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18 Comments

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The Travails of Mr. Stickman

By Val Dodge

Mr. Stickman has the toughest job in Toronto: keeping you safe. In a day’s work, he gets smushed, crushed, beheaded, befingered, mangled, strangled, thrown, blown, ground, and crowned. And unlike the relatively delicate spokesmodels who calmly remind you to mind the gap or not to trespass, Mr. Stickman is willing to give the extra effort and actually demonstrate the consequences of not following the rules. Wherever danger lurks, Mr. Stickman plies his educational trade. He endures every manner of indignity, accident, and disfigurement that you can imagine, all in the hope that you will learn from his painful and sometimes deadly misadventures. What follows is a small sampling of his daily work around Toronto.

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Comments

  • rek

    This takes me back to middle school; I drew pages and pages of a stick figure (modelled after my friend Erik) undergoing all manner of gruesome deaths. I don’t think trucks and electricity featured so prominently.

  • minou

    I’ve also taken photos of the signs at Riverdale Farm (“Caution: Cows may butt”) because they always make me laugh. There’s also the one that we’ve renamed “Don’t pee on the pig”.

  • Mark Ostler

    I remember an amusing warning sign in Ireland that simply showed a car driving itself off a cliff.

  • james a

    There’s an awesome flickr pool devoted to this: http://flickr.com/groups/stickfiguresinperil/pool/

  • PickleToes

    So in the course of taking these pictures how many times did you have to ignore the warnings the signs gave?

  • andrew

    Obviously at least thrice; I wonder if you could get away with slapping an additional warning sign that simply says “IF YOU’RE READING THIS YOU MAY JUST BE ABOUT TO DIE A HORRIBLE DEATH. LEAVE NOW WHILE YOU STILL CAN”.

  • David Toronto

    Mr. Stickman on the pedestrian walk signal doesn’t have any ankles!

  • rek

    Torontoist, a known warren of socialists, communists and criminals, now promotes dangerous situations to our children and glorifies accidental injury and death!

  • PickleToes

    rek: Thank you for confirming first hand what I already knew about this place. I guess promoting dangerous situations now helps you make the case for universal healthcare later.

  • Marc Lostracco

    I have a similar image from a John Deere riding mower from my childhood burned into my mind which showed the mower blade flaying a foot laterally at the toes, with the upper and lower bits of the foot splayed out grotesquely. Picture yourself kicking a horizontal lunch meat slicer blade with a bare foot and you’ve got it. Thinking about it still gives me stomach flutters.

  • David Toronto

    @ Marc Lostracco
    Have you ever come across the term; collywobbles?
    It’s the same thing, but in one word.

  • andrew

    And yet…pickletoes is still here. Trolls are impervious to injury, warnings, and irony, it appears.
    I should really lay off.

  • jennyfish

    This is too funny…especially when Mr.Stickman breaks out in his dangerous, hazardous, forbidden dance!!!

  • PickleToes

    And yet… andrew is still here. I guess Cuba and China weren’t really that appealing to him after all.

  • Ben

    And yet…pickletoes is still here.

    You could have fooled me.

  • andrew

    Oh-ho! What a funny little tool. But why would I want to deprive myself of a daily dose of vitriol and stupidity? If all I read is our maoist groupthink, am I really deriving pleasure from Torontoist?

  • David Topping

    I think I pretty much have to post an article about that script.

  • rek

    Sweet. I don’t have Grease Monkey installed but maybe I will just for this script.