Music Monday: The Fog Descends Edition

Because I like the way Bob White says, "Hey!"

NFD's "Light My Way":

Argh

I think Cat Valente's right and we're hurtling backward through time at alarming speed. And not in a fun Doctor Who kind of way. Having huge public debates about access to birth control felt disappointingly like going back to the early 1990s, but Wisconsin's repealing of its equal pay legislation feels like going back even farther than that.

I wish the single out for particular scorn the following from the above-linked article. One Glenn Grothman says:

You could argue that money is more important for men. I think a guy in their first job, maybe because they expect to be a breadwinner someday, may be a little more money-conscious.

First of all, does anyone, male or female, really grow up expecting to be a breadwinner anymore? I'd venture that most of the households that I know require the income of two working adults to keep them running, and the dollars earned by the women are just as much legal tender for rent or groceries as the dollars earned by the men.

Second, what a huge insult to all the households where women are the primary earners. Working single mothers (and, yes, Republicans, there are *working* single mothers), women whose partners are the stay-at-home parent, women whose partners can't or won't earn much income, and, of course, women whose partners are women are getting screwed by the wage gap every day. I know women in these situations, and the idea that money doesn't matter to them is laughable.

But hey, what do Republicans care for justice, fairness, or kids who go hungry because a parent of the wrong gender is supporting the household? The really important thing is that a corporation might get sued, and we can't allow that.

Conversations We Didn't Have in Skyrim, Part 16

Previous installments under skyrim-conversations.

Marriage proposals in Skyrim aren't very exciting. Unless they happen in the middle of a fight scene.
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It's a Loredas night like every other Loredas night. Well, except that I'm wearing the Amulet of Mara.

Okay, let's back up a moment, because this is one of those Nord things that Lydia keeps telling me I don't understand. Romance in Skyrim is carried on in a way that pretty much comports with the general Nord approach to interpersonal communications, which means that any moments of genuine emotional vulnerability or even actual talking are delayed as long as possible.

Courtship starts, as it does in most places, with the cultivation of mutual affection between two people. Back in High Rock, this might have involved long walks in the moonlight. Here in Skyrim, it usually involves killing someone or something.

Once affectionate feelings are established, however, the custom in Skyrim is to do or say absolutely nothing that might reveal these feelings, until one of the pair in question puts on an Amulet of Mara. Which is basically a giant sign saying, "Come and get it!"
( It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Dragonborn in possession of the Amulet of Mara must be in want of a spouse )