Darren Barefoot wrote A Rant on Rap, which I felt compelled to defend against Bob’s full paragraph of reasons for not liking rap. I’m not trying to talk Bob or Darren into liking rap, but I’m defending it from a linguistic point of view. This is one of my biggest pet peeves — people calling Black English inferior.

Mine is the third post down:

I don’t think Bob’s heard any GOOD rap, he’s just concentrating on the *bling bling* stuff that gets the most attention. I don’t believe it deserves its reputation for dumbing down language any more than pop music (noticed any of Britney Spears’ lyrics? most of it consists of “oh baby baby baby” and “yeah”). In fact, most of the bad rap that rap gets is related to social prejudices, not linguistics at all. Rappers have a linguistic virtuosity that few people can master — do you think you could rhyme off the top of your head? I’d embarrass myself if I tried. Characteristics of Black English that people say bastardizes English is actually closer to Shakespearean times where they used, for example, double negatives for emphasis. Black English carries far more meaning in its inflections and usage of the verb “to be” than English does, so to say that it’s inferior as a language has only basis in preference rather than linguistics.

Anyway, I’m off on a tangent, I’m here to defend rap music — by the way, I’m not black.
Posted by: gail at February 11, 2004 03:06 AM

I’m in Sechelt again for two days. Can’t wait ’til we move to Gibsons near the ferry terminal so I can shorten the commuting time by nearly an hour. I saw the new building for the first time last week, so I thought I’d include some photos:

look at that driveway!

Get a load of that steep driveway! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a driveway quite like that before — I couldn’t even get it in one picture. You’d need a winch to get down there. And heaven help you if your brakes fail! Apparently they can’t build a driveway up to the house because the area in front is septic, so you have to go up the hill (mountain is more like it) to an upper road and then creep down the very long driveway.

office from driveway

Kevin’s house is the main building to the right, and the office is the building on the left, above the garage. The two buildings are joined by the porch, and Allison’s office is above that. The main selling point of this property is the stunning and completely unobstructed view of Howe Sound/Jervis Inlet. If you peer closely, you can see the BC Ferry in the right photo. Which means if the ferry’s late, we know about it right away and have time to run down and get it. Whereas here in Sechelt, we have that bloody Sunshine Coast dual-carriage highway to contend with, senior citizens who barely drive the speed limit, and not knowing if we can make the ferry or not. Aside from the collision with the deer in November 1999 (it ran directly into the side of my car!!), I’ve never had an accident on that road, which is amazing since when it’s pitch dark and stormy you might as well be driving blind.

clocktower

We even have a clocktower, but Kevin says the clock face is two grand! That doesn’t include any of the moving parts, and installation — ?? So I don’t know if we’re going to get that. It does add character to the house, though.

fondue!

Had a fleeting consideration last weekend to get a cat. I confessed this over fondue at Eliza’s place last week.

But I talked myself out of it:

* COSTS: food, litter box and related items, carrier, etc.
* SPACE: where will the litter box go??
* CARE: who will take care of the cat while I’m away? Eliza’s volunteered, but she already has two cats…

That’s the other point. Both Eliza and Kristin say I must get two cats, so they can play with each other. Two! Actually, what put me off the most was the potential veterinary bills. After Ebi was diagnosed with chylothorax, I would say I wouldn’t be able to afford keeping a cat with similar medical problems alive.

Tako’s a cute critter.

Attie Gail forgot her camera on Saturday. Phooey, no photos of the birthday gate-crashing (more on this in a mo’). Allan went to pick up Cheryl from BC Women’s Hospital, so Michael was foisted on my dad on Saturday and I took Maddy (Allan’s nickname for her is Roo). He dropped her off rather early for a weekend morning, but I think it felt earlier as I wasn’t feeling 100% — extremely fatigued, and the beginnings of a sore throat. Not a good sign.

After chasing Maddy around for a while in my apartment — which isn’t really child-proofed, you see — I gave her fringe a bit of a trim, then decided we needed to get out in the sunshine. We headed out for Granville Island, where there’s the Kids Market and a playground. I was also looking for a stroller, so I thought I’d try and kill two birds with one stone.

I didn’t find a stroller, although Maddy and I did spot everything else in the kids market — doll strollers, games, trains, costumes, kites, merry-go-rounds, and two floors of play area. We paid a few dollars to get into the Toddler Adventure Zone, which is similar to what you find at a McDonald’s playplace, but much cleaner and with more things such as stuffed animals and a train set. Apparently, we’d gatecrashed a child’s birthday party, and I overheard the mother say “I have never seen this child before in my life,” but I didn’t care — we’d paid our money and I wasn’t about to leave! I ordered food, and it was even delivered to us! I made a mental note to go there more often… maybe next time we’ll even get a party favour.

From there, we headed over to Toys R Us to buy the stroller, since I knew Maddy was not going to last much longer without a nap, and she’s too heavy to be carrying around everywhere. I managed to get us over to Broadway just as she was snoozing against my shoulder, and I spotted — of all things — a Jeep Wrangler Sport stroller on sale…??? That’s what I thought: Since when did Jeep start making strollers??? Bizarre. Well, this one was much too good of a deal to pass up, and it had front suspension, which sounds over-the-top for a stroller, but it does make a big difference not only for the kid but for the person pushing. The sales clerk assembled it on the spot for us, and away we went.

After another food/bathroom stop, I was feeling intrepid enough to stroll all the way home, so we headed north on Granville after going west along Broadway. It didn’t feel like we’d gone that far, so instead of going home across the Burrard Street Bridge, we went up west along 4th Avenue to see what there was in the way of double strollers and baby stuff on consignment. Looks like I haven’t been on 4th much lately, cos there is shop after shop of consignment places along there now. I didn’t find anything I liked, but for a final stop we went into Crocodile, a high-end baby equipment shop. That’s where I spotted the Bugaboo strollers — my friend Jennifer is the dealer for Canada. When I visited them last spring in Utrecht, Jen showed me her Bugaboo stroller and told me she just had a meeting with the company to be a prospective dealer, and they’d be moving back to Canada if all went well. Bugaboo is the Mercedes of strollers, but it’s high-quality. If you buy all the accessories, it’s in the neighbourhood of $2,000 (Canadian). I asked the guy at Crocodile if they made double-strollers, but they don’t. So, I had a look at the high-end double-stroller that they did stock, and it was — gulp — nearly $800. Mountain Buggy, it was called.

Listen, if you’re going to have kids, you’d better have some money stashed away for all this equipment!

Megan’s incubator and monitor

Now that I have the go-ahead from the hospital, I arranged with my Aunt Susan to go with me to BC Women’s Hospital to visit Cheryl and the bubs.

We arrived during a shift change, so we waited a little while before nabbing a wheelchair for Cheryl to head down to the Baby Ward. They told us two visitors were allowed per baby, so they were OK with the 3 of us going in together. We washed up at this giant sink trough they have along one wall, and passed by the NICU room for the highest level of intensive care babies, where Megan and Maribeth started out. They were moved to the room they’re in now, which has fewer monitors. As you can see, though, the incubators take steady readings of a multitude of measurements, from heart rates to… well, whatever else they keep track of. I had no idea what the numbers on the LED panels meant, but I wasn’t about to bug the nurse to give me a crash course on the machines. She was pretty busy doing her calculations, and we were trying to stay out of her way.

L: Allan with Megan, showing thumb for scale
R: Cheryl holding Maribeth.

They had Maribeth’s incubator covered up, so I took some photos of Megan to start. I was surprised at her size, since the photos don’t really give a good indication of true size and thus make her appear larger than she really is. She was lying on her tummy with her bum up in the air, asleep, under the bili lights. (I had to look up what bili lights are for.) Considering she was the larger twin, I was trying to imagine how tiny Maribeth must be. Megan was small, but she was filled out. When I saw Maribeth, the nurse was just changing her and getting her dressed in baby clothes, so at least I saw her moving around and active. She was considerably smaller, and she didn’t have that “filled out” look. She has some major eating and growing to do!

Melissa on skates

Meanwhile, in Maine, Melissa has grown two whole inches since she went there in November. Cheryl tells me she’s pretty spoiled, being able to eat pretty much whatever she wants, when she wants. She doesn’t have a younger brother and sister to steal her food, or fob off her food to when she isn’t happy with what’s on the menu. She has three aunts and two grandparents at her beck and call. No wonder she’s grown so much!

I love Ananova’s quirkies!

Ananova - Cow goes for a stroll in bank

Introducing:

Megan Joy
born 3:00pm, Feb 2
4 lbs, 3 ozs

Megan 

Maribeth Joelle
born 3:10pm, Feb 2
2 lbs, 12 ozs

Maribeth 

After a bit of a scare on Sunday, and early testing on Monday, the twins were surgically removed in the afternoon and everybody is doing fine. I will take the liberty of copying and pasting bits and pieces from their Maine grandparents’ website (Cheryl’s dad is an ER doctor):

[As you can see, Megan is much bigger than Maribeth.] Both are on IVs as the doctors are not sure that they are “old enough” to take a bottle yet. Maribeth is on CPAP to support her breathing while Megan is breathing on her own… Allan got to hold both of them and to cut Megan’s cord. He saw the placenta–it looks to him like Maribeth only had about 25% of the placenta. Her cord was much, much thinner than the other one (pinky thickness as compared with thumb thickness.)

The NICU staff told Cheryl and Allan that “They are cute as buttons and they are doing very well!”

This is the first set of twins recorded for our side of the family. Mind you, documentation in the Philippines has really only been since WWII, and I’d say even that’s sketchy. I know for a fact that relatives who have immigrated made up their own birthdays (not just my father!). I would say the Philippines remains, at least in rural areas, primarily an oral society.

On Cheryl’s side of the family, there was a set of twins but quite distantly related.

While I was on my way to the optometrist’s, my brother called to say they’ve admitted Cheryl for an emergency caesarian. I headed straight for the hospital after my appointment in North Van, sat in the waiting room for an hour, and finally got too antsy and made the nurses get Allan out of the OR. Out he came, scrubs and all, but we only had a couple of minutes to sort out:

* the stuff in the van
* where the van was parked
* pick up Michael and Maddy from daycare in Langley
* arrangements to pick Dad up from the airport late tonight

… now I’m packing up a bag cos I probably have to stay overnight in Surrey, to drop the kids off at daycare in the morning before coming back to Vancouver… ??? Dunno how this is all going to work out, but as long as the twins are alright…

*more news later*

Came across this from reading a post on Roland Tanglao’s blog about neurologist Alice Flaherty’s book titled The Midnight Disease. It discusses hypergraphia — the burning need to write — and writer’s block. Interestingly, she says in her press release interview with her publisher:

“As for examples of writer’s block, the strange thing is how paradoxically eloquent many writers are in describing their block. Because a block is often very genre-specific, as anyone knows who has felt blocked on a big paper and has procrastinated by writing long e-mails. Coleridge is a perfect example of that — he used to churn out metaphysical treatises when what he really wanted to do was write poetry. The recent movie Adaptation demonstrates a trick many writers use in that situation, which is to escape your block by writing about it. Both Coleridge and Wordsworth did that.”

I *wish* I suffered from hypergraphia, and not from writer’s block. It took me f**ing forever to get that first assignment done!! I pulled 3 nearly-all-nighters just to get it completed, when it really should’ve taken just one.