This item will take less than 1 minute to read, but it's about significant news in the IT world: Merger talks between Microsoft and Yahoo are officially dead and buried.

To recall the late, great Chris Farley: "Well, la-di-frickin'-da!"

Gee whiz, what a surprise! To the key players in this long drawn-out and undoubtedly expensive exercise in extreme hoo-haw that never had a chance of being completed in the first place, The Station says:

Steve Ballmer: It's time to retire, buddy. You misread this deal about as badly as anyone could have possibly done it. You could have asked virtually anybody in the open-source world about whether this deal would have worked, and you would have received the same answer: "Um, no."

Carl Icahn: Go take a seat in the corner. Sell your $1 billion worth of Yahoo stock and go away, please. (See this Station post.) Also, check my eWEEK colleague Joe Wilcox's post.

Jerry Yang & Co.: Congrats, you're finally rid of the Microsofties. (See this Station post.)