Associated Press, 23 minutes ago

It’s a strange world out there, and it’s about to get stranger as the Google pac-man has announced its intention to eat up multi-billion dollar corporation Wal-Mart, as if it were a magic cherry.

“I’m sure this will make us invulnerable to ghosts,” said co-founder Sergey Brin of California-based Google Inc. “I get more worried about them every year. Creeping around my house and stuff. Dead stuff seriously gets to me.”

The first change that will be implemented involves new ways to search and buy groceries and household items.

“It’s all going to be manual at first,” said Nicholas St.Ratnick, head liaison between Google and Wal-Mart. “You’ll walk up to a desk in Wal-Mart and ‘search’ for an item you’re looking for, say mayonnaise. An employee—most-likely underpaid and a bit disgruntled—will go to the shelf for you, bring back all the jars of mayo plus other things that we’ve found mayo-consumers are also likely to buy. We hope this will all be automated in the future. You know, like technofied and futuristic.”

When asked if the Wal-Mart name will be kept, Brin said, “We’re dropping both names in favor of a more resonant trademark. After several board meetings, we’ve settled on the name Goomart—I like the way it rolls off my tongue.”

Both Google and Wal-Mart stocks dropped after the announcement.