to do jello shots with some of the fine, fine ladies of Kappa Alpha Tau. But the reason I didn't hear that kid screaming? The reason he was screaming in the first place? A bomb I trouble-shot. The thing that tore my chest apart? A rocket I built. I didn't exactly the model number on the body before it scattered fifty pounds pounds of heated metal over a two hundred foot radius, but I know my own work. The shape of the tail fins -- you know, the things on the back that make it fly straight. I came up with them when I was thirteen. It was the summer before I came here. Dad showed me the problem. I got the numbers from his engineers, and I fixed it for him. It wasn't at the kitchen table because Starks don't hang out in the kitchen, and we didn't have that kind of relationship anyways, but you know what it's like. Most of you will probably be doing it soon for some other big company. Or to make some other big product.
For years, in fact, I didn't think about my dad being dead. While I was over there, shivering my ass off while holding a car battery, I realized I never said goodbye to him. A little after that, I realized that I never got a chance to ask him if he ever had doubts. If he ever wondered what we made was a good idea. That was more important than saying goodbye. More important than anything else I could ever have asked for from him. Or gotten from him.
Class of 2008, commencement speakers are supposed to inspire you. I'm supposed to tell you how bright you are, how wonderful you are, how wonderful the world is, or, if it's not so wonderful, how you can change it. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to tell you the world is full of good people -- the reason I'm standing here giving this speech is because the world is not full of good people. I get kidnapped, MIT has already sent around letters to the alumni saying that I'm going to be talking here, so they get the CFO of my company. Who also got a bachelor of the sciences here before he went to Harvard Business School. He was in the habit of fixing messes for me. I'm giving this speech because two and a half weeks ago, he died, and when I went to my parents' funeral, he was the one who stood by me and carried my father's casket. In fact, he gave the eulogy because I was nineteen and too drunk to stand. First time he had to step in and give a speech I was supposed to give.
Now, I'm giving a speech that he was supposed to give. First time. For years, Christmas dinner used to be him and me and a bottle of Scotch. And it turns out, hey, he's the one who had me kidnapped. Later, he tried to take this arc reactor out of my chest. He held a little device up to my ear -- not one of my inventions, for once -- paralyzed me and took this light you can just barely see through my shirt. Took it out and put it into a bag. He talked to me while I went into cardiac arrest, and then he walked out the door. Apparently, he hated me for a long time. Who knew?
The world isn't full of good people. It isn't full of people you can rely on or people you can trust. You probably won't be able to change the world. I'm a billionaire genius who was building computers when most kids are investigating the mysteries of the Tooth Fairy. I've built a robot suit so advanced it lets me hit Mach 2 and outfly a F-22 Raptor, yet I can't get my personal assistant to sleep with me.
Don't wait to take responsibility. Don't wait to think of the consequences of your actions, of what you build. I waited until I had a car battery hooked up to my chest, until the man who had saved my life once by taking the shrapnel out of me and who saved it again by picking up a machine gun and running -- not walking, running -- towards his own death so that I could get out of there. He saved my life, twice, and kept me from going crazy or just giving up. I stood over him while he died on a sack of rice that American planes dropped to feed the hungry. Somehow, it ended up in a terrorist cave in the Hindu Kush mountains. I promised him that I would make something of my life. I waited until three American kids were dead, and I didn't even hear them die because the rockets I built were just that good. I waited until I found out that my business partner was selling missiles and rocket launchers and tanks to terrorists.
You might not be able to change the world. You might not even like the world very much. But I waited.
Don't wait.
The idea about Tony not being able to hear the kid because THAT'S HOW GOOD HE IS AT BOMB-DESIGNING is from dafnap. Also, the rectal exam. And atrata had the idea about Tony talking Afghanistan with the crowd, but not with Pepper. I WOULDN'T POST DAILY IF I DIDN'T HAVE ENABLERS. BLAME THEM.
Also, Wiki informs me that tailfins are actually more about controlling yaw? Let's just pretend that's what is generally understood when Tony says "fly straight."
Real speaker, by the way, was this gentleman. And Happy Fourth, my fellow Americans.