Sydney, AUSTRALIA - (Dec 16) - In what is believed to be the largest corporate merger EVER, EVER, EVER, Death, today, agreed to, like, totally purchase, in its entirety, the condition formerly known as Life. The new merged entity will be known as Death-in-Life, or just plain Death, for short.

"This is a win-win situation for both sides," said Death spokesman, John Travolta. "As everyone knows, Life was already on the verge of complete bankruptcy, and this merger will allow it to continue operating many of its vital and valuable functions far into the foreseeable future, rather than being chopped up and sold off for firewood at some backwoods fire sale."

The valuable functions that Death will now allow Life to continue operating include such popular life functions as farting, belching, taking a dump, being an asshole, murder, disease, impotence, $15 million dollar athlete salaries, $20 million dollar celebrity salaries, blindness, stupidity, Disneyland and, of course, dying.

In fact, many analysts believe, that Death's purchase of Life is not as purely altruistic as Travolta's tone of voice, body language, and continual winking, would appear to indicate.

"Without the traffic from Life's popular portal site, Dying," a popular analyst claimed, "the activity on Death's own portal site, AOL, would tend towards zero with sub-zero growth, most likely ending in the leveraged buy out of Death itself by the little known but ultra-fundamental upstart company, Neither-Life-NOR-Death.

According to the analyst, Death will also be adding the valuable "Life" brand name, to its already impressive portfolio of other valuable brand names.

"Despite its state of total disrepair and decay," said analyst Tom Cruise, "Life has always been seen as the crown jewel in the Kentucky Derby of branding. Ownership of the 'Life' brand will give Death complete or partial ownership of many valuable intellectual properties across the whole spectrum of intellectual property, including such popular and valuable intellectual properties as Life cereal, 'Life' Magazine, the film 'Life with Father,' the soap opera, 'Love of Life,' the Lifetime cable channel, the popular 'slice-of-Life' fiction sub-genre, the popular metaphysical concept of 'Life-After-Death,' the TV show 'My So-Called Life,' and, of course, the so-called Right to Life movement.

Life CEO, Jimi Hendrix, was too busy being wined and dined by the representatives of Death and so was unavailable for comment.