Gift of the Merger

My balls are jingling with the hopes of enterprise, readers. Christmas time is the time for expansion! You know what that means—merger. Merger, merger, merger!

Of course, I realize I don't have any money, which is to say none of the business' private money, and even on my own considerable wealth I may lack the necessary fundage to merge with another business. Or another successful business at least, heh, which is to say a successful business since the commune is generally considered a complete failure. But that is only as you base the financial prospects as a mark of success. I think the commune contributes immeasurably to society even if it doesn't turn a dime of profit, so that's only a partial failure in my book.

But I don't have to worry about money around this, the most "wonderful" time of the year. That's right, bitch—it's Christmas! Hot frozen egg nog on a stick! Say a little Christmas prayer for me!

How could you not love Christmas? People give you things for free and you don't even have to have incriminating pictures of them. It's the bomb, yuletide bomb. My biggest respect, or at least false respect, is held for that big rube of Christmas crackers, Santa Claus! Yow! Line me up for a free gift, sir, thank you very much.

Now everybody knows there's not really a Santa, hopefully you're all old enough you don't need a conspiratologist to tell you so. No, not a real Santa, but it's a proven fact someone else has probably proved that the post office takes all those letters to Santa and delivers them to the richest 1% of the nation. Yahoo! That's how all the presents get under the tree.

And I, for one, am not planning on being left out. You may have seen on the news ten years ago when a mysterious stranger purchased the world's biggest stocking for a record auction price—guess who. And "Santa" is legally obligated to fill every bare inch of the thing, so that was well worth the investment after two or three Christmases. Five, if you're a big financial details sort of asshole, but I don't care what Gay or anyone else says, it is not "a big fat smelly sock you went into hock to buy." It is a pure gold magnet. And unlike the one I bought from that prospector, this one actually works.

But a freakishly large stocking bought from the man with the world's largest foot is only part of my plan for world domination (the friendly kind, I mean). My next plan is a big whopping merger. To guarantee that's what I'm getting this Christmas, I spent all my time writing Christmas letters to Santa ever since the end of Thanksgiving. Which is to say I've paid the commune staff overtime and freed many reporters from their reporting obligations to handwrite letters to Santa since we all know they have machines that prove you photocopied, and that pisses them off. I'm getting a merger, that's for damn sure.

Microsoft, Wal-Mart, News Corp., I'm not too picky. And don't think I'm too greedy either. If I was I'd be asking for a complete hostile takeover, mine of theirs, and that's not what I want. I just want a friendly merger. I want our two brands to be compatible, forced compatibility if necessary, and for our brand loyalties to extend to the other's customers. I want Wal-Mart shopped everywhere reading the commune by this time next year, and hopefully by the same date commune fans will be shopping at Wal-Mart instead of simply living there.

The nation's wealthiest men can certainly spare that, considering I've been such a good boy. Besides, I'm technically in the top 2% of the nation's wealthiest people, so I'm sure with a little hedging they would like to have some new blood on their stodgy old list. But either way I'm dead set on getting that merger, if for no other reasons than it will shut my brother Gay up about the company never turning a profit. So by the start of next year, look for the wealthiest commune yet! Or should I say the Amazon.commune?

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