I think I just set the all-time record for the Whitest Girl In The Neighborhood, when I had to admit that I didn't know how to eat a tamale. What can I say? Danes don't do tamales. They don't do spicy. They don't do corn, for that matter. And yeah, I know, I'm American, but I grew up on the East Coast. In Wilmington, Delaware. It's not exactly tamale central. And I went to college in Evanston, Illinois. And the first time I'd ever even been in Arizona was two years ago. And I'd never even been to Mexico until 2000.

Just in case you were wondering, you take the husk off.

On the upside, they were really, really good.

Wendy's parents are here, and they are apparently just as nuts as my folks -- they drove out from Montana to paint her half of the house, and work in the garden and do whatever else comes up. They also brought Wendy's youngest brother to pitch in on the work. Go Despains!

My parents will be arriving on Saturday, to paint and clean and install light fixtures and so on. They'll miss the Despains by a day.

Will I go straight to hell if I admit that I'm contemplating the odds of sucessfully starting a little parental rivalry? "Thanks for painting the kitchen, guys. Of course, Wendy's parents painted her kitchen and built her a bookcase and bought her a pony. Just so you know."

Yeah, that'll pretty much send me straight to hell.

Andy is off to grad school tomorrow, so this was our last day working together. He took me to lunch at the same place we'd interviewed him lo those many years ago, and even insisted on taking the same booth (the hostess was a little freaked).

When we got back to the office, I was writing some things up for him -- letting him know what contracts we'd canceled, what we'd kept, etc. My desk is right by the conference room, and I could hear people in there, talking. Andy was editing some articles for me, and asked if we could talk about them.

"Let's go in the conference room," he said.
"No, someone's using it," I said.
He sort of rolled his eyes. "We'll kick them out.
"No, really, we can use the small conference room."
"Just go into the conference room, ok?"

Finally, it dawned on me that people might be in the conference room for my benefit. Yup. They had a cake, emblazoned with "You're so fired!", which I used to say all the time. I have no idea what the Baskin Robbins people must have thought about that.

Jes took pictures, and I'll post them as soon as I get them. We also took one of Andy pointing and laughing at me, as he still has a job.

It was actually a lot of fun.

I still have two more days on the job, but Andy is the one I've worked with the most closely over my time there. He's talented as hell, and it's been a pleasure working with him, except when he's being a snarky pain in the ass -- which, upon reflection, was all the time. The thing was, he was pretty much me at that point of my life -- just out of college, convinced of my own talent, full of myself, unwilling to compromise, snarky, a know-it-all, prone to using inappropriate humor, the whole shebang. It made me want to call Ian, my first manager, and apologize for everything. When I told him that, he got this look of horror on his face -- Heh. That's right Andy, you're going to turn into me. Hah hah!

I'll miss working with you, Andy. I will be calling you in five years to see how your workplace convictions are holding up, to see what sort of compromises you've made, if any. I doubt you'll make the same mistakes I did, but I'm sure you'll find plenty of your own. It'll be interesting to see what they are.

Now throw some freelance work my way, ok?

Oddness: Amazon.com just sent me a reminder about my own birthday. That one I can remember, folks -- it's everyone else's I have trouble with.

I can't take my chair. Bastards.

It's my last week of gainful employment at BrassRing, and things are winding down. I had my last doctor's appointment on BrassRing's insurance -- a mole check at the dermatologist. The good new: Now cancer. The bad news: There's nothing like catching sight of yourself in the full length mirror as you contort yourself to tie the back of one of those damned hospital robe things to make you seriously despair of the thought of ever having sex again. Sigh.

Check out this blog entry from the Big White Guy update. He's a, well, Big White Guy in Hong Kong, and I love his blog. It makes me former-sorta-homesick, even when he's talking about the new anti-spitting ordinance or the octopus pizza at Pizza Hut.

Also, Rich and Lynn, who I don't know, are talking about women and feminism and sex and art. I was going to post a comment response, but then realized it was a post in and of itself. So here we go.

Among other things, they say:

Lynn Why are there so few (if any) great female philosophers, composers, artists, etc? You can make the argument that it's because throughout most of history women have been repressed and forced into the traditional roles of wife and mother. There is some merit to that argument but I think that to completely dismiss the disparity in achievement based on this one feminist theory is to deny reality.

Have you read Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own"? I highly recommend it. It goes a long way toward explaining why there are so few female artists, writers, philosophers, etc. of the past. And it's not just one argument. The gist of it is this: Women aren't expected to have an inner life, so any art they create is done be stealing time from other activities. It's not just that motherhood makes demands on you -- even if a woman didn't have children, she was expected to serve whoever. Any time they are writing, they have to expect to be interrupted, diverted, told to do something else. It's only recently -- as in, in the last century -- that women have been able to actually stake a claim, and say "This is important, this is what I'm going to do." (You can make the same argument about working-class men -- they simply didn't have time or resources to create. It's a hell of a lot easier to let your creative juices flow when you're not (1) exhausted from the coal mines or (2) starving to death.)

And here's the thing -- I'm hardly a genius, but I do know that writing (and I'm guessing all art and philosophy) is hard. It takes dedication and a certain egotism, a selfishness. And until recently, god forbid a woman should have an ego or be selfish. There was nothing more monstrous than a woman who would sacrifice herself for the good of the family, the community, etc. That made a difference.

Rich It's my opinion that like hunger, greed, ambition or fear, a rampant sex drive can be a strong motivator.... It's a matter of record that most of history's great generals, terrible conquerors, transcendent artists and world-changing politicians have had elevated libidos; it's not quite a prerequisite, but it's close. If you accept that postulate, then it stands to reason that the half of humanity more prone to high sex drive [emphasis added] would appear more frequently in the annals of humanity's great achievements and follies.

I'd contend that sex drives differ more between individuals than they do between the genders. But again, a strong sex drive is expected and praised in men, and is reviled and discouraged in women. Men are studs, women are sluts. So if you do believe that a strong sex drive relates to a strong creative drive, what would it mean to have that source of power questioned and denigrated and burned out of you on a matter of principle? If you were expected to actively suppress those desires, that drive, or better yet, deny it even existed? How would that affect your creative product?

Bottom line: I don't buy that men as a whole are more creative/artistic/touched with genius than women as a whole. I think a lot of it has to do with opportunity, with expectation, with cultural realities. Considering the obstacles women faced -- and still face, to a much lesser extent -- it's miraculous that Jane Austen or Hildegaard von Bingham or Simone de Beauvoir or Lavinia Fontana were able to create what they did.

Now we get to see what women can accomplish creatively when many of the barriers are gone. Think Shulamith Firestone, Julie Taymor, Mary Zimmerman, A. S. Byatt, Doris Lessing, Alice Walker and who knows how many other artists, writers, philosophers (I have to admit I'm not up on current philosophy). Let's revisit this in 50 years, and see how the genders stack up.