Rorschach Monkey & Lucifer Sam

Rorschach Monkey

The map below is a "cartograph", or visualization of the political maps of the US, based on the 2008 Presidential election. These were published by Mark Newman, from the University of Michigan. These visualizations are supposed to provide more acuracy than the traditional red-state/blue-state mapping system, this is done by county, using Red, Blue or shades of Purple, based on their percentage of vote.

  

Let's play my favorite new Tosh.0 Game shall we? It's called: 'Rorschach Test'. Simply blur your eyes and look at the image above (like cloudwatching). See the monkey?

  

I am reminded of two things when I look at this:

  

1) Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit, a 1992 philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn about a highly evolved, telepathic Ape who spends his time examining mythology and sociology as they relate to ethics and sustainability. 

2) The monkey from Bruno Bozzetto's: Allegro Non Troppo, an Italian parody of Fantasia that skewers capitalism like a ripe tomato at a shish kabob.

Just like in Fantasia, the entire film is a collection of short cartoon vigniettes, set to pieces of classical music. In the piece featuring Ravel's Bolero, we get to see life evolve on a planet from a drop of coke that some astronauts tossed asside while visiting.

From early on, the monkey is causing problems for everyone. First he clobers some guy and steals his fur.  Then he happens to discover fire when a bolt of lighting zaps a tree in his path. After that, it's on. He immediately runs around setting everything on fire.

The next thing you know, skyscrapers are popping up everywhere and the animals can't figure out which way is up. Everything gets destroyed in the end, except for one giant man with a shit-eating grin on his face. His head cracks open and out comes the monkey.

And of course, who can forget Planet of the Apes?

  

Lucifer Sam

  
This one, on the other hand:

This Map uses the same color scheme, but with each of the counties scaled to visually show their population size. The idea is to help us see the voter breakdown by population more accurately. Producing an oddly shaped but recognizable map.  

  

I'm sorry, I'm not normally a religious man but, but when I look at this, I see 3 things:

 - Oil on water

 - Leaping flames

...And finally:

Two Demons discussing the fact that apparently, one of them has a huge Florida-shaped Penis which seems to be doing it's best to inch it's way out of the shot and go spread havoc elsewhere.

The slightly portly, churubic guy on the left -- who I can only assume is Beelzebub is, dare I say, rather Chenyesque. While the well hung Lucifarian leading-man character on the right (the one driving the wings) bears a striking resemblance to ol `Dubya.

Apparently, when the world blew up (again), these two assholes were the only ones left who were rich enough to survive, albeit susspended in some sort of artificial, science-fiction, CIA developed, nano-particle based, amniotic breathing fluid that happens to look just like the flames of hell.

Go figure...

  

More information about these visualizations ca be found here:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/