BODDY MANSION, Hill House, Thursday (NNGadget) — iTunes 8, released with the new iPods on Tuesday, causes Blue Screens of Death on Windows Vista. Apple and Microsoft enthusiasts quickly fell to heated message board discussion of which company was to blame — but equally quickly fingered the culprit.

“It’s Linux. Gotta be,” said Xbox Zune (name legally changed from Bill Softie). “It’s the only suspect that fits the facts!”

The Suspect, Weapon and Location cards revealed were Linux, in the Basement, with the Emacs Macro. But the motivation remained unclear.

“Yes, it was us,” said seventeen-year-old Debian maintainer Hiram Nerdboy. “And we’re proud.” A faint ammoniated cat piss odour came forth as Nerdboy ranted his confession. “Your effete desktops are a drain on the minds of millions! Mental resources they could use to learn simple tools like Lisp and Haskell! Is time actually cubical in nature? Your 3D desktops and games and shallow interfaces hide the true power, elegance and beauty of the command line! One Dimensional Desktop, with infinite compactified dimensions hidden inside like string theory — intuitive and obvious! I wrote an Emacs macro that plays one of my Ogg Vorbis sound files any time I like! How is iTunes easier than that? 4 simultaneous 24 hour Days within only 1 rotation of 4 quadrant Earth! Educated evil and stupid! LINUX SHALL TRIUMPH! … I’m sorry, I meant GNU/LINUX SHALL TRIUMPH! Sorry, Richard. Sorry. Sorry.”

“Geez, dude,” commented Mac user and first-day iPhone buyer Arty Phagge, “get a girlfriend. You’ll feel better,” he said, sipping his latte before his appointment to touch up his Apple logo tattoo.

In a completely unrelated incident, a red Converse-clad daemon and a blowfish, carrying a flag, were earlier seen leaving Apple’s Cupertino secure facility, snickering.

STENCH OF DEATH, Redmond, Wednesday (NNGadget) — Microsoft has discounted the entry-level Doesn’t-Do-Much Xbox 360 to $200 from Friday, $50 cheaper than the Nintendo Wii. (This will translate to a £250 price point in the UK.)

“We are thrilled to be the first next-generation console on the market with a big ‘Microsoft’ logo on it to reach $199, a price that invites everyone to enjoy Xbox 360,” said Aaron Greenberg, marketing marketer for Xbox. He says this will cause a “smash and grab” mentality amongst consumers. “And not ‘grab and smash’ as they throw it out the window when it gets a red ring of death again.”

The models that actually play anything worth playing will, of course, stay at $300 and $400. “But history shows that more than 75 percent of all console sales happen after the price falls below the $200 mark. Which would be the PS2, PSP and DS … uh, forget I said that.”

Greenberg assures consumers that the new cheap Xbox 360s will not be refurbished red ring of death casualties. “Not all of them. Honest. However, twenty Xbox lifts every morning will be much better exercise than Wii Fit.”

Microsoft Japan is already actually paying people to take the machines, with little success. “We hope more people will be able to enjoy Xbox 360,” said marketing marketer Takashi Sensui, “and we can stop enjoying quite so many of them. We also have this fine pile of HD-DVD drives … Wait! Come back!”

Greenberg further assured consumers that “the Xbox 360 will kick the PS3’s ass every way from Friday, you wait and see.” Nintendo were unable to comment in time for this story as they were still too busy trying to make Wiis fast enough to keep them in the shops.

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TEH INTARWEB, Silicone Valley, Friday (N! News) — Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing, has been contracted to write an awful, awful movie about Facebook.

“I can write funny and poignant television dramas and I can work a toaster,” said Sorkin. “So I thought, ‘how hard can this Internet thing be?'”

Facebook: The Awful, Awful Movie will tell the story of how Mark Zuckerberg invented binary digits as a toddler and the web browser in his Harvard dorm in 2004, and how every single person in the world joined up by 2007 to play Scrabulous Wordscraper. The planned sequel, to be filmed simultaneously, tells how Facebook solves conflict in the Middle East, cures breast cancer and, in Soviet Russia, pokes you.

Stars tipped for the film include Ben Stein as the history teacher with a heart of gold, Will Ferrell as the porn star with a heart of gold, Lindsay Lohan as the Myspace convert with a heart of gold, Keanu Reeves as the Wikipedia administrator with a heart of gold, Jessica Simpson as the idiot from high school who still sends you vampire invitations every week with a heart of gold and Adam Sandler as the Presidential nominee with a heart of gold. Uwe Boll will direct as the director with an ear of tin.

Facebook: The Awful, Awful Movie will be released direct to YouTube in late 2009 and no longer be available shortly after.

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