The Edge of Freedom #55"
By: Favor, Medic / Morale Officer, [PST]
Stardate: 58204.14 0600
From: Ensign Favor
RE: I Just Flew In From Rigel 6, And Boy Are My Arms Tired: Travel Planning, Poetry, and Baby, You Look Smashing!
Good morning, cast and crew.
I must confess, my leave extended much longer than I had planned, and as a side note to all of you vacationers, a word of advice. Make sure that when you go on shore leave, that your bail bondsman can 1, be reached any time, day or night, this time zone or that one, this galaxy or that one, and 2, can post your bail in a variety of different currencies. Just in case, and all that.
Otherwise, you might spend several extra days that you hadn't planned on spending, in a stinking, primitive jail in the Sands of Ozxhl, just because you sucker-punched a churl who richly deserved it. ( Sure, I broke a finger, but you should have seen the bones sticking out of his face. I was in a pink seratonin fog, people. There is a reason why the medical community recognizes both adrenalin and seratonin as valid neural-enhancement drugs.)
And, once you get back to your ship, you could wind up standing tall before the man, explaining why you shouldn't be court-martialed for going AWOL beyond your approved leave period.
Today I have some poetry that I wrote with a burnt match on the side of a concrete cinderblock, while I was gone on my vacation. You know. The vacation that I've been on for the past six weeks? Because I was not here? I had plenty of time to reflect, and with my extensive Ritalin memory, I carried all my poetry back to the ship on the canvas that is my mind, and I will share it with you.
But first, I have some questions.
Was I missed?
Was it hard for you to live without me?
I hope so.
Were you able to get along without me?
I hope not.
Speaking of Sick Bay, I have a haiku:
Chamber of malaise I hope that no one croaked Due to my absence.
So anyway, my hair is growing back, and I must say, I look smashing. I really do. I admired my chestnut fuzz, now about two inches or so long, in the mirror this morning. It's nice having hair again. It's good and spiky, and sometimes I put goo in it so that the clumps of hair harden into skewers and when I walk down the corridors, others dodge around me.
It's like having a big, dangerous trap perched atop your head. It looks like it might hurt, and nobody wants to put it to the test.
It's good to have spikey hair, I think, as a pre-emptive measure to keep others from invading your personal space. I can recommend this as a tried and true means of keeping others at arm's length, if that's your goal. This spiked hair thing is a trick that I learned from Gilda, my cellmate on vacation. To give credit where it's due.
But I digress. For self affirmations, I look in the mirror, and I smile so that I can see all my pretty white teeth, and I say to myself, "Ensign Favor," I say, "you look succulent and juicy." That's exactly how I started my day today. I suggest you do the same, it will put a bounce in your step like nothing else.
Have you all been taking your vitamins while I was gone? Have you been getting enough exercise? Prevention is worth a pound of cure, or something like that. It's not worth a pound of chocolate though! HA! HA! And the crap that comes out of the regurgitator (simulator, elevator, escalator, regulator, whatever!) well, bah! You can't really call that stuff chocolate, can you?
I sincerely hope that all of you have taken good care of yourselves while I was gone.
I hope that none of you have been indulging in things you shouldn't. I hope that none of you have been hitting the sauce too hard, or self-medicating in other ways during my absence. You do that too much and you'll wind up sitting in a plastic chair, saying things like, "Hi, my name is Bev Peabody, and I'm addicted to glint. It's been 10 days since my last confession," or something along those lines.
Lastly, I couldn't help but noticed that someone has been fooling with my tri-corder. People, I believe you were warned about this at the very beginning. I'm quite certain that you were. In fact, I *know* that you were, because I wrote a manifesto of menace, detailing exactly what would happen if one of you touched my tricorder. Thank heavens I saved a copy for posterity.
I believe I will be launching a professional investigation to find the perpetrator of this crime, and when I identify the individual who touched my medical instrument while I was gone, I am going to poke him or her with my spikey hair until they bleed.
That is not a threat, it is a promise.
You can run, and you can hide, but you cannot get back the DNA which I have already extracted from the surface of my tricorder. I will find you. Oh yes. I will find you.