Panem Gloriosus- Chapter 9, Act 2, Strip 57

So, yeah. This happened. And I didn’t show it.

Depicting the actual match would have been pretty much a waste of time, since this was literally the most boring sportsball match in history. The Yuri Shinkai Gakuen team was severely handicapped by the difficulties of trying to propel a ball by hitting it with a small flying mammal. The bats didn’t enjoy it either. The team’s tactical approach of arranging themselves into various convoluted sex positions achieved complete surprise, both of the opposing bread as well as the officials and the audience. Unfortunately, that’s all that that approach achieved. And surprise, rather than enthusiasm, was also the only thing that the team’s cheering effort got out of the audience – no wonder, given that it centered around a large Egyptian pyramid with an utterly bizarre looking alien monster on top. That state of affairs would have called for quick corrective action by the team’s coach, of course…but he was unconscious in alcoholic stupor, aside from the fact that he didn’t know the rules of the game.

In short, an abysmal effort on every level, which should have lead to the team receiving a severe drubbing…if the other team wouldn’t have been just as bad, consisting of a single tin loaf with arms that were way to short to do anything productive. And his motivation wasn’t great to begin with.

So the game dragged on, scoreless, for ever and ever, until Bernd scored a single point in the final inning. Nobody knows how it happened, since by that time everyone watching was gone, asleep or delirious. Perhaps it was just a case of 50,000 monkeys at 50,000 typewriters…everyone kept making the balls got this way and that, so given enough time, sooner or later one of the balls was bound to end up in a place that scored somebody a point, on stochastics alone. Or perhaps one of the referees simply made a mistake…he might have gotten a fly into his eyes, or perhaps he was just sick and tired of it all.

Anyway: Congrats, Bernd. A well-deserved victory. You were the better team, by performing slightly better than not at all.

More on Thursday.