MICROSOFT Bids to Acquire Catholic Church
By Hank Vorjes

VATICAN CITY (AP) — In a joint press conference in St. Peter’s Square this morning, MICROSOFT Corp. and the Vatican announced that the Redmond software giant will acquire the Roman Catholic Church in exchange for an unspecified number of shares of MICROSOFT common stock. If the deal goes through, it will be the first time a computer software company has acquired a major world religion.

With the acquisition, Pope John Paul II will become the senior vice-president of the combined company’s new Religious Software Division, while MICROSOFT senior vice-presidents Michael Maples and Steven Ballmer will be invested in the College of Cardinals, said MICROSOFT Chairman Bill Gates.

“We expect a lot of growth in the religious market in the next five to ten years,” said Gates. “The combined resources of MICROSOFT and the Catholic Church will allow us to make religion easier and more fun for a broader range of people.”

Through the MICROSOFT Network, the company’s new on-line service, “we will make the sacraments available on-line for the first time” and revive the popular pre-Counter-Reformation practice of selling indulgences, said Gates. “You can get Communion, confess your sins, receive absolution — even reduce your time in Purgatory — all without leaving your home.”

A new software application, MICROSOFT Church, will include a macro language which you can program to download heavenly graces automatically while you are away from your computer.

An estimated 17,000 people attended the announcement in St Peter’s Square, watching on a 60-foot screen as comedian Don Novello — in character as Father Guido Sarducci — hosted the event, which was broadcast by satellite to 700 sites worldwide.

Pope John Paul II said little during the announcement. When Novello chided Gates, “Now I guess you get to wear one of these pointy hats,” the crowd roared, but the pontiff’s smile seemed strained.

The deal grants MICROSOFT exclusive electronic rights to the Bible and the Vatican’s prized art collection, which includes works by such masters as Michelangelo and Da Vinci. But critics say MICROSOFT will face stiff challenges if it attempts to limit competitors’ access to these key intellectual properties.

“The Jewish people invented the look and feel of the holy scriptures,” said Rabbi David Gottschalk of Philadelphia. “You take the parting of the Red Sea — we had that thousands of years before the Catholics came on the scene.”

But others argue that the Catholic and Jewish faiths both draw on a common Abrahamic heritage. “The Catholic Church has just been more successful in marketing it to a larger audience,” notes Notre Dame theologian Father Kenneth Madigan. Over the last 2,000 years, the Catholic Church’s market share has increased dramatically, while Judaism, which was the first to offer many of the concepts now touted by Christianity, lags behind.

Historically, the Church has a reputation as an aggressive competitor, leading crusades to pressure people to upgrade to Catholicism, and entering into exclusive licensing arrangements in various kingdoms whereby all subjects were instilled with Catholicism, whether or not they planned to use it. Today Christianity is available from several denominations, but the Catholic version is still the most widely used. The Church’s mission is to reach “the four corners of the earth,” echoing MICROSOFT’s vision of “a computer on every desktop and in every home”.

Gates described MICROSOFT’s long-term strategy to develop a scalable religious architecture that will support all religions through emulation. A single core religion will be offered with a choice of interfaces according to the religion desired — “One religion, a couple of different implementations,” said Gates.

The MICROSOFT move could spark a wave of mergers and acquisitions, according to Herb Peters, a spokesman for the U.S. Southern Baptist Conference, as other churches scramble to strengthen their position in the increasingly competitive religious market.

What’s the difference between a female lawyer and a pit bull?
Lipstick.

The manager and coach of an Irish team were discussing the layers they had on their books and the manager asked, ‘How many goals has O’Halloran scored this season?’
‘Exactly double what he scored last season,’ replied the coach. `Eleven.’

A blonde walks into the hairdresser with headphones on. She asks the woman working there for a haircut. The blonde sits down in the chair. The woman takes the blonde’s headphones off and cuts her hair. At the end, the woman asks how she likes her hair but, to her surprise the blonde is dead! The woman picks up the headphones and listens.
She hears: 揃reathe in…Breathe out…breathe in…Breathe out.”

A bloke goes into a pub.
The barmaid asks what he wants.

‘I want to put my head between your tits, and lick the sweat off,’ he replies.

‘You dirty bastard!’ shouts the barmaid, ‘Get out before I get my husband.’

The bloke apologizes and says he will never do it again.

The barmaid, disgusted, accepts his apology and asks what he wants again.

‘I want to pull down your knickers, spread cottage cheese between your arise cheeks and lick it off,’ he replies.

‘What???’ screams the barmaid, ‘that’s it! You’re barred, you dirty, filthy, perverted bastard, get out now.’

Once again the bloke apologizes, and says he will never, ever do it again.

‘Right. I’ll give you one last chance,’ says the barmaid. ‘Now, what do you want?’

‘I want to turn you upside down, fill your pussy with Guinness and drink it all out of you.’

The barmaid starts crying and runs upstairs to her husband, who is sitting down watching the tally.

‘What’s up, love?’ says the husband.

‘There’s this disgusting bloke downstairs. When I asked him what he wanted, he said that he wanted to put his head between my tits and lick the sweat off,’ she says in a flood of tears.

‘What? He’s a dead man,’ shouts the husband getting out of his chair.

‘Then he said he wanted to pull down my knickers, spread cottage cheese between my arise cheeks and lick it off,’ screams the wife.

‘Right, he’s going to need a body bag, the bastard,’ shouts the husband rolling up his sleeves and picking up a baseball bat.

‘Then he said he wanted to turn me upside down, fill my pussy with Guinness and drink it out of me,’ she concludes.

When he hears this, the husband puts the baseball bat down and sits back down in his chair.

‘Aren’t you going to do something?’ shouts the wife in hysterics.

‘Listen love, I’m not messing with someone who can drink 14 pints of Guinness…’

Four women were out on the golf course, when one pointed out a white blur approaching from a distance.. As it grew closer, they could see it was a streaker drawing near.. As the nude guy ran past the women one said, “My golly, which is that? Was that Dick Green??”
Another answered, “I don’t think so. I think it was just the reflection.”

There was this lawyer who drove his shiny new Lexus to work one day. He parked it right down in front of the firm where he worked to show it off to all his lawyer buddies. As he got out, this truck side-swiped the door and ripped it right off.The driver stopped and ran to the lawyer saying “Are you alright, are you alright?”

The lawyer, now furious, started to scream and berate the driver. “What the hell do you think you are doing? This is my brand new Lexus…Ya know I am a lawyer and I am going to sue you for all you are worth!”

Then a policeman ran up to the scene and said to the lawyer, “Calm down! You lawyers are so materialistic it’s disgusting! Don’t you know, when that truck ripped your door off, it took your arm with it?”

The lawyer looked down and saw his left arm missing and said “Oh, God, . . . my ROLEX!”

A blonde walked into a gas station and told the manager, ”I locked my keys in my car and I was wondering if you had a coat hanger I could stick through the window and unlock the door.” ”Why, sure,” said the manager, ”we have something that works especially for that.” A couple minutes later, the manager walked outside to see how the blonde was doing. He heard another voice. ”No, no, a little to the left,” said the other blonde inside the car.

There was a man who would come home blind drunk every night and vomit in the bathroom sink, and every night the man’s wife would warn him that someday he would puke up his guts.

One day the wife cut up a chicken and left the guts in the sink, just to give him a scare. At about 3:00 a.m. the man came home and spewed in the same sink as always. About 30 minutes later, the man came out of the bathroom and said to his wife,?you were right honey, I really did puke up my guts, but don’t worry, with the help of this long wooden spoon, I managed to put them all back.”

A horse and a chicken are playing in a meadow. The horse
fall’s into a mud hole and is sinking. He calls to the
chicken to go and get the farmer to help pull him out to
safety.
The chicken runs to the farm but the farmer can’t be
found. So he drives the farmer’s BMW back to the mud hole
and ties some rope around the bumper.

He then throws the other end of the rope to his friend, the
horse, and drives the car forward saving him from sinking!

A few days later, the chicken and horse were playing in the
meadow again and the chicken fell into the mud hole. The
chicken yelled to the horse to go and get some help from
the farmer.

The horse said, “I think I can stand over the hole!” So he
stretched over the width of the hole and said, “Grab for
my ‘thingy’ and pull yourself up.” And the chicken did and
pulled himself to safety.

The moral of the story:

If you’re hung like a horse, you don’t need a BMW to pick
up chicks.