Former Congressman Tom DeLay To Help Debug Microsoft Vista

Redmond, Washington, April 29, 2006 -- Tom DeLay, the disgraced and indicted former exterminator turned former congressman who recently stepped down from his post as the disgraced former House Majority Leader in order to "spend time teaching orphans to gerrymander" has been hired by Microsoft Corp. to seek bugs in the long-awaited, cantankerous and top-heavy Microsoft Vista operating system, the long-overdue sequel to the long-despised, cantankerous and top-heavy Microsoft Windows XP.

"We think, given his long experience as an exterminator prior to his career as a disgraced congressman, as well as his spectacularly lax code of ethics, his status as a member of a brutally persecuted religious majority, and his innate skill at illegally redrawing electoral boundaries in his party's favor, Mr. DeLay will be an excellent addition to our debugging team," Spyro Flintax, technical coordinator for Microsoft, said.

"On top of that, due to Mr. DeLay's remarkable adroitness at back-alley political machinations, we've already received an advance order from the Republican Governors Association for 1,780,000 copies of Windows Vista. They don't seem to mind that, in its current form, the operating system generally wipes the hard drive of any hapless PC you happen to install it on."

Mr. DeLay, according to Mr. Flintax, will personally supervise a team of dedicated "bug-hunters" at Microsoft Corp.'s Redmond, Washington headquarters.

"He has the tools, he has the know-how, and he has the kind of damn-the-torpedoes, take-no-prisoners, I'd sell my own grandma down the river for a moth-eaten sawbuck kind of mentality we need in a dedicated bug-hunter," Mr. Flintax said. "Once an exterminator, always an exterminator, we say around here. Tom DeLay is the right man for the right job at the right time. And besides, the bastard's unemployed."

Mr. DeLay, according to a spokesman for Mr. DeLay who identified himself only as "Deet", said he is confident he can help Microsoft Corp. get Vista to market "no more than another eight to ten months behind schedule" even if Mr. DeLay is forced to perform the majority of his duties from behind bars.

"Most of the better white-collar prisons have a discarded PC or two sitting in the library or propping open a door in the ping pong or mah-jongg room," Deet said. "So I don't think it will be any hindrance if Tom DeLay is doing hard time while he's also working as a Microsoft consultant. In fact, I think if you asked most Microsoft employees, they'd pretty much stare at you blankly and ask what the hell the difference is."

Tom DeLay, again speaking through spokesman Deet, said he "expects that looking for bugs in Microsoft Vista at a salary of $40,000 per week is going to do a lot more to help orphans than if I were just running around on the street teaching them how to stuff a ballot box. These kids need to know someone out there is gunning for an operating system that, even though it will drain all the available electricity from a 20-mile radius and dim your lightbulbs until they look like sad little brown pears in their sockets until they pop, will still let you play half a game of Harpan on the Internet before it crashes. I think I'd think that's important, if I were an orphan or some other wretched little parasitic burden on upstanding tax avoiders."

Mr. DeLay is expected to assume his Microsoft Vista bug-hunting duties by early next week, dependent on the timing of his mandatory court appearances.

By Ion Zwitter, Avant News Editor