NEW YORK–Pfizer, the world’s largest drug maker, bought out Wyeth yesterday in a $68-billion deal completed in the parking lot of a Brooklyn Wendy’s.

“Yeah, the stuff’s good,” said Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler after examining Wyeth’s assets and drug lineup.

Wendy’s security footage indicates that Pfizer representatives completed the transaction at 2:30 a.m. in the back of a Dodge Minivan. The broker of the deal, whom both parties would only refer to as their “hookup,” drove away with a paper bag full of cash and stock certificates. Kindler, meanwhile, looked around him before walking nonchalantly back to his car, slipping a plastic baggie containing the Wyeth deed of ownership into the pocket of his black hoodie.

Pfizer expects the purchase to fill revenue voids in the vaccine and recreational markets. “Buying Wyeth allows us to diversify our brand, meaning there will be a Pfizer drug in every CVS, Walgreens, and poorly lit alleyway in the country,” said a Pfizer spokesman.

Not everyone is excited about the deal, however. “Can’t someone do something about this?” said Gus Kovaris, who lives near the Wendy’s. “I lived here all my life. This used to be a quiet neighborhood. Now we’ve got mergers and hostile takeovers every week. Some poor guy’s going to get laid off here one of these days.”

When asked if Pfizer was planning any other mergers, Kindler shook his head. “My hookup’s completely dry. He said try again next fiscal year.”

PALO ALTO —Facebook, the largest online social network on earth, announced at a press conference Friday that it will lay off 50 employees by the end of the month. Web 2.0 pundits were shocked to learn the company actually had employees to let go.

“Yeah, there was an actual office and everything,” said Roland Shipley, a former member of Facebook’s inexplicable workforce. He also claimed to have personally seen hundreds of other Facebook employees during his tenure, and to have received regular paychecks, although he could not produce one friend, Facebook or real, to back up his claim.

Founded in 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook grew exponentially in online presence and workforce size despite the fact that nobody has the slightest clue how it makes money. During the early days, Zuckerberg says he was constantly being poked by some guy named Madoff. Some of the personnel cut included staff from sales, marketing and finance—although observers point out it may be more than coincidence that they’re all named “Smith.” “Users don’t notice online advertising anymore, not even for Obama plates,” said Michael Calore of Wired. “I suppose they could start charging people to join, but who would pay money to learn that some guy they barely know just went to the grocery store? Excuse me, I just got tweeted.”

When asked about the long-term viability of the company, Zuckerberg said, “Users depend on Facebook as an integral part of their daily lives. Without Facebook, how could you find out what their friends are doing? How would you invite them to parties or tell them how awesome they are? You think people could play a game like Scrabulous in real life? Impossible.”

As new CEO of Yahoo Inc, Carol Bartz will receive a compensation package worth $19 million in salary and bonuses, as well as stock options for rival company, Google.

“By including stock for an industry leader like Google, we were able to lure the best candidate to Yahoo,” said Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock. “This is exactly the sort of thinking that will help Yahoo stay competitive in the years ahead.”

After taking the helm, Bartz fired up Yahoo staff during a high-energy meeting in which she outlined her plans for the company. The presentation utilized slides created with Google Docs presentation software, including budget projections displayed on a Google spreadsheet. Following the meeting, Bartz spoke to the press during a conference call on her Google Android phone.

Bartz also addressed widespread rumors of Microsoft buying Yahoo. While no decisions have been made, Bartz did offer ideas of what such a partnership would yield. “Take MS Office, for instance. Yahoo could offer an entire office suite, free, on the web. Word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, you name it,” Bartz said. “And you could search the web from our site, too.” A staff member pointed out that Yahoo already offered a web search, to the surprise of Bartz, media members, and several Yahoo employees.

Bostock said he is excited about the direction Bartz will take Yahoo, and predicts Bartz will become recognized as one of the business world’s top CEOs once she leaves Yahoo for greener pastures. He noted that hiring Bartz has already paid dividends. “Our web stats have skyrocketed,” Bostock said. “Just check out our Google Analytics.”

WASHINGTON, DC — Eager to right the struggling economy, President-elect Barack Obama unveiled a $700 billion stimulus plan designed to create 3 million new Steve Jobs over the next two years. “American innovation, ingenuity and looking good in jeans is what makes this country great,” Obama said. “No one embodies that spirit more than Steve Jobs.”

The co-founder of Apple, Inc., Steve Jobs’ leadership has led to the Macintosh, the iPod and TV commercials that viewers actually watch. Obama’s new “Jobs’ Jobs” plan calls for replicating Steve’s DNA and injecting it into 3 million unemployed Americans, producing exact copies, or iClones, of the mercurial CEO. These new Jobs are expected to invigorate every American industry, from technology to cars to razors that leave a sexy stubble.

“Consumer confidence and enthusiasm will never be higher. Americans will celebrate the unveiling of the wireless stapler, and they’ll stand in lines for days at the grocery store to buy iCorn,” Obama said.

The clothing industry has already received a boost due to unprecedented demand for black mock-turtleneck shirts and blue jeans with adjustable shrinking waistbands. Psychologists also expect an increase in clients when the Jobs iClones become smug, vain and vindictive fast food restaurant managers.

Republicans initially decried these government-created Jobs, saying the Apple CEO’s micromanaging style reflects Democrats’ desire for more invasive government. However, Jobs won over key legislators with a riveting speech on the House floor, during which he unveiled the first embryonic iClone, as well as the iHeart, a pacemaker that will synchronize a person’s heartbeat to his or her favorite song. “I live-blogged the whole thing,” said Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R) of Nebraska following a five-minute standing ovation for Jobs. “Simply phenomenal. I would take a bullet for that man.”

Jobs admits he was hesitant at first about being used as the template for a new race of visionary assholes. What finally convinced him? “When the president of the United States looks you in the eye and says, ‘Do you want to sell portable jukeboxes for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world into your own graven image?’ you listen.” Later in the interview, Jobs claimed the whole idea was his from the beginning.

Before returning to his home in Silicon Valley, Jobs will stop at a government lab to provide additional DNA samples. “Good artists copy, great artists steal,” Jobs said. “I think this is a little bit of both.”

LAS VEGAS—The 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, an extravaganza of the hottest new gadgets hitting the market, went largely unnoticed by attendee Lance Middleton, who used the event as a four-day, one-man tent revival about the virtues of his Google Android phone.

“The Android is the most revolutionary thing since DOS,” Middleton told anyone who would listen and a few guys he cornered in the men’s room. “Ten years from now, nobody’s going to remember the iPhone or that skinny dead guy.”

Middleton, 29, purchased the T-Mobile G1, the first phone to use Google’s new Android operating system, as a Christmas gift to himself. After memorizing the manual, sales brochure and list of possible side effects, he’s been going on and on about it ever since.

At CES, Middleton wandered past various displays of stereos, personal computers, and Blu-ray players. However, his activity inevitably devolved into an excuse to talk about his phone. “Like, he’d take a picture of a home theater system with his phone, then ask the person next to him, ‘You seen one of these yet?’” said Chet Forster, Middleton’s buddy and CES hotel roommate. “Next thing this poor guy knows, Lance is all ‘open source’ this and ‘democratic apps market’ that.” Forster added he planned to buy an iPhone as soon as he got his next paycheck, then registering Lance’s Gmail address as a “satisfied iPhone customer who wants every marketing email and new product update Apple sends out.”

During the convention, Middleton was variously spotted booing the new Palm Pre, and obsessively using his phone’s GPS/Google Maps feature for directions to destinations mere blocks away. “I mean, it’s Vegas,” said CES staffer Milton Borges. “If you’re looking for Circus Circus, it’s the place that looks like a giant goddamn circus tent.”

Middleton also live-blogged the event, a task which sometimes took more than an hour per post on his phone’s tiny keyboard. “In five years, the Android will replace the personal computer,” Middleton wrote in an entry to FreeLance. “Forget One Laptop per Child. We’re raising a generation of Androids.” Middleton’s posts suggested he did not find this thought frightening, nor a possible sign of the apocalypse.

As the convention drew to a close, Middleton was using his phone to find a tattoo parlor in order to get a tattoo of the Android’s green robot mascot taking a bite out of the Apple logo. However, for all the Android’s features, Middleton was unable to program the number of any single women into his phone.

NEW YORK—Following the arrest of disgraced Wall Street investor Bernard Madoff for his $50 million Ponzi scheme, millions of swindled investors and angry consumers flocked to Wikipedia to figure out what exactly a Ponzi scheme is.

“He was paying old investors with the money he got from new investors,” said Marsha Worthington of Dayton, Ohio, after reading the online encyclopedia’s entry on the scam that emptied her children’s college fund. “That’s illegal, apparently.”

Joe Brikowski of Des Moines, whose family’s life savings is most likely gone forever, said, “When I first heard it on the news, I thought they said ‘Fonzie’ scheme. You know, like putting all the money into a phony leather jacket company.” With a heavy sigh, he then snapped his fingers, pointed both thumbs in the air and said, “Aaay!”

In a Ponzi scheme, investors are promised high returns on non-specific investments such as hedge funds, when in fact, they are paid out with money paid in by later investors. Arthur Cogdill of Boulder, having learned his $10,000 investment vanished in just such a scheme, said, “I knew I should’ve bought in earlier.”

Since Madoff’s arrest, Wikipedia has reported a 500% increase in traffic to the Ponzi entry, as well as a 200% increase in user-generated article updates. Ralph Ludtener of Duluth, Minnesota was one of the millions who read up on the structure and execution of a Ponzi scheme. He noted, “That’s really slick. I could run an operation like that, no problem. People who live in Duluth are real suckers.”
Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox pointed out that the scale and modern methods employed in Madoff’s fraud may have earned it a classification of its own. “A ‘Madoff scheme,’ if you will,” Cox said. “You know, I started the Wikipedia page for the Madoff scheme. Check it out!” Cox vowed to friend all article contributors on MySpace.

MOGADISHU, Somalia—Survivors of a recent pirate attack near the horn of Africa reported the experience much more of a horrifying ordeal than a rollicking adventure.

The Somali pirates seized an Ukrainian cargo ship by approaching on three small speed boats. Crew members were surprised to see the pirates armed with machine guns and rocket propelled grenades, rather than the cutlasses, flintlock pistols, and hook-hands commonly associated with marauders on the high seas.

“I’d expected piracy to be a little more…I don’t know. Adventurous, I guess,” said crew member Yuri Dimitriov, lamenting the general lack of swordplay, swashbuckling and debonair wit exhibited by the pirates. “Mostly they just yelled and cursed. Occasionally they’d beat one of us. If I hadn’t urinated myself fearing for my life, I would’ve thought the whole experience was pretty disappointing.”

Some crew members were more realistic about the encounter. “We weren’t on a sailboat, so they couldn’t do that thing where they launch themselves at our mast, plunge a dagger into the sheet, and descend gracefully to the poop deck,” First Mate Gustaw Kovalevsky said. “And they were holding us for ransom, so making us walk the plank wouldn’t be practical, either.”

“It is what it is,” he added with a wistful sigh.

Economic experts anticipate the rise in piracy to increase costs for everything from oil to everyday goods as shipping companies plot longer routes avoiding pirate-patrolled waters. That doesn’t count the hefty ransoms paid to the pirates—ransoms which authorities can no longer be sure are being stashed on remote desert islands accessible only by following cryptic, circuitous maps.

Despite not having an eye patch or peg leg among them, these pirates performed efficiently, securing their ransom in fewer than 48 hours, leaving the Ukrainian ship as quickly as they’d come. But does such efficiency come at the expense of artistry?

“One crewmember, they shot in the stomach and let him moan there for three hours without once threatening to send him to Davy Jones’ locker,” Dimitriov said. “They had no concept of what piracy is. No style at all.”

In the wake of Circuit City’s bankruptcy, some book publishing industry leaders think consumers will instead flock to bookstores this holiday season.

“Now that people won’t be buying Hi-Def TVs, DVDs and Video Games this Christmas, we’re confident they’ll naturally go back to reading books,” a spokesman for Random House said. “No laptops? No problem! A book fits great in your lap. If the Man upstairs wanted laps to be used for computers, he would have put an outlet in your navel.”

The bankruptcy has influenced publishers and retailers to launch efforts to reach Circuit City’s tech-minded market, including marketing extra-wide books to would-be big screen television buyers, iPod-sized graphic novels with non-functioning earbuds just for looks, and puzzle books with pop-up Wii controllers to hold in one hand for comfort while getting used to using a pencil again.

“Maybe now consumers will finally see that the Kindle is an iPod for books that will pay for itself in five years … 20 if you buy paperbacks at flea markets,” a wild-eyed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said during an interview on The Today Show. Bezos spent the rest of the ten-minute segment helping host Ann Curry turn a page.

Small non-chain bookstores are also trying to woo former Circuit City customers. “We’ve recreated the whole Circuit City shopping experience,” said Fritz Menzel, owner of the “Books, Bagels and Brewskies,” a Milwaukee bar, bakery and book shop. “My clerks are hard-to-find, unfriendly and know nothing about books. Come on down!”

Tenacity. Discipline. Innovation. You lacked all of these qualities in 2008. Avoid another year of failure by adding these Top 10 Business Books for 2009 to your Christmas list.

1. The 4,867 Habits of Obsessive-Compulsive People by Stephen R. Covey—Succeeding in business means minding the details. This book covers everything from “Be proactive 117 times a day” to “Wash your hands six times before leaving the bathroom.”

2. Getting Shit Done by David Allen—Updated edition for Generation Z.

3. Good to Lousy by Jim Collins—Why some companies make the leap…and how to avoid being crushed under them.

4. Who Moved My Cheese? Episode 2: The Quickening by Spencer Johnson—Two mice enter. One mouse leaves.

5. How to Win Friends While Under the Influence by Dale “Budman” Carnegie IV—Includes classic tips like, “Buy the next round,” “Dude, you could totally take that jackass,” and “Stop staring at her boobs.”

6. The 40-Hour Work Week by “A. Boss”—Full text: “I don’t pay you to read books. Get back to work.”

7. The One-Minute Micromanager by Ken Blanchard—Three hundred pages of strategy that boils down to “Here, just let me do it.”

8. White Collar Crime for Entrepreneurial Dummies—A complete how-to for embezzlement, fraud and bribery, plus a razor-sharp back page for shredding the book.

9. Made to Suck by Chip Heath—Why some ideas survive and slowly choke the life out of your company.

10. Random Metaphor Adapted for a Business Setting by Seth Godin—The Tribes of the Big Red Fez kill a large Purple Cow to make a small Meatball Sundae because Small is the New Big or something.

Scientists at Gillette have won this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics for their development of the Gillette Samurai, the world’s first seven-bladed razor.

“They said man couldn’t fly. We flew,” said project leader, Roger Bigsby. “They said we couldn’t travel faster than sound, but we smashed the sound barrier. They said duct tape couldn’t cure warts … OK, we’re still working on that one. And they said a razor with more than five blades was impossible. Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “You can now have cheeks that will set new standards for babies’ bottoms!”

As recently as two years ago the scientific community scoffed at the idea of a razor with more than five blades. Field experts like Dr. Alexei Dotsenko, a physicist at MIT, assumed Gillette had reached the practical limit of shaving technology with the five-bladed Gillette Fusion. “Are we shaving or fencing?” asked Dotsenko in 2006. “We physicists have a saying—if God meant for us to shave with such razors, he wouldn’t still have his beard.”

Even before Gillette released the five-bladed Fusion, Bigsby and his team explored the theoretical possibilities of six and perhaps even seven blades. Traditional multi-bladed razors lift the hair as they cut, enabling subsequent blades to shave closer, but sometimes sharpening the hairs instead of cutting them off and causing an irritating medical condition known as “Pinhead Syndrome.” For the Samurai, Bigsby envisioned blades which became progressively sharper. The sixth blade, made of finely cut diamond, is sharp enough to cut through time itself, allowing the seventh blade to shave whiskers growing twelve hours in the future, eliminating five-o-clock shadow. “This was the real driving force behind Albert Einstein’s work on the Theory of Relativity,” said Bigsby. “His mistress hated stubble, not to mention that silly mustache.”

Bigsby dedicated the award to the brave scientists who tested the blades. Setbacks were many—five men lost ears, one cut off his nose and two were driven mad by constant nightmares of working in a delicatessen.

Finishing second to the Gillette team was the European Organization for Nuclear Research and their work on the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator. A close third was Scotty McFarlane, a Brooklyn teenager, for his iPhone 3G app “X-Ray Vision” that allows users to take pictures of women and make their clothes disappear.