REDMOND, WA -- Amidst a flurry of recent new product unveilings, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced that his company had acquired Necronomicon ex Mortis, the Book of the Dead, in a cash and stock deal of an undisclosed amount.
    Bound in human flesh and inked in human blood, Necronomicon is an ancient Sumerian text containing bizarre burial rites, funerary incantations and demon resurrection passages. Reportedly Microsoft had an army of living undead programmers amassed and waiting to storm the parent company that was holding it.
    Ballmer commented, "The Necronomicon will allow us to build new strategic co-branding solutions that will benefit consumers, and also allow us to consume all mankind with evil." He also defended his company against its allegations of abuse of monopoly power and lusting after the blood of the living, asserting, they had "the freedom to innovate."