Signs of the Times in dekePod Episode 001

In the latest installment of dekePod, you learned how to cover up your petty juvenile criminality by tricking Photoshop into giving you an alibi. One of the misdemeanors used as an example was rearranging the letters on a sign to change something innocuous . . .

into something, well, plain silly if slightly scatological.

But I know y’all count on me to give you the behind-the-scenes scoop. Fact is, the original, real-world photos that Deke wanted to use were just too, um, distractingly vulgar, even for we hardened denizens of dekeWorld. Of course, that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to show them to you, because we are. (Caution, the full article contains some exceedingly creative and crude language. The young and pure of heart should go no further.)

We didn’t want you to be snapped out of your pure juvenile enjoyment of Metadata Forensics, What a Crock by this:

Vulgar sign, front

Or, Heaven forbid, the flip side of that same sign:

Vulgar sign, back

With the exception of the school names and the blacked-out letters, these are actual real signs that Deke shot next to a bucolic street near his house in Boulder, CO. As Deke remembers it, “It was the end of the school year, and these kids had managed to open the sign and rearrange the letters when no one was looking. Can you imagine the creativity and daring required to pull that off? And they say public school doesn’t inspire the imagination!”

The irony, of course, is that real signs created by real middle schoolers were judged to be to racy for dekePod consumption, even with the black-outs. Plus, we didn’t have the “before” versions. And, mad anagrammers that we are (we’ll kick your ass in Scrabble), we don’t have the kind of experience with vacuous school signs that we’d need to reverse-engineer the real “after” signs into their humorous-by-way-of-contrast “before” states.

Enter the awesome Ryland Sanders, who not only has a cool website where you can make personal church and school sign pictures yourself, but who also supplied us with emergency high res versions of our Pilkey-esque creations that would be adequate for our video needs. We raise our martini glasses to you, Ryland; thanks, man!

Next entry:Bring It On: Team Deke-ster Spotted Answering Digital Photo Questions

Previous entry:Blurring Live Text with a Drop Shadow

  • I still wish we had used those

    Those signs aren’t vulgar, they’re clever. And they paint a riveting story. One of these pranksters wanted an anal probe on February 25. That’s the start of a really great narrative!

  • Degenerate Generators Unite!

    Look! I came up with a subject!

    Ryland’s stuff is awesome. He has so many generators—one of my faves is the Concert Ticket Generator—http://www.says-it.com/concertticket/—which I use quite often.

    Mordy Golding


    http://rwillustrator.blogspot.com

  • aw shucks, ma’am

    Thanks for the kind words! I’m glad I could help out. You guys did a great job with the podcast, too!

    I hope Mr. Pilkey is feeling better these days… poor guy. Those toilet pee pee sandwiches can’t be good for his ulcer.

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