First it was the Watchmen; now it's Lost. I am filling my head up with drama, human drama. But in each case, there's something else going on - little puzzles that reveal themselves, giving the experience more depth than just entertainment.

So far, the Watchmen achieved greater depth than Lost. But, again, I'm only in the early stages of my journey through Lost. It's interesting to see how each experience changes my awareness of the real world. For instance, there are all sorts of themes and parallels tying together each episode of Lost; there are even more details woven together in Watchmen. Suddenly, I start noticing details connecting in life.

Today there was a sudden influx in the number of ants in the cottage. I think the culprit was some sticky buns that my mom left for me on the counter. Ordinarily, I would have eaten them the first day back, but the weekend ended with massive amounts of sugar, leaving me disinclined. I've discovered ants in the cottage before - one or two each week - but today I must have killed almost a dozen. They're not the little, annoying ants but the big black ones. Nice and slow. Not too hard to take care of. But I've disposed of the sticky sweetness and wiped the counters down. I'm not a big fan of killing insects - the Jains believe they could be your great-grandfather making amends - but what else to do with ants in the house in the middle of winter? Build them a solarium?

All this reminds me I should get back to reading Walden, which I put down last weeks ago. He had a much different relationship with ants, one that I could maybe learn from: not how to deal with ants but how to look at them.

As if to prove their point, an ant just crawled across the bed. This seems to support the theory that the ants are just bored, exploring the house for fun. Or they have that parasite that makes them do crazy things, like the parasite that infects a mouse's brain making him fearless and eaten by a cat - which is where the parasite wants to get. I guess in the ant's case it's a fungus.