The sky is on fire

A woman gave birth in a plane yesterday.

She delivered the baby over Kazakhstan on a flight from Bangkok to Helsinki.

This is the second time since August that a baby has come into the world at cloud-level. The August birth is more amusing, though. It's not so much the event as the story.

Is "jet-lagged" really the best descriptor for someone who just squeezed out a baby in a 30,000 ft high airplane bathroom?

I must have missed that on the nausea tabs:

Take 1-2 capsules every six hours if feeling drowsy, nauseous, or post-partum. Ie) you just shat out your kid in the airplane bathroom. Holy fuck. Treat yourself to some drugs.

What actually happened on that plane is a mystery, as this excerpt suggests:

"An Adelaide doctor who, along with three other medical practitioners, helped deliver the baby, said it was a smooth, 'fun' birth."

It's perplexing. You can't just say it was a fun birth and not elaborate. I'm pretty sure fun birth is an oxymoron and definitely not short-hand for anything I know.

While we're on the subject of birthing, I'm reminded of something a friend of mine was saying today about some Japanese believing that spawning a child under the Northern Lights will increase their baby's IQ. Tourists flock to the Yukon and North-West Territories to copulate in glass-ceiling hotel rooms under the flickering of the magnetic field.

Unfortunately, I think the glass-ceiling hotel rooms are only in Finland, since I could find no evidence of such a hotel in Canada.

I hope some babies were conceived in the prairies yesterday under the meteorite that crashed after dazzling the night's sky with a streak of white, yellow and red. Some called it a fireball. Others called it a weather balloon. Yes, a weather balloon; they look so much like flaming meteorites headed towards earth.

Some comments from the Vancouver Sun's comment page:

IMHO
Fri, Nov 21, 08 at 10:31 AM
I'm sorry I missed it!! Shoot!!!
Julie
Fri, Nov 21, 08 at 10:32 AM
i was driving past macklin sk and i saw the sky light up so bright then turned to look at what was going on and all i see is a fire ball shooting towards the ground. it looked not to far away from where i was. it was pretty intense.
Garry
Fri, Nov 21, 08 at 10:33 AM
I got a chance to ride this bad boy Meteor to earth' what an amazing planet you earthlings have here ' keep it clean and keep it real.

I want these people in the same observation room.

Now the hunt is on for the meteorite's remains. I guess a similar meteorite landed up north six years ago, and the guy who found it was paid $200,000.

Here is one guy's advice for meteor hunters:

"Look for charcoal like rocks, don't touch it to contaminate it, put it in plastic and freeze it right away. sounds obvious, but if there is snow, it will look like a pile of black rocks scattered everywhere on the snow."

Like, duh, everyone knows what to do when they're trying to preserve a meteorite. All those elementary school drills with ziplock bags and dry ice.

I would be down for a reconnaissance mission. Think about what kind of baby I'd birth after conceiving on top of the meteorite? Hopefully a kid that can distinguish between a meteorite and a weather balloon, the word 'fun' and 'this oxygen mask is really... friggin.. oxygen... lots... I'm the doctor... this is fun...'

And one who doesn't use exclamation marks as emoticons for meteorites: Shoot!!!!