Sigh. If only this were real, but alas it is not, as indicated by the “Created” date for the photo. I wish I had a dollar for every time I looked out a window and wished there were a tornado cruising the horizon, destroying all in its path. Good for entertainment, bad for the local economy.
Apocalyptic weather such as this was rampant during the summer of 2004. Or so the TV weathermen and a few local “experts” would have you believe. Granted, we did have some severe storms, but people tend to exaggerate for effect (such as me). The cycle tends to go like this: a heavy storm hits, an elderly tree falls over, people assume only a tornado could be strong enough to inflict such damage, ergo a tornado struck. Next thing you know, local TV crews are interviewing drunken winos who witnessed the twister, shyster vendors are selling T-shirts on street corners bearing the phrase “I survived the tornado of (insert date here)” and subsequently the local weathermen go out to talk to the vendors, get a free T-shirt, share a few laughs and oh, what fun! Then the exact same thing occurs a week and a half later.
Personally, while I love the thrill of a good storm, I hate the cretins who misinterpret the weather (especially the local weathermen). Granted I’m no meteorologist, but whenever we get a severe thunderstorm warning, the local weathermen seem to make matters worse rather than bring a calm. For example, WHAS’s John Belski will interrupt scheduled programming every five minutes to spaz out and order everyone in the viewing audience to flee to their basements and pray to whatever deity they worship. For God’s sakes, you half expect the man to be hauled off stage by an oversized cane (or a couple of the men in white at least). However, I digress.
I created this picture the very afternoon after one of the aforementioned storms cruised through the Highlands. People by the dozens claimed that they saw a tornado migrating through the area mere minutes earlier, despite evidence to the contrary. After all, there was a tornado watch in effect, so a funnel cloud MUST have damaged half the city. So to mock them, I created this photo in about two minutes. Very minimal effort on my part. I printed it out with a heading stating: “The Day After Tomorrow was Here Today! Taken at approx. 4:30 P.M. May 30, 2005,” and placed it in the box office. I thought it was rather funny since we had just opened “The Day After Tomorrow” that weekend.
Within minutes, I had customers astonished at the photo, claiming that they had seen that same tornado in the Highlands at the same time and only wished that they had their cameras to take a photo of it as well. Fools. It’s another example of how stupid the general populace is. Show them a pretty picture and say it’s real, and they won’t even question it. If only this photo had been real though. I might have gotten a night off.
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