Never prank a guy who knows Photoshop

Call me "gullible" or call me "the new guy." Call me "exhausted" or call me "feeble." All four names where applicable last week when I got pranked and ran a photo caption with the wrongs names of two Phillips County residents underneath a picture on the front page. Fool me once, shame on me...and prepare for payback.

I attended the VFW/ American Legion Chili Cookoff two weeks ago and met a bunch of new people. I chatted them up, wrote their names down and snapped some pictures. Three of these people where dressed-up in Mexican garb for the event, one of whom I knew to be Kari Hould. Her cohorts, however, I wasn't familiar with. After I snapped a picture of the three, I inquired as to what their names where. The two kind gentleman told me that they were Chris Barthelmess and Richard Dunbar. I was really pleased with myself when I already knew how to spell "Barthelmess" and though the name "Dunbar" rang a bell, this kindly soul didn't seem familiar, but I took him at his word...rube that I am.

Of course I know who Richard Dunbar is. I have talked with him two dozen times over the last year and have taken his picture at least three times.

As I sat designing the paper on Tuesday morning, it struck me as odd that I couldn't place Dunbar (keep in mind that it was the 17th hour out of 20 that I had worked in that time span.) With other things needing to be done, I stopped questioning myself and pulled the trigger, caption done.

Wednesday morning rolled around and the paper was out. Once the words are on the printed page, there is nothing that can be done ...typos and spelling errors are on display for at least the next seven days for people to point out. Kari came into my office at about 10 a.m. and let me know that I had been duped. It seems as though Barthelmess and Dunbar, or so I thought, used their Poncho Villa getups at the cookoff to pull the wool over the editor's eyes. The culprits, AKA Greg Oxarart and Troy Blunt, got me and they got me good. (Laugh it up, boys, payback is on the horizon.)

It is one thing to mess with a reporter at a daily newspaper. The mistake/prank would go unnoticed by most of the readership and would go away quickly. A weekly paper is a different animal. Any Phillips County local who saw this picture quickly knew that I was the rear-end of a joke. What Mr. Oxarart and Mr. Blunt didn't think about was the fact that I have all week – in fact years and years – to repay the favor of playing a prank on me.

Payback starts today gentlemen. I am not sure how long the payback will playout for? Maybe just this week or maybe over the next 30-years...I have nothing but time, sirs.

As luck would have it, I was able to snap some other pictures of Oxarart and Blunt on Sunday night. What follows bellow is the first of many pictures I was able to snag of the two gentlemen.

Enjoy, fellas.