Birth by transporter

An old friend of mine recently gave birth, and my sister and I had the following MSN conversation as a result:

A: Alina has squeezed a human being out of her.

A: I don't think I ever want to do that.

M: Yeah, like I've said before, Star Trek transporter...

M: Which makes me wonder why the babies on Star Trek are never born that way...

A: Uh, yeah...

A: me, too?

M: "Beam it out, Doctor! BEAM! IT! OUT!"

A: Or, Give me the drugs!!!
Good, now beam it out.

M: But that would take longer...

M: Honestly, why would they even let it get as far as contractions? Once the water breaks, you know it's ready to come out.

A: uh...

A: so, we're really going to have this super hypothetical conversation?

M: No.

M: But I do think that of all the medical miracles the show espoused, they could have clued in to making birth less painful for the women.

A: this is true...

M: And I think that some of that has to do with either a) lack of women on writing staff or b) lack of attention paid to women's issues in a notoriously male-centric genre.

M: Or c) a need to retain some concept of the "natural" in a representation of an advanced technological time and falling back on the cliché of "motherhood" as the most natural thing women are capable of.

M: And THAT makes this MSN conversation more analytical than anything I've written in my actual dissertation today.

A: change your topic?


I have since written a couple of pages, so there shall be no topic change in the future. Boo. (not really)

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Days left before leaving for a conference in Vancouver: 0