Apr 11 2009
Baby Birthin’
babyboy arrived April 10, three days ahead of schedule. Much drama was involved, which I’ll have to get into later. In any case, Raffaele Francis (we’ll call him Rafe) joined us, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. she and Rafe are recuperating at the hospital, and I’m about ready to pass out, so I’ll just leave you with a first pic. Needless to say, more to come, plus the very interesting story about how we didn’t quite make it to the hospital. Yeesh!
Wow. Congratulations! He looks peaceful enough… and now all you need is another .5 kids and a dog, right? Though how you get the .5 is beyond me…
Seriously though, this is a happy day; or, rather, (middle of the) night.
The story of getting to the hospital sounds like a good one, too, I can’t wait to hear it!
I bet you and she are exhausted. Do you need someone to bring some food over? I just finished reading Toi Derricotte’s poem, Natural Birth (about sixty pages long, so yes, giving birth ain’t no lyric poem, ain’t no pastoral — it’s an epic), and just reading it exhausted me. A really good poem, by the way.
So, cigars all round — congratulations! Way over here in Minnesota, I raise a glass in Rafe and she’s honor.
By the way, my colleague just had a baby a month ago, and so I gave her the Everyone Poops book, because I remember how much you enjoyed reading that to Ellie. (Cue evil laughter.)
Question: are you allowed to have one blog for two babies or do you have to start an EightRed or SevenPointFiveRed or a SevenBlue for Rafe? (Not R.F. like the landlord in Three’s Company?) I thought maybe there were some rules you folks in RhetComp had conjured up for this sort of thing.
Anyway, I expect you’ll be too tired/busy to do much blogging, but I followed up on your thing about prosumers on mine. (If the mother is the producer of the child, then by analogy, is the father its prosumer? Or just an investor of seed money?… Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)
stevethomas: Everybody’s always assumed you were an evil sumbleep, but now we have confirmation, with you further disseminating that Everybody Poops scheisse. Damn your Japanese pedagogy to hell, sir!
Seven Red will plod on in its usual pointless way, occasionally antagonizing people who don’t know me, or otherwise babbling about nonsenses with an air of grave authority. You there! I said STOP! Little known: the seven in Seven Red refers to the #7 line on the NYC MTA, which was the line I most used growing up. The Red refers to the Red line on the CTA, near which we thought we were going to live. But then we ended up living near the Brown line rather than the Red, and we couldn’t very well change the name to Seven Brown once I’d already sunk cash for a two-year domain name contract, so we were stuck with Seven Red. Point being, the friggin’ name doesn’t make much sense to begin with, so why should we change the *number* for a mere personnel expansion? Answer me that, answer man.
I read your prosumer bit, and I will link it here shortly with some comments. By the way, one guy that’s written most cogently on a positive version of the term is probably the top Zizek scholar in this thing you call RhetComp. What is this RhetComp? Talk about a neologism that refers to nothing! (Far worse, of course, is the dreaded CompRhet. I’m not even joking. You can tell immediately how people will respond to particular arguments and methodologies in writing studies simply by determining whether they say RhetComp or CompRhet.
Where’s the STORY??