It was all a carefully planned hoax designed to drive traffic to our annual eRupt Conference, held at the Holiday Inn’s Pocahontas Room in beautiful Alachua, Florida.

We invested significant coin in that conference. We bought a six-foot deli sandwich and an entire case of Seagrams Tahitian Sunset Wine Coolers for this thing, and we’d have been totally screwed if nobody else showed up.

We apologize to any readers who were fooled, flummoxed, bewitched, bamboozled or deeply aroused by the hoax.

“You’re putting that in the wrong place, goddammit. Have I taught you nothing about proper shelving procedures?” — Melvil Dewey (1851 – 1931)

I’m doing what Dan Tynan should have done, or JR Raphael for that matter — venting my thoughts on the latest episode of the eSarcasm soap opera on a blog that nobody ever reads rather than abusing eSarcasm’s mighty publishing platform to get as much attention as possible from the 4 to 7 people who actually read it.

Where was I again? Oh yeah — the clusterfuck that is eSarcasm.

My colleague Dr. Smartass hits the nail on the proverbial head: Tynan’s public resignation from eSarcasm, on eSarcasm, was an ill-timed sleazy move, not unlike the way he tried to hit on JR’s grandmother at the last eSarcasm Christmas party. I mean, the woman is 90 if she’s a day. I throw up a little in my mouth every time I think about that.

I say that with the utmost respect for Tynan, who I think is a phenomenal writer with a rapier wit and a brilliant mind, though he still owes me $38 from last January and I’m starting to get a little PO’d about it.

You won’t catch me saying this about anything else that gets published on eSarcasm, but that post should have absolutely gone on his personal blog or website, or possibly only spraypainted on the walls of his skull. I’ve thought about this all day, and it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth (though not as bad as thinking about Tynan boffing JR’s granny — seriously, that is nasty).

Clearly, Tynan has an ax to grind with Raphael, but he must realize that nailing JR to the cross in such a visible way, and I mean that literally — Tynan tacked him to one of the crossbeams in our office with a staple gun, and it took us 45 minutes to pry the staples out with a letter opener — was definitely not a classy thing to do. I only hope he realizes that one day.

As I’ve written countless times, I have a great professional relationship with JR, and I would really like to avoid getting fired or demoted, because I really need this job and I can’t face going back to Wal-Mart.

I’m not saying eSarcasm doesn’t have major issues. Boy, do they have issues. One of these days I’ll write about them, hopefully after the gag order has been lifted and no one is paying attention.

eSarcasm is aroused to announce the debut of its magical new URL shortener, Sarc.me. Starting right…now, Sarc.me will change the way millions thousands hundreds dozens of users share snarky geek humor across the Interwebbular Plateaus.

How will it work, you ask? Well, pretty much like every other URL shortener out there. But instead of something drab like “Bit.ly” or “Ow.ly,” it’ll say “Sarc.me” — and people think that’s kinda neat.

“That’s kinda neat,” said some guy we made up in order to prove our aforementioned point.

Sarc.me rolled out in a limited beta late last week and is now fully operational. Anytime you share a link from one of eSarcasm’s convenient in-site Twitter buttons, the Sarc.me interface will automatically deploy. Like some sort of really cool rocket on a futuristic spaceship. Even The Wall Street Journal‘s Walt Mossberg agrees.

“I agree,” Walt Mossberg remarked.*

Effective immediately, all links sent out by eSarcasm’s generously girthed Twitter account will also feature the new Sarc.me URL shortening experience.

“This is an enormous step forward for the dissemination of sarcastic material,” said eSarcasm Chair Dan Tynan.

“You said ‘semination,’” added eSarcasm Sofa JR Raphael.

Tynan and Raphael admit that Sarc.me wasn’t their first choice for a URL shortening platform — Fuck.me, Blow.me, and Suck.me were unfortunately already taken — but they only admit that because we gave them lots of liquor and subjected them to 20 minutes of intensive tickling. Otherwise, they’d totally deny it and insist that Sarc.me was always the only option.

* Full disclosure: Walt Mossberg was not actually talking about the Sarc.me URL shortener when he made that remark.

You know how it is sometimes. You drink too much tequila, you meet an amazing woman, you take her home, things happen. In the morning she turns out to have more chest hair than you do and starts hitting you up to pay for her hormone treatments.

The “I May Be Fashion Challenged But I’m Smarter Than You” T Shirt contest was a little like that.

We should have known something was up when we called our partners in this venture one evening and their mom answered. She said it was too late for them to talk on the phone, and we should call them the next day after they’d had their nap.

Later, they asked for our help in sneaking $35 million out of Nigeria and into an offshore bank account. That was also a red flag. Stupidly, we ignored it.

For the record, we thought this T shirt was funny. So was this one. We found T shirt drolly amusing. But heck, we just run a humor site. What do we know from funny?

There were also some really nice designs. Strangely, none of those won either.

Congratulations to the winners. As for the owners of that T-shirt design site, we hope they sell enough shirts to offset the cost of that iPad. We’re sure it set them back at least three months’ allowance.

Intercourse, PA — One year after its stunning debut, the world’s leading geek humor portal has unveiled a redesign that enhances its mission to bring snark to the masses. Working with the world’s top plastic surgeons, the nipped-and-tucked eSarcasm 2.0 offers features that are both new and exciting yet also strangely familiar to its legions of fans.

Among the highlights of eSarcasm 2.0:

* Sleeker, longer, and thicker home page, ribbed for your pleasure.

* Dedicated video section called eTube, which will feature the funniest Web videos it can steal from other sites find, as well as eSarcasm originals like “Google-China Negotiations Hit Impasse” and “Foul-Mouthed Octogenarians Doing Unspeakable Things” (NSFA).

* New streamlined Quickies section featuring eTube videos, iToons comics, and Hump Day Hotties. Now 27 percent more premature!

* Easier access to the vast archive of eSarcasm Favorites, revealing scores of butt-gusting stories you may have missed, including: “Are You a Certified Facebook Douche?” “The 12 Universal Truths About Twitter,” and “The Steve Jobs E-Mail Generator.”

And more!

“We are so convinced you’ll love eSarc 2.0 that we’re offering a money-back guarantee,” says eSarcasm co-founder Dan Tynan. “If not completely satisfied with the level of sophomoric humor available at the new eSarcasm.com, please return all Web pages you’ve viewed (along with the labels from six specially marked cartons of Harry Popper Condoms) and we’ll refund every penny you’ve spent.”

Adds co-co-founder JR Raphael: “Our new redesign allows us to take on the tech world in newer and even more juvenile ways. We look forward to deeply offending each and every one of you.”

Along with the refreshed design, eSarcasm is pleased to announce it has finally emerged from beta, skipped right over gamma, delta, and epsilon, and gone into zeta. The site’s founders say they had hoped to get into Kappa Kappa Kappa, but their plan was foiled when the house mother peeked under their skirts.

Look for the upcoming bug fixes, eSarcasm 2.01, 2.02, and 2.03, coming to a browser near you.

eSarcasm, The Web Site That Longs to Pleasure You In Ways You’ve Never Imagined ™, officially opened its kimono and displayed its wares to the world exactly 365 days ago. Over that time our snarky band of jokesters have produced more than 700 articles, entertained more than 1 million visitors, generated 2 million page views, and earned more than $37 in advertising revenue.

Even we are fucking impressed by this.

Along the way we’ve garnered numerous accolades, including:

“… tasteless, occasionally hilarious, but mostly tasteless…”

“…not for the easily offended or those with sensitive stomachs…”

“… a new low in Internet humor…”

and

“…I can’t believe no one has sued your asses yet…”

(That last one came from our attorney, who is currently defending Dr. Smartass against yet more spurious statutory charges. We can personally vouch he was nowhere near that school at the time of the alleged incident.)

We are humbled by your praise, thrilled by your attention, exhausted by churning out 2+ posts a day and aroused by the thought of doing it again and again and again until we collapse in a sweaty pool of erotic effluvia.

Sorry, got distracted by some porn there for a second. What were we saying? Oh yeah: For all that you do, we thank you.

Now go design a funny T-shirt and win yourself an Apple iPad from Fibers.com. You deserve it.

Wear one of these babies on a first date and you’re almost certain to score (though you may be alone when it happens).

“We look forward to dominating the world of eCommerce and putting Amazon.com completely out of business,” says site co-founder and chief body fluids officer (CBFO) JR Raphael. “This should provide a welcome boost of revenue to our operations.”

“Finally we can start to pay off those loan sharks,” agreed co-co-founder and live animal trainer Dan Tynan. “I’m almost out of fingers.”

HELP WANTED: eSarcasm is actively seeking an attractive female between ages of 18 and not dead to model our wares for publication on our site. Applicants should send an email noting their qualifications, a hot picture, and a signed affadavit affirming the picture really is of you to models@esarcasm.com. OK, we’ll settle for the hot photo. But we are serious about the modeling bit.

Here’s the release we were prepared to send out:

eSarcasm, The Web Site That Can Tie a Cherry Stem In a Knot With Its Tongue (And Also Its Toes) ™, has been acquired by TechCrunch. Beginning immediately, it will become part of the TechCrunch stable of sites. The site’s cofounders, Dan Tynan and JR Raphael, will join the TechCrunch staff and get the opportunity to meet the extremely dishy Evelyn Rusli and the less dishy but still perfectly doable Sarah Lacy.

Amazing, isn’t it? Less than a year after first coming up with the idea for a geek humor portal, we were going to walk away with enough cash in our pockets to buy furniture and have the carpet cleaned. Hookers and blow for everyone!

Today, we heard from TechCrunch’s attorneys (the firm of Eichmann, Himmler, & Goering) that the deal was off. Kaput. Finito. Verklemp. In fact, it was never really on to begin with.

How did this happen? It’s a long story.

When the call came from Arrington’s personal assistant three weeks ago we probably should have been more suspicious. Sure, he sounded a bit young – but with all the unpaid teen interns they’ve got running around there we figured that’s just how they roll. The fact that he insisted on conducting all negotiations himself, and refused to let us speak directly to Arrington, was another clue we should have heeded but didn’t. But when he demanded a MacBook Air laptop in return for being acquired, it began to send off red flags.

By then, we’d totally redesigned our home page to match the TechCrunch look and feel. We’d started doing even less fact checking on our stories than usual. We’d even taken to strutting around the office smoking cigars and browbeating our staff, just to get in the mood.

In hindsight, it was probably not the most logical of unions.

True, we had been occasionally critical of TechCrunch. We’d had a bit of sport poking fun at the CrunchPad JooJoo Tablet fiasco. We’d strongly implied Mr. Arrington was out of his depth when it came to actual journalism and liked to go around in women’s clothing. But we figured, business is business. And, most likely, he was buying us just to shut us up.

That was all right with us. We can be bought. And at the price that Arrington his teen assistant was quoting, they could have bought ten of us, and Doctor Smartass, and still had money left over to visit Club Voyeur with half of the Republican National Committee.

But it was clearly not meant to be. So we’re back where we started — serving the very finest in sophomoric geek humor to you, our faithful regular readers.

We thank you both for your support.

As of March 2010, eSarcasm appears to have been blocked by Websense, a “Web filtering” company used by numerous corporations to keep their minions from staring at boobies protect their employees from potentially objectionable content.

An alert reader in Alabama first picked up on the change, informing eSarcasm staff that the eSarcasm.com site was no longer accessible from his workplace. eSarcasm’s esteemed board of directors immediately responded to the news.

“We are thrilled to be in the company of such fine publications as Playboy, Penthouse, and Hot Naked Sluts On Their Knees,” remarked eSarcasm Director of Vulgarity Dan Tynan.

“Hey, what’s the password to that Hot Naked Sluts site?” added JR Raphael, eSarcasm’s executive supervisor of pornographic activity.

While eSarcasm cannot be certain of the reason for its corporate banning, an internal probe has determined the event could possibly be tied to one of the following items:

• The video we posted showing foul-mouthed octogenerians graphically discussing their plans for fornication.
• The story we wrote about a woman named Wonder Vag who may or may not give Wonder Head.
• Our open letter to China’s porn-policing moms in which we try to convince the country’s government-formed censorship force to get naked and roll around with us.

Then again, it could have also been our disturbingly nude portrayal of Facebook head honcho Mark Zuckerberg, our repeated proclamations that Jesus Christ had endorsed us, or our frank discussion about why drunk girls are most likely to go down on you. Or any of the countless other inappropriate things we’ve published over the past year; to be honest, we’ve kind of lost track.

Regardless of the reason, eSarcasm would like to extend its deepest gratitude to Websense for bestowing this great honor upon our humble site. And, just to make sure that this blog is also banned, we’d like to let them know that they’re a bunch of ass-gobbling fuckhead shit-turds.