Amok tuber.

Well, I guess we should have taken the symptoms a little more seriously. It seems the man-sized tuber has run amok. And there's nothing more dangerous than a crazed root vegetable.

It's a little hard to describe the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night (mind you, in space... it's ALWAYS night) to find your spacecraft rolling end over end. My first thought was that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) had fallen asleep over his pulp novel and slumped over onto the navigational console. No, my friends... it was far worse than this. The man-sized tuber, who we thought was safely tucked away in his recuperative terrarium, had broken free of his restraints and taken his little cart on a joy ride through the control room, smashing delicate instruments with his big, knotty root-fists, and setting Mitch Macaphee's lab shoes on fire. I dragged myself upstairs to see the unlikely sight of Matt, John, and Mitch wrestling the tuber into a corner and pouring cranberry juice down his gullet. (We've been using cranberry juice on the tuber as a natural calming agent. Not scientifically derived, you understand - just randomly chosen.)

What do you do about a tuber run amok? John had an idea: lock him up with anti-Lincoln and let them fight it out over a game of Battleship. Now, I don't want to discount this idea... it might just work. The question is, work at what? Hey, look... we're headed (we hope) towards a string of relatively lucrative gigs on the planet Neptune, and the man-sized tuber has been drafted (in the absence of anyone with the relevant skill sets) into service as our sound man. How the hell are we going to sound without our cruciferous companion twiddling the knobs? I mean, this is desperation time, friends. We may or may not ever find our way out of this interplanetary field of stones, but man god damn, we have to bring that tuber back to his somewhat limited senses! Yes, that is how important our sound is. Oh yes - we are dedicated, people. Hear me say it. LET ME HEAR YOU SAY, "YEAH!!"

Whoops... okay, I wandered a bit. Slipping into the old stage jargon, too. My bad. Anyway, we thought John's idea was worth a try. So into the aft cabin they went. Matt obligingly set up the Battleship board, and we locked the door behind them. A few hours passed. Not a noise emanated from within the chamber. I thought it prudent to, at least, peek inside and see how they were faring. Well, what I saw was not encouraging. Apparently, Anti-Lincoln had nearly sunk the man-sized tuber's battleship. Still, he was not getting a rise out of tubey. Tubey was just sitting there like a potted plant (which, of course, he is kind of.... only without the pot). I tried to pull Anti-Lincoln's attention away from the game, but it was no use. He was deep in the pon far - the "blood fever". It happens every seven years. (Oh no, wait... that's the Vulcan mating thing. My apologies. ) I'll tell you what - for a guy straight out of the antimatter 19th century, he sure does love board games.

All right, maybe I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill. We can get Marvin to mix us. So what if it sounds like ass, right? Actually.... best not answer that. Wait 'til we get to Neptune, then speak.