Big Red Car here on a cool, crisp impossibly sunny Wednesday morning in the winter that is Texas, y’all.

It is 40F which is pretty damn cold for a Texas winter. It will get to 60F before the sun scoots home this afternoon.

Of course, that snow where you live is so ……………………………………….. lovely, no?

Yahoo, the ship that Marissa Mayer is boxing the compass on, is adrift or, maybe, headed in every direction that the compass will spin. Who really knows?

Marissa — the Big Red Car is on a first name basis with many powerful CEOs (in his dreams) — arrived with Yahoo enmeshed in a world of deteriorating and suspect revenue to the tune of some $5B but she was the woman to firm it up. Get it over to the gym and finally get serious about Pilates.

She famously urged everyone to “lean in” and even wrote a book on the subject. [Ooops, Big Red Car, actually Lean In was written by a woman named Sheryl Sandberg. I know that all business women look alike to a misogynist Big Red Cars but you ought to get the big stuff right, Big Red. Dumbass!]

OK, OK, sorry.

So Marissa arrives at Yahoo — bit of a surprise pick to some, who knows, really? — with the board having made a mandate to layoff 5,000 folks which MM decides to essentially ignore. Kind of a ballsy move, no?

She then puts the “work from home” freedom to the guillotine thereby pissing away any risen morale she had garnered earlier.

Now, she has announced that:

1. All of Yahoo’s internal assets are “in play” and she is entertaining offers on ……………………………………………. anything.

On Wall Street this is called the “Open Your Kimono to Show You are Wearing Nothing Underneath” strategy.

The PE firms and other various acquisitive vultures will be showing up to pick over the carrion shortly.

2. One could read ahead and suggest that this leaves Yahoo holding only its stake in Alibaba, a great investment made in the world pre-MM.

[Note: Yahoo knows exactly what it has in the crown jewel called Alibaba. It tried to spin it out to shareholders in a non-taxable transaction but the IRS — the Federal bis dev department — quashed the deal.

3. In addition, MM is going to reduce the 11,000 Yahoo-ers by 15% which is a big number, y’all. This is called the Bleed Yourself Strong strategy. Also, a nasty piece of business and that makes you appreciate the “remote start” feature of your new Land Rover.

Why doesn’t every CEO pose for Vogue?

Marissa had that fabulous Vogue glamour shoot that was the envy of all CEOs. Could Elon Musk have pulled something like this off? [Answer, no. He doesn’t have the legs for it.]

She chatted up Charlie Rose about it and was thankful only that it hadn’t made the cover of Vogue. One is tempted to ask — why the Hell not?

Some of her detractors — line forms to the right, folks — have suggested that she was upside down in the photos and Yahoo is, similarly, upside down under her leadership.

It’s just plain meanness because her detractors aren’t nearly as pretty as she is. Sexy either.

Tumblr

Tumblr was a signature acquisition. With much fanfare, Marissa and Yahoo acquired Tumblr for $1.1B back in May 2013. It was a very big deal.

MM ‘splained why she had paid so much for a $10-15MM revenue company in a …………………………… Tumblr blog post — Why I Bought a $15MM Revenue Company for $1.1B!

In Q4-2015, the company took a $4.4B “impairment of goodwill” charge to write down the value of its deteriorating assets in the face of a harsh reality that suggests MM and Yahoo overpaid for Tumblr. Big time!

[Quick education on goodwill and goodwill impairment. Goodwill is the difference between purchase price and the value of the acquired hard assets. It used to be amortized and now it is “tested” annually. If it isn’t worth what you paid for it — using some identifiable valuation technique that you can defend — then the loss (impairment) of goodwill is identified as a GAAP — non-cash — charge against earnings. Nasty bit of business if you’re in the habit of overpaying for bits of tech swag.]

Huge writedowns of assets acquired on a CEO’s watch are the kind of thing that activist investors and board members start mumbling about when they decide to replace a CEO. Long line to piss on a CEO’s grave when this happens.

I am pretty sure that MM has an updated copy of her resume in a file somewhere and will send it to anyone who has an opening for a slightly used CEO but a very glamorous one to whom the camera is kind.

This situation could be flogged for a bit longer but the Big Red Car is getting tired. Let’s bring it in and clap it out, y’all.

Bottom line it, Big Red Car

Here it is, y’all. Out into the sunshine and let it stink.

1. Yahoo is dead meat and has decided to auction itself off before its “sell by” date hits.

Oh, you can put a fresh face on it and you can conjure up some residual value for someone to pay but it’s basically a dead duck and MM was not able to breathe life into it between her Vogue glamour shoots and here prodigious need to breed. Sorry. That is mean.

2. Marissa Mayer bit off way more than even she could chew. Nice white teeth but not chewers.

3. MM did some truly stupid shit — the Vogue shoot, the Tumblr acquisition. Chickens are coming home to roost.

4. Yahoo is a hula hoop, eight track tape, MySpace, AOL type “ran out of gas” before getting home story.

Stick a fork in it but turn Alibaba into cash before you do it.

5. There is and was a bubble — a $10-15MM company sold for $1.1B and then turned back into a shitty little way over valued company whose promise was like a fart in a hurricane.

The venture industry can use this one as an exemplar as to why it makes sense to run for the exits when being courted by the likes of Yahoo, et al.

But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a hugely overvalued Big Red Car looking for a new paint job. Please.