We live in a growingly visual society.

It's something that Journal photo editor Ryan Soderlin has tried to emphasize to me repeatedly over the past couple of years, and apparently, it has sunk in.

When a report of an overturned semi trailer came in over the scanner Tuesday, I didn't instinctively go looking for a reporter to rush to the scene. Instead, it was back to the photo department to get Ryan and multimedia producer/videographer Tim Appel out to the scene of the accident.

It turns out that the overturned semi was actually a home that had been blown off the back of said semi. And while reporter Andrea Cook did follow up on the I-90 mishap for a story, the story really is in the images.

The change has been effected. A younger version of me would have never thought to send a photographer first in this instance, and the thought of even having someone shoot video would have seemed completely foreign.

Of course, it helps when your photographer is a solid reporter as well. But the truth is, as readers become more visually oriented, so do we.

Here's a few of the best offerings from the AP visual vault from the past few days. And, as always, remember our video "vault" can always be found by clicking here.

The Earth swallowed my car!

Talk about a bad day.

So your driving home in suburban Georgia when suddenly you get this falling feeling. When you come to amidst the smoke and the car alarm, you realize your car has been swallowed hole by the biggest pothole you've ever seen.

And as if that isn't bad enough, authorities say they can't immediately tow your vehicle out of the hole for fear the tow truck would be swallowed up by the rain-weakened road. So you wait, and while you wait, someone vandalizes your car.

And then your neighbors start dissing you because even though some neighborhood vandals removed the orange construction cones and police tape marking the area of the sinkhole, they are blaming you for the crash because you should have known there was a car-eating hole in the roadway.

And just when you think it couldn't get worse, somebody from AP video shows up and records it all for the whole nation to see.

Yeah, talk about a bad day.

Facebook fowl-up: Obama assassination poll pulled

A cousin of mine who played in the NHL through the 1960s and into the 1970s had the nickname "The Mad Bomber." It stemmed from an incident when the team was boarding a plane one night and he joked about bringing a bomb on board.

Not funny. At least, not at the time. These days, even less so.

The person who put up an online survey on Facebook asking whether people thought President Obama should be assassinated would probably give good money and maybe more to get away with only a nickname and some serious scorn.

What they will likely face is something far worse as the U.S. Secret Service has launched an investigation into who penned the poll, a poll that more than 700 people responded to before it was pulled from the social networking site.

It's a bird, it's a plane … it's …. it's … it's Super Grandma

92-year-old Jane Bockstruck celebrated her birthday this month with a flawless 13,000-foot plunge from an airplane. She took the 120-mph free fall in front of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Orange, Mass.

Needless to say, that's one brave grandma, nay, great-grandma.

And in this corner, a 22 foot long King Cobra

In one of those has to be seen to be believed kind of videos, residents of a village in northern Thailand make their living from what they call boxing matches with snakes. Trained snake fighters go eye-to-eye with venomous king cobra snakes.

And if that isn't amazing enough, youngsters also partake in the wickedly dangerous sport.

Sex offenders in the woods

The print version of the story of nine people on the sex offender registry in Georgia living in tents in the woods because of strict sex offender laws certainly got a lot of attention when we posted to the Web site on Tuesday.

The video takes a different track, interviewing one of the offenders and his dilemma. It also gives a little tour of the tent town.

Meanwhile, the state has evicted the sex offenders from the woods. What's next? Who knows.