For those unfamiliar with the awesomeness, this is what their first album sounded like.

OH JESUS IT BURNS!!! OH GOD!!! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!!!1

*Sigh* Oh rednecks, is there nothing you won’t attach to your trailer hitch?

Hitch Hands - Middle Finger for your Trailer Hitch

via Strange New Products

I stop what I’m doing and peek out the window by my desk. In Georgia, that blaring tone meant a tornado had touched down somewhere within a mile radius, and it would seriously behoove me to shuffle my ass down to the basement post haste. But it was a clear and sunny day, with only the barest hint of a breeze and not a cloud in the sky.

Great, I thought. The Reds are attacking.

The first place I went was weather.com to see if there was some freak weather event occurring outside of my field of vision. No weather alerts had been issued for the area, and the current satellite picture exactly described conditions outside my window. Phew! Next I did a Google search for “Minneapolis sirens,” and wouldn’t you know, they test the damn thing on the first Wednesday of every month. Mystery solved! Evidently all was calm and business as usual in the Twin Cities, and the Wednesday drills were just something I would slowly grow accustomed to.

Shortly after this revelation, the warbling tone stopped.

Now, what does it say about me that, when presented with a loud and piercing warning tone, my first instinct is to check the internet to confirm the presence of danger? I didn’t panic, I didn’t run to the streets, I didn’t even call anybody. Where would I be if it wasn’t for Google search? I’ll tell you, I’d still be cowering in the Southwest corner of the basement, ducked and covered under whatever furniture I could find down there.

It must be a generational thing. People my age literally use the internet for everything, and it would really be peachy keen if the government could make use of the system at the speed of events. I would much rather get a text message that says “Hennepin County says RUN!” or “This is only a test (beeeeeep)” than have to run to a computer, TV or radio to figure out what’s going on.

Photoshop Disasters has quickly become my new favorite blog. In newspapers, digitally manipulating an image can amount to a blacklist-able offense; in advertising, however, it’s par for the course. We all know that beauty magazines airbrush the hell out of their subjects, but when it’s done right, the changes are imperceptible. Images can only be taken to a certain degree before they start tumbling into the uncanny valley. What Photoshop Disasters does is compiles some of the laziest, most egregious uses of image manipulation ever to be unleashed on the general public.

This is what bugs me when people ask if I “know” Photoshop. Yes I do… technically. I know what all the tools are, what they do and how to switch between them, how to select certain parts of a picture and stack things using layers. Does that mean I know what do do with those tools? Partially. I have a laundry list of parlor tricks I can perform with reasonable accuracy (so long as you’re not looking for anything sharper than 180 dpi reproduced on newsprint). Am I any good at it? Not really. But I’m learning.

At least I know not to play fast and loose with perspective and bizarre limb-lengthening.

[I]f Seinfeld episodes like “The Soup Nazi” had aired ten years later, think of how much more grating the reaction would have been. Millions of images of Jason Alexander emblazoned with the caption “I LIEK SOUPS.” Millions more pictures of the Soup Nazi, posted in retaliation: “NO MOAR SOUPS.” Naruto music videos based on the joke. Soup references in every webcomic. Soup Nazi cosplay. Peak Oil reached. Ron Paul elected President. The world’s volcanoes erupt in unison. All because the Internet ruins everything.

How to Ruin a Joke

The room is dark except for a few orange wall torches throwing a dim light down the curtained hallway. It’s hard to make out, but ever so often I catch a glimpse of the macabre: skeletons shackled to the wall, a corpse hanging from the rafters, the velvety lining of a partially opened coffin leaning in a corner, a painting of Whistler’s Mother holding a bloodied axe. I feel my way along the stone walls to keep up with the rest of the group.

Suddenly our guide throws the switch for the fluorescent lights overhead. Much of the magic and mystery evaporates, and I find myself in a room filled with latex and foam props awaiting the next October.

“Over here is a harness,” the guide says, gesturing to the corner where an elaborate rope swing is docked, “where the talent can swoop in and scare folks coming around the corner. You can see the spot on the floor where he lands.”

It’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m at World of Fun in Kansas City, Mo., with my roommate and his two coworkers, all employees of Valleyfair, getting a behind-the-scenes tour of the park’s Halloween Haunt accommodations. We’re in the vampire chamber, which sits unobtrusively in the middle of the park in an old roller coaster docking station. Caleb and Dave ask tons of questions, taking mental notes of designs and concepts to borrow for their own ValleyScare creations. Kara snaps tons of photos. I drink in the theatrics of it all.

We made the six-hour drive the night before, stopping for chili dogs and burgers at Sonic (at Kara’s giddy request) and loading up on liquor and mixers at a nearby grocery store. Ostensibly this was a business trip for the park employees to check out the facilities and gather ideas to take back to Valleyfair and improve their guests experiences. Really it was a chance to ride some bitchin’ coasters and gorge ourselves silly on overpriced food. And ride and gorge we did.

I do love me some roller coasters, but I’m in no way a connoisseur like my compatriots. For one, I am an unabashed screamer, much to the amusement of anybody stuck sitting next to me. Two, I can count the number of different parks I’ve been to on one hand, so I don’t have the largest frame of reference for comparing thrills. The big hit of the day was definitely The Patriot, a hanging coaster with steep drops, loops and barrel rolls. That and the Finnish Fling — and old-school centrifuge where the floor drops out. Evidently, there aren’t that many still in operation around the country, and we had the privilege of seeing two. More on that in a bit.

We took a lunch break and headed over to a nearby casino to load up on piles upon piles of fantastic KC barbecue and beer. With a pound of meat per person, it was kinda hard to walk after lunch. But after stopping by the cabin and cracking into the liquor, we were ready for more park punishment.

Now, I hate to say it, but I’m a bit of a weenie, and I fell asleep shortly after we retired for the night. Evidently I missed some shenanigans. All I’m saying is when I woke up, Kara had shoved herself into the cabinet under the sink, convinced it’d be a good place to spend the night. Her bottle of vodka was nearly empty. I did the math.

In the morning we grabbed some sobering Waffle House and hit the road to come home. Or so I thought! We ended up at Adventureland just outside of Des Moines for another day of ride hopping and midway games. Adventureland is, well, interesting in that I’ve never seen an amusement park run entirely by geriatrics. Seriously, all the ride operators were retirees in their 60s and 70s. I suppose it saves on security, since it’s hard to act like a total toolbag in front of somebody’s grandparents. In any event, the big winner here for me was the Outlaw, a winding wooden coaster that crushed my cigarettes on the first drop (no joke), and another Finnish Fling, which went by some other name which I can’t remember because the operator left us on it for a full six minutes.

All in all, a great weekend. Although I’ll be happy if I don’t see another corn dog or Icee for a couple of weeks. Check out the rest of the photos here and here.

So why is this so great? It’s and acknowledgment that all these seemingly light humor pieces floating around the tubes are actually powerful tools which can rapidly forge bonds between people around the globe. Randall Munroe put it more succinctly than I ever could:

XKCD: There is a mindset that people share, but aren’t aware they share. XKCD helps them discover each other.

I collect lolcats. I even went as one for Halloween. Being plugged into these memes will one day help me in my career. The best way to talk to geeks (heck, any group) is to speak their language, get inside their heads and show that you’re one of them. Genuinely.  We know what missing the mark can look like. Whether through direct references or via the same channels of communications, this is the way advertisers can most quickly reach Gen-Y.

I will know that I have made it in this industry when I’m pulling down mad money to slap Impact cutlines over photos of cute animals. Just you wait.

Here’s a closer detail shot:

Pastor Roger Byrd said that he just wanted to get people thinking. So last Thursday, he put a new message on the sign at the Jonesville Church of God.

It reads: “Obama, Osama, hmm, are they brothers?”

Byrd said that the message wasn’t meant to be racial or political.”It’s simply to cause people to realize and to see what possibly could happen if we were to get someone in there that does not believe in Jesus Christ,” he said.