(un)real life 5.6, “Exhortation,” is up. You get to see a bit more of what Will does as the high and mighty Webmaster of lesbovamps.com. Disappointingly enough, his activities don’t differ that much from those of your average editor, despite the unusual contents of the site. His fights with freelancers are just an exaggerated version of stories that I’ve heard circulate in my years in the publishing industry. It’s pretty mundane, actually, much to Will’s disappointment [he was hoping for more hot undead girl-on-girl action].

Today’s word of the day is for Ashbet, who likes pomegranates. The word “pomegranate” comes from Latin “pomum,” meaning “apple” or “fruit,” and Latin “granatum,” meaning “having many seeds [granum/-a].” So a pomegranate is, literally, “a fruit with many seeds.” How many? According to this highly scientific random sampling, graphed nicely for your convenience, pomegranates can have between 200 and 1,200 seeds, depending on the breed, source and size.

I can’t even begin to cover the symbolism of pomegranates in a measly LJ entry, so I’ll just say that the number of seeds has made the pomegranate an obvious fertility symbol in many Mediterranean cultures. Pomegranates are associated with death and rebirth as well, since Persephone, the harvest goddess’ daughter in Ancient Greek mythology, swallowed 6 seeds of one when she was in the underworld. Since she had eaten underworld fruit, she was sentenced to stay 6 months below the earth, which correspond to our 6 months of winter [although, in New England, it’s more like 10 months]. The 6 pomegranate seeds that Persephone ate represent the life that hibernates, dormant, during the cold season, then bursts to life in spring, when Persephone comes up and Demeter, her mom, parties by letting everything bloom. Life, death and sex in one fruit…pretty awesome, huh?