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Faltering Dotcom Acquired by Satan, Will Serve In Hell For All Eternity TALLAHASSEE - In yet another acknowledgment of the centrality of information engineering in an increasingly connected world, the Florida-based Internet advertising firm Elation was purchased by thewell-known angel investor Satan on Friday for an undisclosed amount ofcash. "This is really exciting," Satan said. "This is a primo opportunity to extend the hell brand." "We saw a company comprised of incompetent young people,driven to the brink of desperation by imminent financial collapse and a gnawing sense of purposeless, and were immediately intrigued," said the Whore of Babylon, the Iraq-based boutique financier who helped broker the deal. "There was obviously some great synergy with Satan's core business of despair." In order to make room for the new Elation offices, which will be designed by the well-known "garbage artist" Wilhelm Slattery, Satan was forced to evict about 600 gluttons, longtime residents of the third circle of hell. "I had really lost interest in those people," Satan said. "All they do is lie supine and gorge themselves. It's disgusting." While the Elation acquisition did little to stem market disenchantment with technology stocks, some analysts applauded the move. Given the faulty business models and the massive losses generated by Internet start-ups since 1995, market watchers have thought supernatural intervention offered the only way for many of the struggling ventures to survive. "Satan has been looking to get into the e-commerce space for a long time," said Barry Wylie, a black arts analyst for C.S. First Boston. "I had been assuming he'd add an e-tailer or anadvertising-supported entertainment site, but the web banner idea makes alot of sense, too." As part of the deal, the sales team will no longer sell ads for the tech magazines and pornography sites that had previously formed the back bone of the Elation portfolio. Instead, execs will concentrate on selling ad pages for just one client: Speculum, the online journal of patristic and biblical hermeneutics. The workday will begin at 5 A.M., with employees responsible for selling at least $2,000 of advertising per day to companies represented by cynical Wall Street lawyers. Satan said he expects few layoffs attending the transaction, and in fact hopes to attract some new hires. "Good knowledge workers are so hard to find in this economy," Satan said. "Just so long as they make quota and manage to affect a veneer of enthusiasm and hip coolness, they'll be welcome at Elation. In fact, no one can leave, ever." The change in ownership is set for January 3, when Satan will produce a streaming video webcast of his weekly Black Mass. The gluttons are expected to move to Texas.