Okay, I realize this is actually supposed to represent someone shoveling, and that that act stands in for construction work generally...but the key items of info that need to be graphically conveyed in that case are: (a) there may be a person on or near the roadway; and (b) the person is there to do construction work. But why the anonymous artist felt the need to depict our worker's load at all (when it's just a distraction from the essential act of shoveling), why the load appears to be the upper portion of the pointy spire of hair sported by the boss in Dilbert, and why the shoveling implement apparently comes equipped with some sort of heavy-looking, triangular basin-like arrangement...that's a mystery. Either that, or the sign shows a person who has just speared a hitherto-unknown suit of cards (a mutant crossbreed of clubs and diamonds, with diamonds' redness apparently being recessive) with a poker of sorts.
Fortunately for construction workers everywhere, such musings have not distracted me to the extent that I go careening into them as they work.
4 comments:
I think this icon is commonly referred to as "man urinating on rock"
Jeff, you're not looking at it right. It's not a side view of a shovel and its load, it's a skewed 3/4 top-down perspective view of the shovel with no load (i.e. it's turned slightly towards the viewer so you're sort of looking at the top of it). Just adjust your perception a bit and it's obvious.
Although I do like the urination explanation.
Rog - I really can't see it. The closest I get is a sort of psychedelic freak-out view in which we're seeing, somehow, the other side of the shovel, which is upside down, but with a part of it rendered translucently to assist in perspective. A/k/a "M.C. Escher's Stoned '70s Dormroom Shovel-Bearer."
Anony - Man, what'd this guy consume? His urine's eroding the rock away!
Obviously, the problem is that you don't play video games. This is known as the "isometric" view, for some reason.
Also, large doses of hallucinogens help.
I'd draw you an ASCII-art representation, but I'm not quite that bored yet.
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