Alo Palto, CA - (Jan 29) - In yet another striking example of rampant merger mania sweeping world business, the well-known law known as Murphy's Law (which states that if anything can go wrong, it will) has acquired the almost as well-known law known as Moore's Law (which states that computing power doubles every 18 months while the price is cut in half) for $110 billion.

"People were getting sick of these dumb old laws, anyway," said Gimmey Moore, owner of Moore's Law, "and this merger will breathe new life into both of them while allowing us to achieve much better throughput with much less expenditure of manpower and capital resources."

According to "Murphy," the inventor of Murphy's Law, the new merged Murphy-Moore Law will state that if anything can go wrong with a Compaq Presario, it will -- and it'll go doubly wrong 18 months later, at which point the Presario will only be worth half as much -- if it's worth anything at all.

Murphy is also rumored to be in the market for other laws, and will apparently finalize a deal next month to purchase the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

According to sources close to Murphy, if the deal goes through, the new law would be called Murphy's 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, and would state that if anything can go wrong with the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, it will.

Supreme Court Says Census Can't Use Sampling

On Monday, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 against the use of statistical sampling to compensate for the large numbers of people who will otherwise go uncounted in the year 2000 Census.

The use of sampling would have allowed census takers to play extra loud samples of, like, James Brown going "Whoooooooooooooooa!!" or "Awwwwwwrrrrrrriiiiiiiight!!!" in order to get people hiding from the census to come rushing out of their apartments in the hopes of seeing Mr. Excitement himself -- at which point they could easily be forced to give out essential personal information.

The technique is called statistical sampling because statistics are used to determine which sample to play and how loud.

Drudge Launches Hard-Hitting Exposé of NBC Practises!!

Courageous right-wing butt-boy, Matt Drudge, has revealed in his daily column, "the Drudge report" that all is not well at the Peacock network.

"The egg salad they serve in the NBC cafeteria," said Drudge in today's report, "is really pretty awful. For one thing, they use too much mayonnaise. And, for another, the eggs are really undercooked -- so it's all, like, eggy and mushy. Uhhhhggg. I get sick just thinking about it."

Drudge had apparently ordered an egg salad sandwich while waiting in the NBC cafeteria to meet with top NBC officials who were to hand over hundreds of hours of video-taped confessions from women who'd been raped and beaten by President Clinton while he was still Arkansas Attorney-General.

"I can guarantee you," Drudge stated categorically at the end of his column, "that I will never again order an egg salad sandwich at the NBC cafeteria. On my honor as a courageous right-wing butt-boy."