The Sandusky Tribune

Mitchell Coombs, the reigning champion and the only three-time titleholder in league history, underwent three hours and forty-five minutes of reconstructive sinus surgery on Tuesday and, in keeping with the customs of this league, transmitted the proceedings live from the bed.

The particulars were disclosed voluntarily and in greater detail than anybody had asked for: a deviated septum, inflamed turbinates, and nasal cavity walls weak enough to collapse inward under the pressure of ordinary breathing. Insurance covered the majority. Some $2,600 was paid out of pocket, timed deliberately against a deductible the family expected to meet regardless, there being a baby coming. The league's foremost practitioner of acquiring assets below market value has now applied the method to his own face.

He framed the operation as a celebration of the title, and executed an orderly transfer of power on his way under, ceding the franchise to his wife for the duration. The league found the handover considerably more dignified than the last one.

The bedside conduct of his colleagues is preserved in the archive in full. Two items belong in the permanent record. Mr. Clark's congratulations took the form of an unfavorable review of the previous nose. Mr. Clegg, a practicing dentist, requested the wife's telephone number on the stated grounds that he had trades to propose to whoever was now running the roster.

A third item is a matter for the legal desk. Mr. Didericksen asked the sedated man whether he had "obliterated" the surgery — an attempt to invoke the Obliterators Curse against a party under general anesthesia. The invocation is void. The Curse binds the declarer, and the declarer was asleep.

The splints came out a week later, and the champion issued the first public health advisory in league history: anyone who cannot breathe through his nose should have the operation, because "breathing is really cool." Commissioner Oldham promptly disclosed a deviated septum of his own, together with the six weeks of prescribed nasal spray he must complete in order to demonstrate that lesser remedies were attempted first. He remains, in this as in all things, one round behind the champion.

Mr. Israelsen's employer is running a competition scored on professional-network engagement. It concludes September 30. He is in second place, by 368 points, to a gentleman from operations named Felipe.

This newspaper notes the structure of the thing without judgment. The league's official Collusion Expert — a title earned by orchestrating the 2018 trade-for-nothing scheme and never rescinded — is conducting an openly coordinated engagement operation involving eight grown men, their wives, and, in his own solicitation, their loose acquaintances. He is losing it anyway.

The method has refined considerably since the first appeals, which produced nothing. Nobody in this league will comment on a post about synergy. Everybody in this league will comment forty times about soda. The Friday tier list is the solution: a ranked board of consumer goods, published mid-morning, engineered for the express purpose of making eight men angry in public on a professional platform.

The zero-sugar edition performed exactly as designed. Within an hour the commissioner had demanded a tier below the lowest tier available, the Chubby Chasers had filed the entire board as worthless while disclosing a preference for the diet formulations over the zero ones, this newspaper's editor had proposed violence against a stranger and declared any placement of Pibb above the bottom tier a war crime, and the newest member of the league had produced the only genuinely useful observation of the day: "It's all zero if you don't think about it."

Proposals for future editions, all rejected: car brands, shoes, and optimal girth; the religions of the world; and a ranking of ethnicities by industriousness, submitted in writing by the commissioner of this league. Mr. Israelsen ran fruit.

His own assessment of his position, filed Friday: "I need a hit here."