Ensign Redshirt: Eleven AM

I guess some days are just like this. I was hanging around the water cooler, chatting about the chance of another World Series for the White Sox, when Chole came by with an update on the Evil Spock vulcanhunt (props to Doobie for pointing out the terminology error). The President’s brother is apparently conducting a little B&E to squash some scandal, and we have to squash the squashing. My job is existential like that.

Evil Spock apparently didn’t give my hypergraphia, but he did give me a copy of Fedor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot once. Inscribed on the inside cover he wrote: “Nothing personal.” I don’t know what that means, but I do find Dostoevsky compelling.

As one of the greatest Russian writers ever, Fedor has been very influential on the rest of the world, too. His work usually centers on poor people in desperate situations, not unlike that of the Vulcan. His Notes form the Underground is considered a founding work for existentialism. He wrote Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, and he gave a famous speech at the unveiling of the Pushkin monument that got him labeled a mystic. I wasn’t there, of course, but I think it was just one word: “Plastics.”

Dostoevsky has several brushes with death, including surviving a mock firing squad and instead being sentenced to Siberia. He eventually bit it after walking out into a blinding snow storm never to be seen again. How existential. If I really knew what that meant, maybe I wouldn’t say such things.

Transmission ended.