Microsoft, Justice Dept. Settle; World Economy Saved!!!!

[Note: Once upon a time there was a story. It began: "Once upon a time, there was a story. It began: 'Once upon a time, there was no story.'" This is that story.]

Early this morning bleary-eyed representatives of the Microsoft Corporation of Redmond Washington and bleary-eyed representatives of the US Justice Department of Washington DC, announced a settlement in the Microsoft anti-trust suit which had involved the US Justice Department of Washington DC and Microsoft Corporation of Redmond Washington in, apparently, some kinda anti-trust lawsuit kinda thingie or other.

The main condition of the settlement requires that Microsoft President and/or CEO and/or founder and/or chairman or whatever, Bill Gates, and Microsoft co-founder or CEO or President, Steve Ballmer, or whatever, immediately cease to exist. Period.

"Also, their names, words, deeds, and even the acoustic waveforms of their lifetime accidental stomach sounds will be expunged from all data bases and all human history and all human memory, and from the fossil record-to-be of all past and present ages," Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Garth Register Jr., told business reporters at a press conference held in the dark, early in the morning, down by the, down by the, down by the banks of the River Charles.

As a condition of the settlement, all 6 billion people on Earth will be required to drink a glass of DNA-flavored electric 7-Up containing the gene for being unable to even conceive of the concept of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer ever existing, let alone remember that they ever even actually did, or who or what they were -- OR WHY.

Once Gates and Ballmer have been relieved of existing, Ballmer's role will be taken over by his double, his semblable, his frere, former wrestler King Kong Bundy, and Gates will be replaced by his doubles, actor Krispin Glover ("River's Edge") on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, and former Jane's Addiction lead singer, Perry Farrell, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays -- in order to maintain the falsely perceived continuity of civilizaiton as we know it.

Gates and Ballmer, whose cessation to exist will be comprised mostly of an infinite recursion without possibility of even the thought of terminating condition, were genuinely sanguine about the whole thing, and still mostly focussed on providing the customer with the best possible product, at the lowest possible price, down to the last neutrino of their time in "non-infinite-recursiveland," as they've come to jokingly call the state of not quite yet having ceased to exist.

"We are working," a smiling Gates told reporters, "on this Haiku, which we will call Microsoft Haiku. So far it goes:

Blah blah blah population
Blah blah blah simulation
Blah blah blah whatever
Blah blah blah would you like a demonstration?

He also said Microsoft would be releasing a new version of Microsoft Idea.

"This idea," said Ballmer, "is about 2 people driving across the desert in pickup trucks. They don't know each other, but both have been driving for thousands of miles non-stop and still have thousands more non-stop miles to go. By chance they both arrive, at the same moment, at the same stop light just outside Barstow -- and 90 minutes and 90 miles later are both dead 'cause one of them said out his window how it was Bah Doo, Bah Doo, Bah Doo, La Bamba and the other one said back no, it's Bah Dah, Bah Dah, Bah Dah, La Bamba."