No sooner did I leave for the weekend than the Slate sale story finally broke. That giant BONK sound you heard around 4 p.m. Friday was my head hitting the roof of my Escalade on the L.I.E. when I got paged with the news.

You know, they all laughed at me on Wednesday when I floated the hot and heavy rumor that Slate was for sale. They all said I'd end up dead on the bottom of the East River when I mentioned the news again on Thursday. We try not to do bitter over here, but just this once, I'd cordially like to invite all the nice naysaying folks in media-land to eat me.