Monday, September 23, 2019

The Extremes of Vehicle Gendering

Recently, I've come across a couple vehicles in the town where I live that stopped me in my tracks.

They represented the extreme opposites of masculine/feminine duality that exists in so many aspects of life, apparently even in automobiles.

The first one was a truck that I saw in the parking lot of a liquor store, dubbed "The War Wagon" according to the spray-painted lettering on the side. It resembled a vehicle that would be present in a Mad Max, post-apocalyptic hellscape. I guess South Jersey is close enough...



Right down the road, I saw this pretty little Jeep at the local supermarket. Painted black with pink trim, and, yes, eyelashes on the headlights - this model of mobile femininity was the perfect balance to the gritty machismo of "The War Wagon".



BONUS!:

This is a RV that I've seen parked in various locations that I call "The Yahweh-Mobile".
It's covered in religious sayings, Bible verses, and the general feel of insanity that manifests through people covering their car in obsessive text or imagery.


Wednesday, September 18, 2019

MANDATORY BIPARTISAN LACTATION CELEBRATION


I recently posted about reaching 1 million page views, and it made me realize how rewarding my 15-year blogging journey has been. I've been able to share all kinds of interesting, weird, and awesome things. I've archived some of my own life and my creations, as well.

I am in my forties, and equal parts cynically jaded & also stuck in perpetual child-like wonder. I still love science, art, spiritual philosophy, and all types of knowledge- but the flood of information in modern digital media makes it difficult to pick topics of sufficient interest to share or discuss.

Especially when it comes to politics, I've become numb to the sheer stupidity and corruption of it all. When I was younger, this blog was a political forum for my disdain and ridicule of the George W. Bush Administration and neoconservative lunacy.

With the election of Donald Trump as President and our plunge into a political situation that is ridiculous and regressive to levels that were unimaginable previously, it is easy to want to throw up your hands and just say "Fuck it all". The human race will die out one day, the Earth will be swallowed by the Sun, which will eventually burn out, and the rest of the Universe will go on in the endless patterns of creation and destruction for billions of years. None of this crap matters in the cosmic scheme of things, yet here we are. So what do we do?...

I'll tell you what we do... we express the absurdity of the situation and break down mental boundaries like the artist know as Beeple (Mike Winkelmann). All of Beeple's art is mind-blowingly amazing, but I saw this gem on Instagram and was like,

"Wow, this is some exquisite non-sense!" 

This pretty well portrays the wackiness that we humans are immersed in right now.

MANDATORY BIPARTISAN LACTATION CELEBRATION 🇺🇸
by Beeple




Monday, September 16, 2019

The Monkey Buddha - 1 Million Page Views!

 
Between working my full time job as a graphic designer, keeping my side businesses going (Paul Micarelli Design and Fantasy Photos), helping my wife with our brand Conscious Living for You, being a husband, and trying to find time for myself, I haven't been able to post on my blog nearly as much as I'd like.

So, I opened up Blogger to post something tonight and realize that I missed a milestone I knew was creeping up...  The Monkey Buddha has passed 1 million page views since I started this blog, back in 2005!

June 28, 2005

It took me almost 15 years to get that many views, but I've never advertised or really promoted this blog in any way. It has always been simply a creative outlet for me to share and write about the things that interested me.

As you can see in the screenshot above, my most viewed post is, much to my continued amusement, "The World Was Always Awful".

I have had many people contact me over the years or leave comments through the blog. I've even met some friends and clients from it. It has been rewarding to hear how people enjoy enjoy reading it, and it's mind-boggling to think about how many people may have been affected, influenced, or just entertained in some way over all those years.

If you happen to be following The Monkey Buddha, or just landed on this post somehow, leave a comment below with your thoughts on this virtual information outlet I've created. Hopefully I can continue to post here for at least another 15 years! By then, I will be uploading information to the holo-blog through my Apple iThink implant.

This about sums ups my feelings right now:


Sunday, September 01, 2019

Super Zoom into a Pen


I saw this animated GIF on Reddit and loved how well it demonstrated something I've talked about on this blog many times. The Universe is not discrete levels - such as quantum, microscopic, macroscopic, or cosmic.

The Universe is actually a continuum that can be "zoomed" in or out to practically endless degrees.

This world , which we get to experience in our limited capacity, is infinite and full of incomprehensible detail.

Here is the trippy original video, titled "The Super Zoom," which is actually a digital rendering. It also shows the scales at which the zoom is taking place.