Yet still more of the same.

For an ordinary event in an exotic location I am looking for a concordance in the juxtaposition. Kicking stones is ordinary; kicking Stonehenge is remarkable. This is not actually a requirement of the exercise, however I think it helps. The object of the exercise, for me, is to learn about unusual experiences I didn’t know you shared rather than scoring ten out of ten for uniqueness. But I want any which find a match, or even a near miss, to provoke a worthwhile response. To this end, I think, if the description can strike a cord it will be more likely to get reaction. Also, if the event can be expressed succinctly there is more chance of a near miss. So instead of “skulled a pint of beer in Prague when I was fifteen” I would say:

4. Skulled a pint of Pilsner in Czechoslovakia.

See what I did there? Prague is in Czechoslovakia (or it was in 1984), as is (was) Pilsen, where Pilsner comes from, which was the beer in the pint glass. A concordant juxtaposition I failed to prepare earlier. Being fifteen at the time may be remarkable but I find it discordant. I also considered “skulled a pint of Pilsner in Prague” which scores points for alliteration but “Czechoslovakia” won because it ceased to exist in 1993 making the event a little less likely to be matched precisely.

Stop talking to him, he doesn’t know.

Janice tends not to pick things up from the floor of Veterinarian’s Hospital because her breasts are prone to escape from her nurse’s uniform when she bends over. To accommodate a shift in comedic paradigm of The Muppet Show from wit to slapstick while remaining firmly child oriented, Rowlf sent a request to the Wardrobe Department for alterations to Janice’s uniform. Inexplicably* alterations were made to Miss Piggy’s uniform instead, resulting in a breast retention failure similar to Janice’s but with significantly greater repercussions. Now both nurses must remain essentially vertical and Miss Piggy can no longer safely throw her head back to laugh, let alone collapse on the operating table. Rather than sending both costumes back to the Wardrobe Department to do what they were asked to do and undo what they weren’t, Rowlf has decided to lobby for a new season of scripts, redevelopment of the cross-sketch running jokes, and a general exemption from the paradigm shift. His position is: asking them to do their job would resolve the issue, but it might briefly generate some ill-will if he gets them on a bad day. If you pry behind the veneer of appeasement he asserts: if the wrong alterations were made to the wrong uniform, then undoing the wrong alterations and doing the right alterations to the right uniform is logically impossible.

*As in, no explanation was forthcoming because Rowlf didn’t bother to ask how the incredible cock-up was made.  ¶ 16:14