I hate outer-space. I hate, loathe, despise - and many other negative connotations - space. Oh, I didn't used to. When I was three I developed an infatuation with the cold, mass-less void (look, Ma! Redundancy!). In 2003, some -most-assuredly drunk and or up for reelection- politicians decided it was time to send a manned probe to our sister planet, Mars.

Now don't jump the gun, padre! I'm not Dirk Daring, Space Explorer Extrodinaire and ladies man. Far from it! Y'see, to keep with the chic of the times, NASA (and probably 20th Century Fox) decided to send up a diverse set of people. Kinda like taking a television show, but setting it in space and have the boobs work for government wages (how sweet is that?). I'm sure you understand why they did it. Have you seen NASA's rating's? They has to do something!

So they held a contest. The winners would be drill in the fine art of aerodynamics for use on Earth, Mars and en route. Then they'd be poked, prodded, canned and launched to be seen again in a frame of time deemed worthy of spice-travel of that era. Well, now I foresee two big questions rattling around in your skulls. The first "If you have such a low opinion of space, then why did you enter the contest?" Quite frankly, there are two reasons. One, I was smashed out of my mind and two I honestly didn't think I'd win. Hell I didn't even win initially! I was the runner-up. You know? The spare tire in case the real winner got sick (he came down with something all-right, more on that in a minute).

Well I somehow made it into that position, and brother, I was content! I didn't want to go into space, and I told the heads of NASA so, many times and quite loudly. But my ratings were high, and people wanted to see the "Joe Average" make it through to the end of the program. I was stuck. So, at the tender age of twenty-two, I found myself in training for space-flight. Twenty-two. That seems like an eon ago. Well I went through and 18-month "crash course" in everything ranging from physics to zero-g ballet.

I'm sure you who know a lot about space and space travel, and consider yourselves unsung professionals of the trade will scorn and ridicule my answer for your next question: "How can you possibly send a crew to Mars with enough fuel and rations to get there and back?" To be unjust and straight-forward I'm annoyed by this question.

It was all explained to me, and I understood it just fine then, but I'm sure you can bear in mind that given my current situation that these kinds of things are not something I'd like to take the time to explain. Essentially I don't know anymore and I truly don't give a flip. I didn't pay attention because I didn't need to. Let's just say that we all had to have some special skill, and mine was keeping the toilets functional. In essence I was the "inter-galactic" janitor (to use a little worn-out jargon). Stop complaining. I know that the toilets keep themselves working and that I really wasn't needed on that trip. But that hits the nail square on the head doesn't it? In all truth, NASA could have done without me, but I won and rules are rules and ratings are good.

At first they threatened to send me home (hell I threatened to go home), but the sponsors and the audience thought that I was exactly the fresh energy needed to boost the approval ratings. Well, in looking, I suppose every "crack team" needs it's comical goof-off and all-around Sancho Panda. But, frankly I saw sending me up as a major crippling of the team, and so did NASA. But again, the audience loved me and I wasn't allowed to leave. So I finished my training with C minus scores, and a flock of "conduct unbecoming" write-ups.

But no-one cared. After all, my all-American over-study was as healthy as a horse. He just had no stomach for drinks. The night that we finished training I took him to the officer's lounge of the adjoining Air Base to which we had access to celebrate with a toast. We were on our eleventy-seventh drink when my over-study decided he didn't like the way that the vending machine kept looking at him, and that he was gonna teach it a lesson. He sucker-punched it and shattered the plexiglass. He would've been fine if he hadn't taken a running tackle at it. I wasn't aware that it was possible to have a piece of stale Twix lodge into your skull.

So NASA proclaimed him dead (though he kept moaning in the morgue for someone to turn the lights down a little), sent a ham to his mother and put my name in his slot. You know, by then it was beginning to sound like an episode of "The Simpsons" I'd seen in which Homer goes into space. Well, fourteen days later NASA desperately sent up the three contest winners -myself included- the two skilled astronauts and a potted ficus I later named "Fikey". Boredom set in quickly for us, and it was all I could do to suppress my urges to ask the captain if were were there yet. She looked a little too tough for me to take on.

After what seemed like an eternity, we arrived at Mars. Oh I know, I say that as if it's as easy to get to as your local drive-thru. We began our landing procedures and touched safely down on the Red Planet's surface. It was exciting and new for all of twenty minutes before I realize that it was red, -all of it- and that I wanted to climb back up into my bunk and see how many more variations of the song "Believer" or by the Monkees that I could come up with. Not that Mars didn't have an exotic beauty all it's own. It was just a boring beauty. After three days on the planet, we headed back to Earth. Along with numerous samples of rock taken from many layers deep into the soil (I nabbed a few bags full of the stuff, planning to sell it to close friends and family members), we brought along a strange little "trinket" I had found the second day. It was a fragment of a strange, yellow metal alloy. Um. Wait, skip that. There was no metal found. At least none that I'm willing to lose my life over.

The trip back was pretty uneventful until the metal started to transform into a super-intelligent being calling itself "Metallico", and began demanding that we take it to our leader. Okay, I'm kidding, just wanted to see if you were paying attention. Actually there was something worth mentioning on the way back. About the time that we neared the moon, a malfunction -caused by me forgetting to re-cork Fikey's water bottle- resulted in a complete and total loss of our maneuvering jets. Once we floated close enough to the moon, we were pulled into it's orbit and slung off into roughly the direction of Mars. Roughly.

At least that's what they told me had happened. They might've just been trying to shut me up when I kept screaming "We're all gonna die" and "Why me? I'm too cute to die!", but I can't really tell. That was quite some time ago, though. We did manage to stop the shuttle (about as stopped as you can get in space. Something to do with perpetual inertia or something to that effect). After about 3 hours of free-flight one of our steering jets came back online and we used it to align ourselves with our exact opposite trajectory. I think that's the terminology. We just pointed ourselves in the direction we wanted to go and fired the engines until we came to a rest.

We took a vote of four to one in favor of conserving our remaining resources instead of "Doing like the Apollo 13 dudes did". By then I wasn't very popular with the crew. We began to run out of food about a week ago, but just this "morning" we gained radio contact with our rescue ship saying that they were on course and should be rendezvousing with us in about 24 hours. My prayer tonight before I get to sleep will be that NASA had the decency to send up a real crew after us. Dear god please.