Consistency

"Dear Pesky Plumbers,

the Koopas and I have TAKEN OVER the MUSHROOM KINGDOM!

The princess is now a permanent guest at one of my seven koopa hotels!

I DARE YA to find her!"

Yes, this is the perfect prank. You just need to leave this note with the pet shop owner, and he'll be thoroughly confused. He could spend days running around trying to find the right plumbers, figure out where the Mushroom Kingdom is, and looking up what "koopa hotel" means.

You drop it off in his mailbox and night, then quickly run off before anyone notices you. You take a shortcut through the nearby alley and...

Wait a minute. There's a Koopa Hotel right across the street from you! What the heck? You were sure you made that up!

What are you going to do about this?

I lost my contact lenses can you help me find them?

You try to ask the stranger for help, but he just stares at you blankly.

Oh, of course! You're not listed on his contact lenses! And without your own, you don't have an identifier to communicate with his lenses, so he can't hear a word you say.

Looks like you're on your own, unless you can find someone who already has you in your contacts. Unlikely when you're this far from home, though.

Well, where are you going to start your search?

Create a jetpack with a violin, flowerpot and puppet stuck in it.

Yes! This will be the perfect entry for the "Least Creative Inventor" contest. There's no way you can lose!

Wait a minute... that guy at the table across from you just stacked his violin, jetpack, flowerpot, and puppet! And the woman at the next table just kind of dropped hers on it and isn't doing anything with them at all!

Damn, these guys are good. You might have to engage in a little sabotage. But only the uncreative kind, of course.

So what are you going to do?

bring it back and shuffle right

Yeah, there's no sense making a scene, you're in enough trouble already. You'll just have to do what the instructor said: get that stray card back from wherever it flew off to, and then shuffle the deck properly. It's a pain, but what else can you do?

You look out the window to see where the card ended up and... oh dammit, it looks like it fell into one of the tar pits.

Considering how much the school paid for these cards - and, by extension, how much you'll have to pay for a replacement - you're going to have to figure out some way to get it out of there and clean the tar off. So what's the plan?

do not doubt it

Okay, sure, that makes sense. You don't doubt the sign that says "DOUBT THIS SIGN".

So you're going to trust it and... doubt the sign? Wait, no, that means you don't doubt it. Only that means you doubt it?

Oh damn it, now you've got one of those logic headaches. What did you have to do to cure those, again?

sequel sequel sequel

Yeah, there isn't much choice. "Sequel", the movie that was a sequel to every movie ever written, was a smash hit, and the only thing you could really follow it up with was "Sequel Sequel". And that was an even bigger hit!

So, yeah, you're going to write Sequel Sequel Sequel. The studio will eat that right up.

Ugh. And then you'll have to write Sequel Sequel Sequel Sequel a few years down the road. Geez, you don't want to keep doing these for the rest of your writing career. Isn't there any way out of this?

> Bat bat bat bats.

Oh, right, that's what you're doing here. You've come to the small European nation of Bat to report on their martial arts tournament, and the controversy surrounding their equipment.

The country is home to an unusual species of flying mammal that have very long, thick tails and tough skin. For centuries, Battians have used these creatures as melee weapons, holding them by the tail. Over time, the practice has been more regulated and used for recreation rather than revolution.

Nonetheless, animal rights activists have condemned such battles. (Or "bats", as local slang calls them.) They note that even though the creatures aren't physically harmed by the practice due to their durability, it's still pretty cruel to just take an animal and hit it against another animal.

You're hoping to get statements from the tournament organizers, the protestors, the counter-protestors, and random people on the streets. Really, anyone you can find with an opinion on the matter.

So who are you going to ask first?