“Hey, Bugs!”

“What’s up, Daffy?”

“Did you hear the news? Our new bosses at AOL are gonna lay off more than 2,000 staffers. What are we gonna do?”

Relax, featherbrain. They’re not going to fire their stars.”

“Oh, yeah? I already heard that they let a few reporters go over at CNN.”

“But they’re not toons. They can’t fire us. They’ll can those musicians over at Warner Bros. Records before they ever fire us.”

“You think so?”

“Sure. After all, if it came down to, say, Don Henley or Pepe LePew, who do you think they’d let go first?”

“Well, Don of course.”

“Exactly. So you see, Daffy, when it comes to acts like Barenaked Ladies and Green Day or lovable cartoon characters like Tasmanian Devil and Road Runner, who do you think is still going to be around after the bloodbath?”

“Why, us of course.”

“And why is that?”

“Because a good toon never dies. But, I’m worried about Sam.”

“Yosemite? What about him?”

“Haven’t you heard? He set up a file sharing program on the Net. He calls it Samster, and people have been using it to swap song files by bands like Colin James, Jackyl and Brad Paisley.”

“That Sam, what a moroon!”

“And did you hear about Coyote?”

“No, what?”

“The script called for an anvil to drop on him.”

“So?”

“But instead of an anvil, he got hit with a banner ad for AOL’s Instant Messenger.”

“Look, Daffy, there’s nuttin’ to worry about. In fact, our shop steward, Porky, is meeting with Steve Case as we speak. Oh, look, here he comes. Hey, Porky, what’s the good woid?”

“Th…th…th…”

“Come on, pal. Spit it out. Tell Daffy here that he has nothing to worry about.”

“It’s tt…tt..terrible, Bugs. They’re making everyone over fifty take mandatory retirement.”

“That’s despicable.”

“No, th… th… that’s AOL, folks.”