WILMINGTON, N.C. – Local man Charles Sniffer got more than he bargained for last week when he…
Okay, I can’t do this. Steve, if you’re reading this on the site, I apologize. I know you told me to fix the grammar mistakes you flagged then throw this up, but I have to go rogue with this one. I can’t wrap my head around the picture you put with this. That’s all I can think about. I couldn’t sleep last night because I was just trying to unravel this photo.
Let’s start with what I know. I know the way you choose photos for articles. You go to a free stock photo site and grab the first thing that is even in the ballpark of relevant to the piece. The original headline was “Convicted Bank Robber Gets Lower Sentence By Bleaching Shirt Collar” (hey, they can’t all be winners). So, going off that I’m assuming you searched “robber,” or “criminal,” but neither of those even begin to explain this image.
Look at this guy! He’s a traditional old timey black and white striped shirt robber. That is the full list of things I understand. Let’s start with the obvious, where he’s robbing. He appears to be comically sneaking away from a children’s hospital. Why?! What do you even steal from a children’s hospital? Is he taking medicine or drugs? It makes no sense to add the specificity of “children” in that case. Is he kidnapping a child? Assumedly not, since the robber’s sack has a logo on it. Now, I’ve seen $ symbols on these bags before. That’s a stock burglar classic. This guy has the Blackberry cell phone logo on his sack. Does he work for Blackberry? Does he only steal popular mid-2000s branded cell phones? Is the children’s hospital the best source for them?!
His shirt says “Blart Hoffman.” Who is Blart Hoffman? I went through thirty-two pages of search results and there isn’t ONE single occurrence of the name Blart Hoffman anywhere else on the internet. Is he Blart Hoffman? Does he want people to think Blart Hoffman is the one robbing a still unnamed resource from a children’s hospital with a Blackberry branded burlap sack?
You can’t possibly tell me this combination of ideas is so commonly requested for internet content that a stock image site put this shoot together, his shoes are hamburgers for christ sakes, but if this was made for one specific piece of work then why go through the trouble of making it free for mass distribution! It has three thousand downloads. THREE THOUSAND. Why hasn’t it been brought up before? I am going insane. I emailed the site! They didn’t see anything peculiar about it. They said “Yeah, that’s Blart Hoffman.” THEN WHY DOES HE WEAR THE MASK? THE MASK IS POINTLESS IF HIS NAME IS ON HIS SHIRT!
I am being pranked by three thousand and two strangers on the internet. That is now my most logical conclusion. Thousands of anonymous people in the privacy of their homes or offices have decided to push me to set my laptop onto the train tracks near my apartment complex.
OR, maybe it goes deeper than that. Maybe I AM Blart Hoffman. Or You are! Maybe… we always were.
NO! Enough. It’s just a weird stock photo. They happen all the time. I have to stop getting hung up on this right now. I’m over it! Someone wanted a stock photo of a burglar for their site, they used extra props and locations they had on hand, and the weirdness is just one big coincidental oversight. Nothing, more, nothing less…
Wait… Is there a person in the background in a mime in a disguise? WHY IS THE PERSON IN THE BACKGROUND A GOD DA-