Adventures in persistent spoonerisms

Chipo[l/t]e 

The first time I ever saw the word chipotle, my mind inverted the T and the L and read it as "chipolte".  Then, after some time, I realized I had it backwards.  So I set a sort of mental flag. Whenever the word came up, I'd tell myself "Wait, you have it backwards, remember to invert those two letters." Then I'd successfully say "chipotle".

However, I didn't realize that I'd cured my spoonerism.  The mental flag persisted.  Whenever I went to say "chipotle" I'd stop and tell myself "Wait, you have it backwards, remember to invert those two letters."  Then I'd say "chipolte".

So then I had to tell myself "Okay, you got this, no need to invert the letters any more."  But it was too late.  I'd gone charging right past "chipotle" back to "chipolte".  So I had to tell myself to invert it again.

This pendulum has swung back and forth over the years, and somehow I've never arrived at the ability to permanently and consistently pronounce or spell "chipotle" correctly. No matter where I am in the cycle, I seem to get it right less than 50% of the time.

I looked it up multiple times while writing this post, and I'm sure I got it wrong at least once.  (Weirdly, spellcheck isn't consistent about when it gives either spelling squiggles.)

Jolelujah 

The internet told me that Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah (link is to the k.d. lang version because that's the one that speaks to me) and Dolly Parton's Jolene can be sung to each other's tunes.

I tried it out, and it turns out they can! The choruses you have to fudge a bit, but the verses work perfectly - and Leonard Cohen's melody really adds a delicious anguish to Dolly Parton's lyrics.

Then I had the idea of a comedic arrangement - the singer starts singing one song and somehow gets lost and ends up in the other, or, perhaps there are two singers trying to upstage each other and getting stuck in each other's songs.

So I was workshopping this in the shower, trying to figure out how the comedic timing worked, and I suddenly lost the ability to sing the verse melody of Jolene.  I tried, but it kept coming out as Hallelujah!

So when I got out of the shower I listened to a recording of Jolene and got that melody back, but then I lost Hallelujah - it kept coming out as Jolene!

Now I can't hold the melody of either song, even when I'm trying to do just one song without any mashups whatsoever.  It keeps changing, it's completely beyond my control, and it never comes out the same way twice!

And, to add insult to injury, it never once comes out with effective comedic timing either!