For days now we’ve had some really big news we wanted to share with you, our faithful readers, but we’ve been constrained by a deeply binding Non-Disclosure Agreement. Today was to be the day we let the cat out of the proverbial bag.
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.
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