The Deadly Follies of Stick Figure Warning-Man

This is a repost from Multiply that I wasn't able to import

I have the worst freaking job in the world.

You know those warning signs you always see with the stick man falling down or being crushed or otherwise incurring bodily harm? That's me. I posed for those pictures.

My entire purpose in life is getting hurt so we can put up signs to protect people who are stupid and/or illiterate. Is it really worth it to go through all this pain and humiliation just to ensure the safety of someone who doesn't realize that if they stand under a parking garage gate long enough it will eventually hit them in the head.

Aren't we better off without these people?

Ah, well. Even a stick-man has got to make a living somehow (my cousin is the guy who lets you know when it's safe to cross the street. Lousy jerk doesn't know how easy he's got it).

I'm Stick Figure Warning-Man, and my follies are meant to serve as a cautionary tale. Look upon my works and weep.

Or just be glad you're not me.

I've done so many of these damn slippery floor signs that most of them just blur in my memory, but this one stands out.

The director of the shoot kept going on an on about going for artistry as well as functionality and all that B.S., and how he wanted a shot of me landing right on my tailbone. We just kept doing take after goddamn take for hours.

After about take 50 or something I start to notice the crew and the director are snickering, and I realize they'd just been screwing with me the whole time.

Jackasses.

So anyway, the next morning I got up early and buttered up the steps from the directors trailer really good. He comes out for his morning mocha or whatever and his feet just going flying right up over his freaking head.

As they were loading him into the ambulance, I managed to get up beside him and whisper, "doesn't seem so funny now, does it, smartass."

But by then he couldn't hear me.

Let me see if I've got this straight.

You shouldn't put hard objects in your cupholders. Like, for instance, CUPS!

This is what happens when idiots who bump their heads in an accident have to go suing everyone that can get their hands on. You people have to have your precious sodas while you're driving, but you want them to be magically held in place when you go careening off the exit ramp.

So I have to do a shot of myself banging my head like an idiot just so a car company can avoid your moron lawsuits.

I blame the stinkin' lawyers.

Here your obsession with hyper-caffeinated sugar-saturated carbonated beverages gets me in trouble again.

It's not bad enough I'm about to get crushed to death by a pop machine, but for some reason there are goddamn lightening bolts striking me in the head at the same freaking time.

Just how stupid does someone have to be to get hit by the arm of a parking garage gate? Let me count the ways:

1. These arms don't stay up long. If you're able to stand under it, odds are very good you just saw the damn thing go up. So, even if somehow you've never seen one of these before, you know how they move. What goes up, must come down - even if your idiotic melon head is under it.

2. You're hanging around right in path of oncoming traffic. Frankly, a little bump on the noggin isn't even the greatest danger to you.

3. You enjoy just standing there in parking garages.

Now, I understand that homeless people occasionally climb into dumpsters for warmth, but this signs warns against playing in them. PLAYING!

Who the hell is playing in dumpsters?

Anyway, just in case some idiot kids want to play in dumpsters, I had to do it for this picture. Did they get me a nice, pristine, new dumpster for the shoot? Hell no, they had to go for authenticity, and I wind up with a face full of rotting food, broken glass, and God knows what other crap you people throw away.

Have I mentioned I hate my job?

God, I hate it when they do this. I'm working hard here - I put my face right in a damn explosion. I even got one of those orange blasts right through my frickin' head, and what do they do with the picture?

They put one of those damn red circles with a line through it right over most of my body. C'mon people, I think the big explosion in the face made it clear enough that this is something NOT to do without ruining the subtlety of my work.

Can we give people NO credit?

Sheesh.

Here's the wife and kid at the supermarket. Did you know as stick figure people we don't even really need to eat? It's true. Notice they have no food in the cart.

Still, we do this kind of thing just to keep you safe. The kid loves it, he never sits still - not even if daddy has had a very, very long day getting his head slammed or falling off things or crushed under heavy objects.

No, junior doesn't care - he just wants to play, play, play! Like daddy is some kind of jungle gym made just for him! He's a little hyperactive monkey I tell you!

Oh, I love him, though.

I have to.

Here's the precious little angel with his favourite toy in the world.

I work like a freak to buy him whatever stupid must-have toy the advertisers are shoving down our consciousness at the moment, and what does he want to do? Climb in a damn bucket.

See what happens when you take a job where you get smacked around all the time and inhale fumes and get electical shocks? Your kids come out morons.

Boy, do I remember the day we shot this one.

Normally, I get to work alone, but every once in a while they bring in somebody else I gotta deal with. For some reason it wasn't good enough to just send hazardous voltage coursing through my body. Oh no! No, this time they gotta send sentient anthropomophic hazardous voltage coursing through my body.

This guy isn't acting either. He's every bit the jackass he looks like in the picture.

Here my son almost gets zapped while visiting Stratford, Canada.

There, though, power stations aren't just protected by warning signs, but also talking, baseball hat-wearing seagulls. They do things differently up there. So, anyway, he was safe.

Well, not safe from the seagull, though. The seagull pooped on him.

I know people love walking on the tracks of subways and elevated trains. It's why it was SO FREAKING IMPORTANT that I get this picture taken and save thousands of geniuses from getting crispy-fried and delaying commuters.

You know, if you're dumb enough to walk on subway rails and get zapped, you probably also need to be warned that if you wait around long enough, you're also going to get hit by the damn subway cars! I'm surprised they didn't have me pose for a picture of that too!

Wait! Scratch that! Forget I said that!

Here, AGAIN, I have to endure some serious voltage for no good reason. Couldn't they just have used the one with me getting zapped by the electrical cloud with the face again?

No, of course not, that would be too goddamn simple. Some jerk got it into his head that for his generator he'd really like a shot where you see my insides getting the old Texas correctional treatment.

Of course, sometimes I wonder how dangerous this whole high-voltage stuff really is. I mean, isn't this how lots of super-villians get started?

I know I'm often trying to make the point that these signs aren't necessary, but could there possibly be a LESS necessary sign than one that basically states: "Please do not sit on the giant chainsaw?"

Come on!

And yes, I'm just a stick figure and my leg can be reattached, but that doesn't mean getting it cut off doesn't hurt like hell.

Whatever happens to someone who willingly sits on a giant chainsaw, they deserve it.

Case closed.

Here we learn that if you're unlatching your truck tailgate, the tailgate may actually open!

Wow!

So don't wave at your friends while doing so.

And with larger trucks, you may get smooshed completely then walk around for a little while in the shape of an accordian.

I seriously think I've been maybe a couple centimeters shorter ever since doing this shoot.

So I'm hanging out with my buddy the other day after work, and he's going on and on about what a lousy day he'd just had.

"Oh, the phone just kept ringing off the hook and my customers just kept complaining. Wah, wah, wah. And, oh, it took me soooo long to get my spreadsheets to balance. Blah, blah, blah."

And he goes on like this for the longest time, ball-babying about how rough his desk-jockey job is, and then he finally turns to me and says, "So, how was your day?"

"Well, pal, lemme tell you..."

They forgot to add that rotating driveshafts can also turn you into a damn cartoon character and make your body do things any biologist worth his beaker would say were completely impossible.

OK, now I gotta go see my chiropractor.

Shooting this warning was not only excruciatingly painful (so what else is new), but also damn insulting to my integrity as a professional.

I show up for this shoot not knowing what kind of sign I¹m going to be shooting for (which is damn annoying to begin with because had I known it was going to be YET ANOTHER shot of me getting electrocuted by a damn electrical box, I could've just told him to use one of the many I'd already done).

So, the director tells me they've got to set up for a while, and I should just relax while I wait, and, oh why not grab yourself a donut out of that innocent little cabinet over there.

So I reach in to enjoy some doughy goodness and ZAP! I get blasted with a damn lightening bolt. The crew is cracking up, and the director, through his jackass smirk, tells me I'm all done ­ they just got the shot.

So I ask him what the heck he thinks he's doing, and he tells me ­ get this ­ he wanted to spring it on me so they could "capture the image of genuine surprise and alarm."

I thought about explaining to him that I'm a pro and had made my damn living by selling surprise and alarm, but my temper got the better of me and I decided to capture my own genuine image of surprise and alarm by kicking him in the goodies.

Most satisfying lawsuit I've ever been served.

What I don't understand is why we couldn't, just for the sake of the picture, simulate this potential hazard using, say, water or soda or bourbon or pretty much anything other than SCALDING HOT PRESSURIZED OIL!

Damn it, people, a little imagination!

Plus, they painted a heart and a vein along the outside of my body and it took about 47 takes until they were able to blast me right where the line started. 

"Well, I know we've had Stick Figure Warning Man come in and do shots of being hit by tailgates, and falling off tailgates, but what if ­ now get this ­ somebody didn't know they would also get hurt if they got hit by a tailgate with boxes on it!"

"Oh, we'd better call him in again!"

Jerks.

I can't even enjoy doing the damn YMCA in peace.

So I'm talking to my buddy, Stick Figure Don't Litter Man, about how much I hate my job and how I'm thinking about quitting the business.

"What would you do?" he asks me.

"I don't know. You've got a pretty sweet gig, maybe you could set me up with a Don't Litter job or something," I replied.

So he tells me he'll think about it. The next day he calls me and tells me he thinks maybe I should just get out and have some fun - relax and clear my head - and he invites me to go golfing with him.

So we play the first couple holes, things are going well, I'm actually feeling a little better about things and all of a sudden Stick Figure Don't Little Man starts driving the cart like a freaking maniac. The bags go flying out of the cart, my beer goes flying out of the cart, and then I go flying out of the damn cart!

And, as I do, I hear the familiar flash of a camera.

Turns out the whole golf outing was just a set-up to get me to do another warning sign shoot!

My "friend" tells me he just did it for my own good, that I needed to get back on the horse.

Creep. In real life he litters like crazy, too!

Then, after the last shot gets taken, I started storming away from there. With friends like Stick Figure Don't Litter Man, who needs enemies?

Then this happens.

I swear I'm going to kill him, just as soon as I can walk again.

So, I got the call for this gate job, and it really didn't sound like that bad a gig, compared to the usual anyway. Just a little scraping and crushing from a moving gate, not too bad. Plus, they wanted me to bring the kid along, not to also get crushed by the gate, but just for a simple running shot they could put the "no" sign around.

And that should be a good thing, right? I mean, I should be happy to be able to spend a little extra time with the kid. I was happy about it. So, first of all, the gate hurt a helluva lot more than I expected. Why do we need such forceful automated gates? What happened to people just opening gates with their own body? What happened to people doing ANYTHING with their own bodies? Damn automatic door, remote-controlled, moving parts world is causing me a lot more grief than is really necessary. Still, that's what pays my bills, so whatever.

Anyway, I get slammed around and scraped up for a while by the damn flying metal gate so the director can get the shot just right. Then when he does, he announces he wants to set it all up again to shoot the other half of the gate doing the same thing?

So I just blow up at that point.

"We can't even trust people to figure out BOTH ends of the gate can crush them? We can't just show me getting crushed by ONE side and let people realize that the other side is the same?"

No, we could not.

"Can't we just use the picture we just took and flip the image since everything about the gate is exactly the same?"

Apparently, we could not. We had to go through the whole damn ordeal again with the slamming and the crushing and the pain. In the end, of course, they did just take the best picture from the first side and reverse the image. LIKE I SAID! Idiots.

Then they get the shot of my son, five minutes, no problem. So the kid has been waiting around for me all day, and he's been pretty good, so I let him run around and blow off some steam while I talk to the producer and just finish up some final business arrangements. They're tearing down the equipment and one of the trucks with the lights is heading out and I hear this sudden horrible clanging and crunching noises and an ear-splitting scream.

It's my idiot kid, of course, and he's gotten caught up in the moving gate.

Everyone got a big laugh that Mr. Stick Figure Warning Man had let his son play on or around the moving gate right. Yeah really funny, jerkholes. Funny if you don't have to drive home with him blubbering in the backseat all the way and get crowned by the wife with a rolling pin when you try to explain.

Man, my life.

So this is how it NORMALLY works. Normally, for one reason or another, someone decides their product needs to have a warning label and they call me or a member of my family in to do a photo shoot to put the label together.

Sometimes, though, sometimes they actually get the idea for the warning in the first place because of something that happens to me... or someone in my family.

That damn kid scattered my Warrant CDs all over the living room.

This warning sign goes on the side of a garbage truck. I tell you this because, you might not realize this, as you don't actually SEE a garbage truck in the picture.

Of course, I got stuck with one of those pretentious directors who are obsessed with "capturing gritty reality" or whatever so he makes us actually shoot this using a real garbage truck.

Full of actual garbage.

Rotting, stinking, garbage. Prancing ninny.

I honestly thought they were kidding when my agent called me about this one.

"Hey, SFWM, I got you another gig!" he said.

"Great," I replied with the usual contradictory mix of being glad for the work and weary fearful anticipation of what the work would actually involve. "What do I need to warn people about this time?"

"Stairs."

"Stairs?" That couldn't be it. "Stairs on fire?"

"Nope."

"Icy stairs?"

"Nope."

"Those stairs you see in cartoons sometimes that suddenly flatten without warning and send people perilously cascading downward?"

"Nope."

"Is there anything," I asked, "particularly unusual or dangerous about these stairs?"

"They're on a bus," he replied.

"A double decker bus? A bus made of butter?"

"Nope. Just the regular entrance stairs on a regular bus. They want you to act out how someone might trip on them."

OK then. I've certainly had much more dangerous and painful gigs in my day, but I'm not sure I've ever had any stupider.

and finally....This was a warning sticker that I shot to be placed on the back of a juicing machine, because apparently some of you mouth-breathers are under the impression that you make the juice by pulling the entire machine, from the back, down on top of the oranges. Next time, try using the actual device on the front, geniuses. 

~The End~