THE TECH GRAVEYARD, Cupertino, Thursday (NNGadget) — Steve Jobs, visionary leader of Apple Computer, has died — and come back, better and stronger.

The news was carried in an obituary run by Bloomberg late last night, which was pulled when news of his resurrection came through.

“They don’t call it the Jesus Phone for nothing,” Jobs laughed with reporters, before eating their tasty, tasty brains.

Jobs’ new cyborg arsenal includes wifi, 3G, laser cannons, a flame thrower and a can opener, all running on Mac OS X Robosteve. Bundled applications include an enhanced hypnotic force field based on the one he uses at MacWorld keynotes. “I can’t wait to try it on Bill,” he said.

Disney, in which Jobs is the single largest shareholder, remained unaffected. “Steve’s just working with the way we do things here,” said the disembodied computer-hosted soul of Walt Disney, who was decanted to a computer in 1966 to avoid being declared legally dead, so that copyright in his works would never, ever run out.

MORDOR, Redmond, Thursday (NNGadget) — Microsoft (NASDAQ: MNPLY) has hired comedian Bob Hope to anchor a $300 million advertising campaign for its struggling Windows Vista franchise.

The software maker is desperate to counter popular Apple ads that personify PCs as un-“hep” and not “with it,” while portraying Apple’s Macintosh as the “happening scene.”

“We felt that resurrecting Bob from the dead and putting him in front of our campaign was just the way to upgrade Vista’s image,” said Kevin Johnson, the fourth executive to be in charge of the development of Vista, just before he quit this morning. “It was also cheaper and easier than actually fixing Vista.”

“Braaainnns,” said Mr Hope.

Few businesses have upgraded to Vista from Windows XP, citing Vista’s cost, incompatibility with older software and hardware and intrusive security features. And twenty years’ pent-up hatred of Microsoft.

The campaign was created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, whose entire workflow runs on Macs.