This is from Alyn George.

Did you ever have any imaginary friends as a child? I didn’t, but I seem to be gathering more and more of them in the downhill stretch of the three score and ten. One of them, Bob (who lives in the Italian Capital) suggested the following little anecdote. He can’t submit it himself, as there are no ISP’s who are prepared to open an account for Imaginary People, so I’m submitting it because he’s my buddy. Bob’s a pal in Rome.

The European Union’s sports ministers were having a meeting to find a way to out-do the American’s on the playing fields. They decided that the sport to use as the vehicle for this feat would be Rugby Union, because most European Nations were pretty good at it but their North American Cousins weren’t. To rub salt into the wound, they decided to play on the name “Superbowl”. They would build a “Hyperbowl”, bigger and better that any stadium ever seen. It was then suggested that seeing as they already had a “Five Nations” Rugby tournament, that they should build five Hyperbowls, designated A through E. The Americans could never recover from such a coup. Everything was going fine with Hyperbowls A, B, C and D but the final Hyperbowl was way over budget, and it seemed likely that the project could be cancelled. The argument that eventually worked at extracting the required extra funds was: “Those Damn Yanks are always exaggerating the importance of everything they do — In order to beat them at their own game, we must have Hyperbowl-E.”