Carl Icahn, pull my finger

When I was heli-skiing in Jackson Hole last week, I realized that the only thing more dangerous than getting between a grizzly bear and her cubs is getting between Carl Icahn and a dollar bill. Seriously. Because here's the thing. A couple months ago we were thinking, holy cow, Carl fucking Icahn is buying up BEA Systems and the dude is ready to sell. Like, now. So I told Charles to throw an offer together and mail it in to BEA ASAP so we could pop the champaign, fire up the mechanical bull, and start rocking my boats. But then Carl said, well, uh, actually no, the offer isn't high enough, and could we please come back with a better offer? As if he really knows how these things work. And as if he's had a lot of luck with the businesses he's invested in recently. Like, um, Motorola and Time Warner. Ouch, Carl.

Anyway, I'm really happy articles like this one about Carl have started appearing around the blogosphere. This butthead needs to be called out and revealed for what he actually is: A little old man trying to play a game of monopoly with real businesses. And to be completely honest with you, that kind of board-game mentality might work in places like New York. Hell if I know. What I can tell you is nobody fucks with Larry Ellison and gets away with it. So, yeah. This isn't over, Icahn.

Friends, forgive me

You woke up this morning and saw the news about our bid for BEA Systems and you thought, what the fuck? Larry lied to us a couple weeks ago when he said he didn't care about those Beaturds. He tricked us, didn't he? Well, yes. And friends, I know what you're thinking right now. Listen, I'm sorry about misleading you. Just believe me when I say that I really want to tell you what we're doing with BEA Systems. But all I can say right now is that I can't say much. It's just one of those things. So have a good weekend and try not to toilet paper my house or egg my Karmann Ghia, okay?

Whatever happened to BEA Systems?

So, hypothetical situation: You're sitting with Safra, talking about tomorrow's conference call with Oracle investors. What company names are you going to drop? Who are you going to make sound like shit? Who are you going to buy out in the next few months? And you come up with a couple names. Red Hat. MySQL. Salesforce.com. SAP. Microsoft. Sun Microsystems. Okay, maybe not Sun. And then you realize, whoa. Holy smokes. BEA Systems isn't on your list. And why is that?

They were doing so well, and they still kind of are, but they've lost something. Yes. They've lost their virginity and the light has gone out of their eyes and they're just not fun anymore. They've burned out and washed up. And you just don't care about them. You really don't. You don't want to buy them or talk about them or even hear about them anymore. And you also know that you can't make any forward-looking statements, so you just talk about all of this hypothetically and keep it to yourself.

Safra says that companies are like flowers: they bloom only once. She says there are a lot of one-hit wonders out there who do one thing and then never do anything else. And she says BEA Systems is one of those companies.

Food for thought, bros.