#this is also true in a literal sense—you have less tastebuds and taste things less intensely as you grow older so you can appreciate

[runawaycarouselhorse]

[coldalbion]

Tastes on Rain

Zorya Vechernaya:  “I can taste you on the rain. What else can I taste?” Mr Wednesday: “War.”

Now, I’m honestly not sure as I begin writing this, whether this is fandom Meta for the AMERICAN GODS tv show, intertextual analysis, or a post on Heathen mysticism. It’s probably all three, despite and because  of the fact that while fiction is not the same as religious experience to the experiencer, it can nonetheless reveal certain essentials from a new angle. The book by @neil-gaiman and the show are not religious texts, any more than the Eddas are. What they share is that they are stories, told by humans, about the nature of divine and semi-divine figures. Figures that, really, are beyond questions of existence vs non existence. They simply are, and that beingness makes them big enough that we’re still telling and relishing their stories even if we do, or don’t, believe in them - thousands of years later .

And that’s important, because it says something about being human. Spoilers for S1E03,and AG as a whole below the cut.

When two old gods reminisce, what happens? Oh, to be sure, some of it’s flattery - McShane’s Wednesday’s velvet tones weaving a spectacle of glamour and long lost glories, of heat and wetness in the face of chilled old bones. It’s a con-job and Leachman’s eldest of the three sisters knows it, and knows-Wednesday-knows-she knows. Zorya informs him it will rain now, and Wednesday the lech, the lover asks when she was ever  afraid of getting a little...wet.

For all that most human stories are about sex and death, and for all the show has not stinted on the sex-scenes, with all due respect to Bilquis, goddess of love, Queen of Sheba, this episode is perhaps the most sexual - if we understand sex as something more than coitus and a pleasurable exchange of fluids. If we see it as intercourse, what do we have?

intercourse (n.) mid-15c., "communication to and fro," ("In early use exclusively with reference to trade" [OED]), from Old French entrecors "exchange, commerce, communication" (12c., Modern French entrecours), from Late Latin intercursus "a running between, intervention," in Medieval Latin "intercommunication," from intercursus, past participle of intercurrere "to run between, intervene, mediate," from Latin inter "between" (see inter-) + currere "to run" (see current (adj.)). Sense of "frequent and habitual meeting and contact, social communication between persons" is from 1540s. Meaning "mental or spiritual exchange or intercommunication" is from 1560s. Meaning "sexual relations" (1798) probably is a shortening of euphemistic sexual intercourse (1771) with intercourse in its sense "social contact and relations."   

Wednesday as middle, as mediator, as trader. Wednesday as hump-day. The Roman writer Tacitus, claimed that the pre-eminent god the Germanic tribes sacrificed to, was Mercury, in a clear case of interpretatio Romana. Mercury, god of thieves, merchants and conmen, the tricky-bastard god of language, messenger of the gods, leader of the souls of the dead.  Mercredi, if you speak French.  Miércoles,  if you speak Spanish. Speak a Romance language, merc  or some variant will probably mark that day. The legacy of Rome runs far.

In German however, the mark is Mittwoch. Mid-week. In English, Wednesday. Wodensdaeg. Language leads the soul, pulls people together, breaks them apart, twists them into new shapes - leads you down the garden path.

In the first episode, we are introduced to the god who becomes Mr. Wednesday as a god of war. It is not the kind of war we think of nowadays perhaps, less total destruction of the enemy, and more two sides fighting against each other until one prevails, or neither can - a subtle and important difference. Wednesday alters the coinflip that makes Shadow his man. It is this two sided-ness, this two-facedness, we see in Odin in the Eddas, too. He claims both sides when he hurls his spear over the warring hosts. It matters not who wins, only that there is the violent deathly intercourse between the two.

It is that which brings the wind to the becalmed Vikings, allows them to live, and also to die. It is the breath of Odin which is breathed into the driftwood that become Aske and Embla, the first humans of the Edda. He gives them that which may be stirred, may be aroused to fury; the wind that may be knife, or cooling breeze, or roaring, storming. And he gives them inspiration.  The faculty to compose and remember poetry; to recall and to breathe life into past and future deeds and histories. He brings the gods and mortals the gift of magical language; charms to heal and harm, to win lovers, to turn away weapons and help when no others can. When the elder sister tells Wednesday she can taste him on the rain, she is speaking literally and figuratively, both as person, but also what he is.. Water is the universal solvent, the fluid we are composed of and need to survive. It dissolves things, and also binds and mixes them together in solution.

It is the medium which is also the message.

As an acknowledgement of his fluid nature, as the messenger of war to the old Gods, he is the Man Who Walks Between Raindrops (for his coat does not get wet, even before he unfurls the umbrella.)

“Kissing is disgusting...but -- but in a nice way, like bleu cheese or brandy.”

In the line above, we are presented with the absurdity of seeing sexuality as mere coitus. Flavour only exists when the food and the tastebuds meet. In that connection, consciousness, experience is altered. 

In some branches of tantra, the practitioner deliberately breaks social taboos in order to perceive the true non-dual nature of consciousness; consuming red meat, living on charnel grounds, drinking from a cup made out of a skull, and even consuming the flesh of a corpse.

‘Nice’ or ‘Nasty’? Do such things exist for divinities?

Now think - when was the last time you saw older people sharing a passionate kiss on television? It is usually the domain of the younger, hotter, more  supposedly  desirable cast. Equally, when was the last time you saw explicit gay sex between native Arabic speakers, except later in the episode? (Notice how they meet in the rain, too? How Salim speaks of his grandmother’s memory? How the Djinn’s fluids burn inside him, how the lovers set each other free?)

And just before the elder Zorya and Wednesday kiss, he asks her if she remembers when they were younger. The kiss is the reminder, an echo of that which Shadow and the youngest sister accomplish on the rooftop. As the elders kiss, Wednesday evokes the memory of youth, making them young again bringing the oncoming storm to bear. He has mirrored Shadow’s kiss, his gaining of the Moon as the silver dollar at the hands of the youngest virgin sister. In that moment, Wednesday and (Shadow-as-his-double), gain the sisters in their enterprise. 

As a magical act, its nondual deviousness is one of Wednesday’s best, and as a semiotic act, the showrunners seem to be making things clear: sexuality is more than heteronormative tits and ass.

But it’s not only the sisters that Wednesday gets, by the time the storm breaks, is it? The war that is tasted on the rain is also the ‘war’ between Czernobog and Shadow as they play checkers. In a sense, as  Shadow gains the “daughter not the father” - the moon-as-coin, he gains himself. Shadow Moon He is no longer resigned to death. It may still come, and probably will, but as with Wednesday, that’s for another day, and Wisconsin. In another, by gaining the coin he begins to receive his psychic, emotional faculties, brutalised out of him by prison. The mythical associations of the Moon trump in tarot-reading apply; intuition, dreams, the primordial waters of the womb, illusion and mystery. Shadow begins to take an active role in the realm of the gods - guided by Wednesday, he is led to make it snow.

And, of course Wednesday is not the only guide of souls we meet in this episode - the first scenes bring us Chris Obi as Anubis, aka Anpu, aka Mr. Jaquel, guiding the soul of one of the newly dead to the Duat. We begin to sense, as she puts it that “This isn’t Queens!” No, it isn’t. As Wednesday says to Shadow, later: “What a beautiful, beautiful thing to be able to dream, when you’re not asleep!” and, in the same scene, “The only thing that scares me, is being forgotten. I can survive most things but not that.” Might this not, in general, be AG’s version of the Old Norse poem where Odin speaks about his two ravens, Huginn and Muninn - who fly over the worlds and bring back news and secrets to the god who always wants more knowledge? Usually translated as Thought and Memory respectively, the Allfather fears the loss of Huginn, but fears the loss of Muninn, more. A poet-magician fears for the loss of memory, both of remembering and being remembered - makes sense, doesn’t it?

And old Odin gave up his eye for a drink from the well of Mimir, a name which has its cognates with memory, ripping it out, because as Wednesday says:

Oh, I want knowledge over comfort, over all things, always.

What is knowledge to a pre-literate culture, but that which is held by memory; brought forth, shared-between, and returned? Rain falls, returning to the rivers, seas, and streams from which it evaporated. It wells up from the deep places to be hoisted to the heavens, only to drain back down, drawn by gravity to the centre of all things.

Wednesday leads Shadow to make snow. Teaches him to crystalize water vapour, to crystalize the knowledge of it, by thinking of snow. Thought and memory combined - knowledge arranged in a particular way.

Arranged to make memory manifest, to change the world. To do the impossible

Or, to give it another name: magic.

[emmagreen1220-blog]

New Post has been published on Biology Dictionary

New Post has been published on https://biologydictionary.net/arthropod/

Arthropod

Arthropods Definition

An “arthropod” is an invertebrate animal that has an exoskeleton, a segmented body, and jointed appendages. The following families of organisms are all examples of arthropods:

Insects such as ants, dragonflies, and bees

Arachnids such as spiders and scorpions

Myriapods (a term which means “many feet”) such as centipedes and milipedes

Crustaceans such as crabs, lobsters, and shrimp

It may help to remember that the term “arthropod” comes from the Greek words for “jointed foot.” If the organism has an exoskeleton with joints between its feet and its body, it is probably an arthropod!

Arthropods are a lineage of life that developed skeletons on the outside – their hard shells, made of a material called “chitin” – instead of on the inside for structural support.

Arthropods’ bodies also have other important differences from those of vertebrates like ourselves – their organ systems are simpler and less efficient, which limits the size arthropods can attain.

An ant the size of a human, for example, would not be able to pump oxygen through its blood to feed all its tissues, since the arthropod circulatory system is simpler and less efficient than a humans’.

All arthropods are thought to have evolved from a single common ancestor, though scientists are not sure what this common ancestor looked like, or exactly when it lived.

Arthropod Characteristics

Characteristics shared by all arthropods include:

Exoskeletons made of chitin

Highly developed sense organs

Jointed limbs (the limbs must be jointed like the joints in a suit of armor, since the exoskeleton is rigid and cannot bend to allow movement)

Segmented bodies

Ventral nervous system. “Ventral” means “in front,” so this means that arthropods’ nervous systems run along the front of their bodies, near their stomachs, instead of along their backs like the spinal cords of animals.

Bilateral symmetry. This means that the left and right sides of an arthropod are the same – it will have the same number and arrangement of legs, eyes, etc. on the right side of its body as on the left.

Types of Arthropods

Trilobites

Trilobites were an ancient family of marine arthropods that went extinct during the Permian-Triassic extinction event. Today, they are known to us mostly through fossils like the one below.

They lived on the ocean floor and occupied ecological niches similar to those occupied by crustaceans today.

Asaphus platyurus

Chelicerates

Chelicerata are a branch of the arthropod family tree that, at first glance, may not appear related to each other.

This family includes arachnids (such as spiders and scorpions), sea spiders (which look similar to arachnids but have some important differences), and horseshoe crabs (which, despite their name, have important differences from other crustaceans).

Myriapods

The term “myriapod” means “many legs” – so it is not surprising that centipedes, milipedes, and other many-legged creatures are part of this family.

Myriapods can have anywhere from less than ten legs – to over 750! That just seems excessive.

Myriapods are typically found in forests and other ecosystems where there is lots of decaying plant and animal material for them to feed on.

Crustaceans

Crustaceans are a family of primarily aquatic arthropods that include lobsters, crabs, shrimp, crayfish, barnacles, and the odd one out – wood lice, also known as pill bugs or “roly polys.”

Unlike their aquatic cousins, wood lice live mostly on dry land and are found in environments such as gardens and forests, where they survive by eating decaying plant and animal material.

It may also surprise you to see barnacles included on this list: adult barnacles develop hard shells that stick them to their surroundings, such as the bottoms of boats or other underwater surfaces.

But earlier in their lives before they freeze in place, barnacles have bodies with legs much like the other crustaceans!

Hexapods

The term “hexapod” literally means “six feet.” It might not surprise you to learn that insects – which all have six legs – are hexapods.

Insects include most “bugs” with six legs, such as flies, ants, termites, beetles, dragonflies, mosquitoes, cockroaches, butterflies, and moths.

There are also three much smaller groups of animals in the “hexapod” category. Collembola, Protura, and Diplura were all once considered to be insects, but later found to have small differences that set them apart from other insects.

Examples of Arthropods

Ants

When you think of a stereotypical arthropod body, you probably think of an ant. Ants have hard exoskeletons and jointed legs. They also have bodies which are clearly segmented into a head, thorax, and abdomen.

Ants show one type of social organization that has been developed by arthropods. Ants, bees, and termites are all what is called “eusocial” organisms – organisms living in extreme degree of cooperation, with “colonies” that almost operate like a single organism themselves.

Most arthropod species are not eusocial, but eusocial colony life is one of the fascinating roads that arthropod evolution has taken.

Spiders

Spiders are also arthropods, possessed of hard exoskeletons, segmented bodies, and jointed limbs.

Spiders typically eat smaller arthropods, such as gnats and flies – though they will eat any living thing they can catch, and some particularly huge spiders have been known to eat birds or rodents!

Spiders have evolved a variety of strategies for catching their prey – some spin sticky, nearly invisible webs that prey animals wander into and get stuck. Others are active hunters, including jumping spiders which can jump at extreme speeds using special mechanisms in their legs.

Some spiders combine these two strategies, such as “trap door” spiders, which set traps by creating hiding places for themselves – and then jumping out to grab unsuspecting prey animals that wander by!

Lobsters

With lobster being considered a luxury food today, it’s easy to forget that lobsters are in the same family as spiders and ants.

Crustaceans can grow bigger underwater than on land – and lobsters can grow to weigh nearly 50 pounds!

Lobsters’ body design has changed little in the last 100 million years, and their anatomy is spectacularly weird. The lobster’s kidneys are located in its head, its brain in its throat, and its teeth in its stomach. Its “ears” for picking up sound are located in its legs, and its tastebuds, like those of insects, are in its feet.

Butterflies

Butterflies are the most famous example of arthropod metamorphosis.

At some point in their lifecycle, all arthropods go through a drastic change from their larval stage to their adult form. But butterflies are the only ones whose adult forms are so beautiful that we pay attention to this change.

The common features of exoskeleton, jointed limbs, and segmented body can be seen in adult butterflies.

Facts About Arthropods

Arthropods colonized land about 100 million years before vertebrates did. It’s thought that colonizing land was easier for them for several reasons – including the fact that they had already evolved legs, which they used for walking on the bottom of the sea.

About 80% of all animal species are arthropods! We don’t see them very often in our daily lives, but all the species of bugs and crustaceans on Earth add up!

All arthropods undergo metamorphosis – a process where their bodies change radically as they pass from their larval to adult stages. Butterflies are the best-known for entering cocoons as caterpillars and coming out quite different, but all arthropods do something similar!

When arthropods outgrow their old exoskeleton, they have to molt – leaving behind their former skin and growing a new one. All arthropods have to do this at least once in their lives.

Crustaceans and arachnids – two types of arthropods – have blue blood instead of red blood!This is because their blood uses a blue copper compound to carry oxygen, instead of the red iron compound used by animals.

Arthropods’ hard exoskeletons is made of chitin – which is made of a derivative of the sugar glucose! But chitin would not taste sweet, and you wouldn’t be able to eat it; to make it hard and strong, the glucose is modified so that our bodies no longer recognize it as sugar.

Related Biology Terms

Common ancestor – A common ancestor is an individual or species from which multiple individuals or species evolved.

Evolution – The process by which populations change over time, due to random mutation and the pressures of natural selection.

Extinction – The process by which a species ceases to exist after the death of its last member. Most species that have lived on Earth to date are now extinct.

Quiz

1. Which of the following is NOT true of arthropods? A. They have exoskeletons made of chitin. B. They are symmetrical, having the same features on one side of their body as the other. C. They colonized land long before vertebrate animals did. D. None of the above.

Answer to Question #1

D is correct. All of the above are true of arthropods!

2. Which of the following is NOT a type of arthropod? A. Hexapods B. Crustaceans C. Cephalopods D. Myriapods

Answer to Question #2

C is correct. The term “cephalopod” has the Greek word “pod” for “foot” in it – but that doesn’t mean they’re an arthropod! Cephalopods are the family of squids, octopuses, and other creatures that decidedly do not have exoskeletons, jointed limbs, or segmented bodies.

3. Which of the following is NOT an arthropod? A. A scorpion B. A snail C. A dust mite D. A crab

Answer to Question #3

B is correct. A snail is not an arthropod. Although it has a shell which could be argued to be a sort of exoskeleton, its shell is not jointed. The snail lacks a true exoskeleton, jointed limbs or a segmented body. The other organisms on this list have all of those things.