Quarantine entry #61 - May 21

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about something else, anything else, really.

There’s the final season of AoS…which I’ll miss, because I’m stuck in a place that has no TV, and I’m not so certain that I’ll be able to access them via my computer, because no matter how much I love AoS, I’m not sure that it’ll be worth the money. As it is, odds are that in their final season, AoS will turn into DC’s LoT, (remember those guys?), complete with time travel and all. S.H.I.E.L.D. must save Hydra because otherwise there will be no S.H.I.E.L.D. – sigh. In the CA: CW film, Zemo made a point in telling some Hydra/ex-Hydra colonel or another that Hydra is done, gone, lost in the junkyard of history.

…Zemo was contained at the end of that movie. He’s supposed to return on ‘The Winter Soldier and the Falcon’ Disney+ series, but that series was one of the first to go down once COVID-19 was here to stay, and so that is the end of that, for the moment.

…Speaking of team DC, Ruby Rose is leaving the DC-verse. Since she was the titular character in the new ‘Batwoman’ TV series, this raises a question – just who will take over from her, and how will ‘Batwoman’ be able to spin it? The reasons here actually aren’t COVID-19-related, but RR is gone from DC-verse all the same, so what next?

…’The Lovebirds’ movie is coming to the Netflix soon, (as in tomorrow – May 22, 2020), so we will talk about it then. The ‘SCOOB!’ film did come to the screens before today, and it is yet another reboot of ‘Scooby-Doo’ in particular and of ‘Hanna-Barbara’ in general, so what is left?

Well, I wanted to talk about snakes today. They may be the youngest modern group of reptiles, and probably the most infamous, thanks to the Biblical serpent. In reality, snakes are not any more – or any less – dangerous than their closest cousins the lizards are, and as for the crocodilians… do not go there.

We have talked about various snakes on and off in the past, especially regarding the AFO episode ‘Jaguar vs. Anaconda’, where the latter had won. Why this was the wrong decision was also discussed at length, so what is left behind?

…Modern snakes are characterized by the lack of limbs, though the oldest of them all, pythons and boas, have spurs as remnants of them. Snakes’ eyelids have also ‘fused’ into goggles, making them different from the various legless lizards, such as the slowworm and the glass lizard. Many snakes are venomous, meaning that it is dangerous for them to bite you, but not vice versa, because otherwise they would be poisonous instead. The venomous snakes of North America are mostly the various pit vipers; they tend to be much more aggressive than their non-venomous counterparts are and do not hesitate to warn others of their defences – i.e., the rattlesnakes rattle, their cousins the cottonmouths (and maybe the copperheads as well) show the insides of their mouths, and so on.

…The odd ones here are the coral snakes of the southern, especially south-west USA, which are more closely related to cobras and kraits of the Old World than to the pit vipers, (which are also found in Asia, though the American species outnumber them). They are shier than the pit vipers are, but are also much more colorful, in bands of black, red and yellow that warns other animals to back away, and rightfully so, because the coral snakes are quite venomous.

There are other snakes, all over the New World, really, that imitate the coral snakes’ coloration with various degrees of authenticity – this is called mimicry, and it is a really quite amazing evolutionary devices that allows the non-venomous, very venomous, and slightly venomous snakes to co-exist with each other, while protecting each other as well, (in a manner) of speaking – but that is another story.

…For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!