moths
Late summer is the season of moths. Every electric light left on at night seems to attract legions of them, relentlessly battering themselves to death against the bulb, shedding the fragile powder that covers their wings as they commit their tiny scorching suicides. Obsessively beguiled by the blinding brightness, it seems they just can’t stop themselves. Does any moth ever ask itself, “Why am I doing this?”
My old friend Neil recently reminded me of my favorite moth of all –
Mothra -, the mother of all moths, from the eponymous 1961 Japanese monster movie. He sent me an audio file of the Mothra song, sung by the Mothra twins, adorable miniature fairies that communicate telepathically with the ancient moth mother. In the first Mothra film, the twins (played by real life pop stars Yumi and Emi Ito ) appear in matching Chanel suits and jaunty Jackie Kennedy style pillbox hats. They try in vain to prevent Mothra’s giant egg from being stolen by evil businessmen from their home on Infant Island. What a great metaphor for modernity !
The original 1960’s Japanese monster movies were all about Japan’s loss of innocence as the first nation state casualty of the nuclear age. Godzilla himself, was a transparent trope for America – big and goofy, smashing up Japanese cities and withering the landscape with his radioactive breath. But nevertheless, he was kind of cute.
Like moths flapping at the window of a night-time kitchen, my tribe of WiFi enthusiasts in rural British Columbia clusters and presses against the side of a government building seeking proximity to a high speed data pipe. We bask in its flux of 802.11b, which like nectar feeds our ever increasing appetites for large downloads at high speeds.
WiFi Enthusiasts outside a rural British Columbia government building
