thinking about ants… there was a scene in Oldboy [maybe this is kind of a SPOILER but i’ll try to keep it general] where Oh Dae-su, the main character, is describing a dream he had - we actually see this - where ants start coming out of his skin and crawling all over him as he is watching tv. Lee Woo-jin, the female lead, tells him that often times very lonely people report halucinating about ants [Oh Dae-su has been deprived of human interaction for the past 15 years], but that she never did… at the same time we see a flashback (?) of her alone on the train crying and looking over at a human-sized ant sitting at the other end of the train car from her… her dream is sad, but humorous while Oh Dae-su’s is horrifying… his reminded me of the ants crawling out of the hand in Un Chien Andalou while hers reminded me of something else i can’t quite put my finger on… something more recent… still surreal…

then i was reading something about open source and the possible solutions to complex social problems being found in a society where information is shared freely and openly… which brought me back to that great book Godel, Escher, Bach which uses ants to discuss the models of programming and complex networks that move toward self-awareness… i can’t put my finger on it, but there is something that doesn’t quite make sense here… maybe something to do with the critical mass [close to mob mentality] of ants and their colony mind being compared to humans and the open source idea… not sure i like that… also the fact that when people are lonely they begin to identify with ants and the colony mind… maybe that’s why there was fear… the uneasyness associated with the ant reference in most movies… fear of a loss of individuality, autonomy… not sure.

anyways, ants are kind of interesting… i think i posted some amplified ant sounds awhile ago… maybe i’ll have to dig that up and listen as i learn to program java…