My heart goes out to the Buddhist monks of Malaysia's Hong Hock See temple, which is besieged by ants. Due to their strict adherence to principles of nonviolence, the monks won't kill the ants, and so far have been unsuccessful in relocating them.

Not long after I became a Buddhist, I stopped killing spiders in my house. These days I take a sheet of paper, get the spider to crawl onto it, and then carry the spider outside, where I set it free. Flying insects are similarly relocated using the old hand-over-a-cup technique.

That said, I still kill ants with impunity. There's no relocating ants. You arrive home to find your kitchen overrun with ants and there's only one thing to do: Spray 'em down with Windex and watch 'em die by the thousands. Stupid ants.

I have much to learn before I could ever be a monk.

David Lynch insists that his new film, INLAND EMPIRE, is simply about "a woman in touble." I'll say. It's hard to describe what Laura Dern's character goes through over the course of this fantastic and initially grueling three-hour experience, but none of it is anything you ever want to experience yourself, that's for sure. It's like imagining yourself living the life of Henry, the doomed protagonist of Lynch's first feature, Eraserhead. You shudder at the thought. more...